Funny you should bring up “government institutional failure all the way across the board,” Owen.
I summer up north near Oshkosh and pay the US Postal Svc dearly for something they call “Premium Forwarding of my weekly mail” I’ve been doing this for 16 years. Each year, I suffer 3 or 4 major losses of the package of mail. THIS year / week takes the cake … my mail didn’t show up so I had to call to get a tracking number; from it I found out they sent my mail to Puerto Rico instead of Wisconsin. This equates to an error rate greater than 10% … meanwhile, the postal rates are going up. Talking to my contact person in FL, he makes no bones about the USPS being all hosed up. They’re not even denying it. He forgot to blame Trump, tho. OH! Did I mention they’re not doing too good over at the drone targeting office in Afghanistan? I’m sure each of us could bring up like problems with Gov’t agencies. Time for the USPS to be replaced by UPS or FedEx! Who’s on first … ??
In THIS 737 case, there are a lot of dirty players but … Jim H – below – nails it.
The Chief and assistant Chief test pilots are being thrown under the bus. Never mind that other test pilots had the same observations (as opposed to concerns). Never mind that they DID pass their observations along–to other test pilots–to management–to engineering–they DIDN’T remain silent.
If THESE pilots are “guilty”–then everyone else above them are ALSO complicit. No mention of the FAA test pilots that ACTUALLY SIGNED OFF ON THE SYSTEM–why not prosecute THEM as well? Apparently, THEY didn’t see a problem, either. Finally–Owen is right–if there was a problem, why didn’t it manifest itself in the United States–where most of the testing and most of the aircraft were located?
I see bits of truth in all of the above comments. Please consider though that “Management” is the process of getting a job done through others. That said in truth, Management must rely on the CTP to get the job done! IF he succumbed to pressure from others, then shame on him for NOT doing his job (he could have always retired and then gone public with the hanky-panky going on within Boeing and/or the FAA). IF he were ignorant of the real issues then shame on him for NOT knowing the details. Yes, MANY others have to be complicit, but when the “S___ hits the fan”, some ONE (as a minimum) must be held accountable! In this case, the CTP is the “sacrificial lamb”.
No one has brought up that they’re calling the charges “criminal.” IF he’s convicted, he becomes a felon. Are they for real here ??? That’s a mighty strong accusation, isn’t it ?? As Yars says, the 'things NOT seen" here are gonna be that no one will want to be a Chief Technical pilot at Boeing … making things worse.
Everyone is making good points. I think Boeing is too big and needs to be broken up into smaller companies. In the corporate world bigger rarely translates into a better run company. In the past twenty years Boeing has bought out their domestic competition and has taken over so many other businesses I doubt that most of their stockholders even know what businesses Boeing is trying to operate. Big corporations don’t take pride in their products anymore, they take pride in their stock price and dividends. When companies prioritize stock buybacks over improving their products the “products” usually suffer. Boeing is a prime example of this.
Martin,
Completely agree. I am a current 73 CA and fly the 800-NG as well as the Max. Both great airplanes. It is a very popular consensus that Boeing leadership should be marched to the gallows. While it’s an emotionally satisfying idea to many, there is no logic to it. Exactly how is Boeing responsible for accidents in which both flight crews failed to comply with an emergency checklist? And not just any checklist, a memory item checklist! Stab trim runaways have been trained since the first airplanes built with movable stabs. The “new” 73 trim runaway checklist created after the accidents is essentially identical to the old trim runaway checklist. I have no doubt that the internet mob will now target me for criticism for saying that the blame doesn’t belong to some executive in an office. The blame lies squarely and only on the pilots who failed to fulfill their responsibilities as professional pilots. Greg
“The case was brought by the then U.S. Attorney in the northern district of Texas, Erin Nealy Cox.
Cox left the Department of Justice after the agreement and in June joined Kirkland & Ellis, Boeing’s lead corporate criminal defense law firm. On Kirkland’s website, she was welcomed to the firm as a partner by Mark Filip, who had signed the Deferred Prosecution Agreement on behalf of Boeing.”
So the US Attorney that initially goes after Boeing instead crafts a sweetheart deal where all the Boeing execs are exonerated, then lands a job as a partner at Boeing’s main law firm. And was welcomed by the same Boeing lawyer who signed the sweetheart deal!
Exactly. While Boeing has blame, so do the pilots. An MCAS failure manifests as a runaway trim. If you’re proficient in runaway trim, an MCAS failure should not be a problem. Also, some say the reactivation of the trim cutoff switches after they were turned off was because there was too much friction in the control system with the trim so out of whack to manually reduce the trim and they were trying to get the electric trim working again. However, that’s another issue altogether. Someone, Boeing or the airlines, took out the procedure to relax the controls to unload the controls to reduce friction so you could get some manual trim in. Wash, rinse, repeat. But anyone who has experience with small planes knows this either through student training or, like me, goofing up and having to deal with an airplane way out of trim at the worst time because I forgot to take nose-up trim out on a touch-and-go. Finally, with the consequences of runaway trim being so high, I don’t know why the procedure is 1) disconnect autothrottles - observe 2) disconnect autopilot - observe 3) trim cutoff switches – OFF. I’d be going right for #3. It reminds me of the Payne Stewart crash where in the Loss of Pressurization procedure on step 243 was DON OXYGEN MASKS. That should have been the 1st step and also the first boldface item.
Because there will never be enough government regulators. You have to use something like an ISO 9001 system, in this case company DERs, to get the job done. Then you have periodic evaluations of how it’s working, just like ISO9001. If they fail, you remove the authorities. If the government doesn’t have enough bodies to cover, then I guess you go out of business. The problem is Boeing is too big to fail because of industry consolidation. So the incentives are perverse.
The procedure was supposed to treat it as a runaway trim. But how often does runaway trim happen on climb-out? It seems that if you had a runaway electric trim nose down early in the flight there may be a good chance that it might not be caught before you get into the situation where manual trim is nearly impossible to do. Imagine runaway nose down trim at 1000’, or 500’, seems that would be very hairy.
“Deferred Prosecution Agreement” - that suggests an outcome has been prearranged which will feature some knuckle-rapping, deflection, and “Nothing to see here, folks, just keep it moving…” I’m sure there will be some courtroom theatrics with the chief technical pilot playing a role similar to the mob underling who takes the rap for Da Boss. With the understanding that he’ll be well taken care of for his loyalty. If this case should happen to get to CourtTV it should be in line for an Emmy nomination in the “Best Dramatic Performance” category.
Uh, depends in substantial part on what the role of the accused person was - expectations much higher for a person who has delegated authority from FAA (via the ODA).
Even if not, big trouble for Boeing for not telling FAA.