Is anyone else bothered by the Seattle Times’ (as well as other media outlets, including AvWeb) continuing claims that Boeing has not accepted blame? Muilenburg’s statements following the Ethiopian Air crash included the following:
> We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 MAX accidents.
> [The] accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft’s MCAS function.
> The history of our industry shows most accidents are caused by a chain of events. This again is the case here, and we know we can break one of those chain links in these two accidents. As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment. It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it and we know how to do it.
Are these statement untruthful or misleading? What would a blame-acceptance statement satisfactory to the media mob look like?
The main theme of these articles seems to be that since Boeing has redesigned the way MCAS operates it should admit fault in the original design process; either its process is flawed, or it didn’t follow the process. Is it possible that Boeing did indeed follow proper design/test/implementation processes AND that those processes failed to take into account all factors involved in the pilot/system interface? Isn’t that the case with pretty much all aviation accidents traced back to aircraft design? Humans design something they believe will function in a particular way, or that pilots will interact with in a particular way, only to find they lacked a full understanding of how that something works in the real world.
If Boeing actually cut corners in its design process the public absolutely has a right to know. But shouldn’t we have proof before smearing a company that deserves a large share of the credit for a decade of unprecedented aviation safety in which some 90 million commercial flights were conducted with only a single fatality? The Seattle Times article includes the statements of “people involved with the program” (who are they?) “[t]wo people familiar with the discussions” (who are they?), “an engineer” (who?), “two people familiar with the details” (who?), “one of the people familiar with the MCAS design” (WHO!!?), but stops short of making any direct claims about Boeing’s behavior, choosing instead to rely on innuendo. I guess we can take comfort in the fact the Seattle Times recognizes that innuendo is not proof.