The Roots of Boeing's 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

The Roots of Boeing’s 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight

By Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles and Jack Nicas
July 27, 2019

SEATTLE — In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board.

Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017.

More than a dozen current and former employees at the F.A.A. and Boeing who spoke with The New York Times described a broken regulatory process that effectively neutered the oversight authority of the agency.

The regulator had been passing off routine tasks to manufacturers for years, with the goal of freeing up specialists to focus on the most important safety concerns. But on the Max, the regulator handed nearly complete control to Boeing, leaving some key agency officials in the dark about important systems like MCAS, according to the current and former employees.

While the agency’s flawed oversight of the Boeing 737 Max has attracted much scrutiny since the first crash in October and a second one in March, a Times investigation revealed previously unreported details about weaknesses in the regulatory process that compromised the safety of the plane.

The company performed its own assessments of the system, which were not stress-tested by the regulator. Turnover at the agency left two relatively inexperienced engineers overseeing Boeing’s early work on the system.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html

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Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

[dem4decades]

1. Park those pieces of shit. Don't ever want to fly on one.

[donkeypoofed]

2. Golly, and who hasn't bothered to appoint a Head of the F.A.A.?!

Cheatolini, that's who. This shit is on him.

[RainCaster]

3. This is a complete failure of everything

At the highest levels, the FAA owns this. They fucked up, big time. They represent themselves as the know-all be-all end-all we-be-da-shit of aviation. As they have demonstrated, that is not the case. They are fucking clueless about how a modern aircraft is controlled, built or designed. The way they approved this plane, then conducted the investigation shows that to us.

Next, the "Lazy B" has to own up to the fact that they shamelessly cut corners in what should have been a serious engineering effort. As the principle owner of the technology in play, they were responsible for insuring that worked correctly. Always. They did not look at all the different ways this system could fail and how such failures would not be detected. And that is the heart of the problem.

Lastly, there is no one else to blame for this. You cannot blame the airlines who were NEVER told of this shitty engineering fiasco. They bought the planes thinking they were identical to all the previous high quality planes Boeing had delivered to them. Only someone as stupid as a Republican could blame the passengers. They were the ones who had placed the ultimate trust in in a US government agency they did not know or understand. That trust was tragic, and foreign governments need to wake the fuck up and see that their own safety regulations cannot count on the US.

[CentralMass]

4. The roots of Boeing's crisis are inside the walls of Boeing.