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Comment by superbaconman | Hacker News Reader

But why is everyone blaming Boeing? They were working on the issue, and I wouldn't want to rush a software patch on plane either. The pilots clearly thought it was an issue, by why are they talking to Boeing? Shouldn't they be talking with the Carrier? I mean if anyone is to blame for loss of life surely it's the carriers?

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Everyone is blaming boeing because every time you think you learned the last possible either dumb or reckless thing they did with the 737 max there is another dumber more reckless thing. Every single rock you look under there is more of this crap.

Let's recertify our jet instead of doing a new one, shorten time to market.

New engines don't fit, ruin the handling of the aircraft. Can't recert that.

Try to fix aircraft handling in software. Designed flawed system to hide this from pilots and get regulatory apptoval. Under testing discover that system as submitted to regulators does not work well enough in flight. Update to allow to run repeatedly instead of once as well as increasing movement ranger per cycle. Do not tell regulators.

Ship aircraft with 1 hour iPad video intro for pilots. Do not mention this system.

Discover that the indicator in the cockpit for sensor failure for the system only works if you have optional HUD upgrades. Sit on this data. Do not patch until your aircraft is grounded.

Reassign the guys who are supposed to be doing safety oversight for you if they ask for more safety testing.

You missed the final step: people die. No individual or group of individuals is ever tried for a crime because corporate personhood.

There is no evidence (yet) the MAX engines placement "ruin the handling of the aircraft". That's still speculation. Clearly it handles different from other 737 type aircraft which would require a different pilot type certification, which is a big deal and a huge competitive disadvantage vs a320neo.

What? The whole purpose of MCAS was to address the tendency for the aircraft to pick up under throttle because the engineers are placed more forward on the wings causing a change in lift

Yes, but that's not "ruining" the handling of the plane, only changing it from the handling of a real 737.

They gave MCAS extremely powerful control over the trim, apparently powerful enough to overcome the pilots. That implies that the handling characteristics that MCAS is supposed to overcome are pretty bad.

Or that they're pretty out of spec for a 737. I think other people in the thread have pointed out that the extra lift from the engine position is considered normal in other airplane models, but I haven't seen a lot about that aspect of the MCAS issue so I can't comment on it.

I think it’s the degree of lift from the engines in a stall situation that made the 737Max8 unusually dangerous. But you’re correct in that Boeing desperately wanted to maintain the 737 type certificate to make it easier to train existing 737 pilots.

It's like back when every single week on Hackernews there was another article about Uber, either dealing with harassment, a corrupt or cut-throat business culture, the hell map, programs to get around laws in various countries, hiring Eric Holder's law firm for damage control, a self driving car driving the wrong way up a 1-way street, a self driving car killing a lady on a bicycle, said self-driving car intentionally had sensors disabled for testing the computer vision system, etc. etc.

There still in business though, so Boeing will probably pull out of this fine.

I could imagine that the biggest risk for Boeings exec comes from the certification issues. That they lost two planes because of the system will result in civil law suits and, I'd guess, a settlement. If Boeing can get these settlements without admitting to wrong doing they will have an advantage on the certification front. If they have to admit wrong doing to get a settlement, like VW had to, the Execs are in much more trouble. And the bad thing for them is that the FAA certification process and any potential cheating in it can be litigated and prosecuted in the US.

Boeing itself should be fine after a couple of really expensive years. VW was as well and I for my part really thought VW could go under. Instead it hit some high level managers and around 30 billion in fines.

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