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Comment by WhoBeI | Hacker News Reader

What will the certification process for the next plane from Boeing look like?

The FAA certified a plane that had obvious flaws. From what I understand they out sourced the certification process to Boeing but that doesn't remove their responsibility, it's still their "stamp". The real certification process started after the accidents and only needed a few weeks to find additional flaws. I'd assume the process is normally months long so "a few weeks" would be finding it early.

But why should I trust the FAA? They seem to be working hard now projecting an image of a for-the-people agency while throwing as much dirt as they can on Boeing but I haven't really seen anything addressing their own problems with out sourcing, corruption, and political interference.

Have I missed something?

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Canada and the EU have already lost trust in the FAA. They're going to certify the Max and probably other planes more independently now.

As a consumer, I'm happy to have more oversight on the planes.

As a Boeing shareholder, I'd be pissed the company demolished the trust that allowed for a lot of cost savings during the certification phase.

Time and time again, we see that companies are terrible at self-regulation. They'll abuse it to save pennies today at the cost of dollars and lives tomorrow.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-canada/...

What happens most of the time with the big companies (Boeing, Cessna, Bombardier...) is that it is cheaper to have an in-house DER (Designated Engineering Representative) for the part of the aircraft that they are certifying. DERs themselves

You have Mechanical DERs, Electrical DERs, Software DERs, and others.

A good example for the HN crowd, the Software DER. Per regulations, the software standard is the DO-178B. The DER isn't actually spinning up the dev environment, or building the piece of software used; just checking to make sure the process was followed. (the dev environment was documented, what dependancies...) These people are a step up from code reviewers and just check paperwork more than software.

The FAA itself isn't concerned with safety; it is just there to make sure there is a papertrail to follow in the event of a safety issue.

I think that's a rewriting of the role of the FAA. A papertrail is a strong prerequisite to being able to adequately review the safety of an aircraft. Without strict conformance to both complete written instructions on how to build, assemble, and configure an aircraft, how would one ever know a plane, no matter how many tests you do is the same design that is later flown vs what was certified?

BTW when the plan was floated to let Boeing self certify more in the process, in the name of 'efficiency' there were objections made to the political appointees driving that.

I don't know what the US certification will look like, but I'd bet on the European certification being independent and very rigorous.

If its independent and vigorous how did the MAX get through to begin with?

That's a good question and one Canada and EU are asking themselves.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5072383/canada-eu-reviewing-certi...

> Canada and the European Union say they are re-examining the approval it gave Boeing 737 MAX jets, following reports of a U.S. investigation into the Federal Aviation Administration certification of the aircraft.

That's the will part in "will look like".

Expect the procedure to change, a lot.

From what I understand, they used to trust the FAA. They probably won't trust the FAA so much in the future.

They used to cross certify each other's planes. Probably not anymore.

This is an excellent point. FAA says it's too arduous to certify these planes, so they let Boeing do it. But, after some people die, the magically have the ability and capacity to do it?

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