11
votes
What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max? Malfunctions caused two deadly crashes. But an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty
Link information
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- Title
- What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?
- Published
- Sep 18 2019
- Word count
- 14 560 words
While some blame can be put on the pilots, this headline seems a bit too unequivocal to me.
If it was the pilots who "really brought down" those flights, then why did Boeing's own investigative panel recommend major internal restructuring to make engineering decisions a higher priority over business decisions?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/business/boeing-safety-737-max.html
edit: This was from NYT from just 4 days ago, and seems to be a bit at odds with the OP link to NYT. Do they need to hire a "continuity" person like movie sets have?
The "lack of basic airmanship" has echoes of another deadly story, where in two separate incidents US Navy destroyers collided with merchant traffic in the Pacific Ocean:
https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/us-navy-crashes-japan-cause-mccain/
Thanks so much for that link.
Wow. That's all I needed to read right there. Maybe I am guilty of stereotyping here but it seems like whatever they are teaching in MBA programs is destroying a lot of good things in the USA.
Am I way off in my derision of MBAs? If not, I wonder if MBA programs are adjusting at all, or are their heads buried in the sand?
The best way I can describe my MBA experience is that I got a Masters in Bullshit Arts. It was 70% common sense, 10% sustainability (that could be due to being in California), the rest was learning how to present data in whichever way best supported whatever your position is. The focus is generally on maximizing profit (or at least giving the impression of maximum profits) while having maximum losses for tax purposes.
The general point of safety engineering is to minimize the magnitude of risks, whether due to human error or overt systems failure. My impression, from a fair amount of reading about the 737-MAX systems, is that there's little question the automatic trim stabilizer made the flight characteristics less predictable by comparison with unmodified aerodynamics even when working as designed, and more prone to runaway amplification in the event of human error.
The fact that well-trained pilots could recover without crashing doesn't excuse the underlying design flaw.