Had the 737MAX undergone normal FAA certification procedures it would never have been certified, evidenced by the “discovery” of a new flaw.
FAA granted Boeing self-certification, essentially, and they pushed through a plane with an appalling fatal defect when piloted by poorly-trained/inexperienced crews.
FAA is mostly to blame for the crashes & deaths and Boeing corporate responsible for the remaining blame (they made the design decisions to speed certification which led directly to the flawed MCAS system) and the demise of the company for putting accounting ahead of safety in dismissing so many engineers because they viewed the company as “mature”.
See the Bloomberg article also here at FR which, frankly, outlines the real causes. When an aircraft manufacturers publicly announces that it may take software or hardware (microprocessors) to fix the problem, clearly this aircraft skipped a number of basic certification steps to meet sales goals.
Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3760301/posts
Valid points and I had read that article.
However, Boeing is a private company. They make a product just like every other company makes a product. They, not the FAA, are ultimately responsible for the product. They have to live with the consequences even as their failure as a company would impact all of us to some extent and I do not want to see them fail.
This is the slippery slope that leads to massive government and crushing regulation. Look what happened to the small private plane industry. There is a free market solution to this problem and we are witnessing it... fix the plane or nobody will buy or fly them. Prevent these failures in the future or nobody will buy or fly your plane.
Blaming the FAA or this President or a previous one for cheering the company is only going to lead to a much larger FAA given our past reactions where government has to solve every problem. It will have costs far beyond the moment.
Consider some examples - In response to 9/11 we created a massive new bureaucracy and grew government immensely and at great cost with the creation of Homeland Security. I am not convinced we are safer for it today.
In response to a massive hurricane called Katrina we bloated and blew up a small federal agency called FEMA who largely existed to write checks to local and state governments after a disaster into a “first responder.” We could have simply signed contracts of some kind with Walmart and other large retailers to quickly deliver supplies to those who needed it. Instead we got many new employees, trucks, warehouses, and other stuff and we have been losing money ever since when there was an easier and more effective non-government solution that would have cost pennies on the dollars.
I want a full accounting of what occurred because it impacts all of us. However, I do not want to pay far more for air travel and in federal taxes because a company screwed up. Blaming the FAA will have repercussions far beyond two plane crashes in foreign countries.
The FAA will certainly respond to the “failure” that they must have more engineers and more employees to review the work of a private company.
Boeing knew the engines were too large for the existing aircraft. They believed they could overcome this problem in the same way it has been overcome on other aircraft with similar problems like the Osprey (long list of failures and casualties) or the F-117 (had its own share of problems) - with software and computers. Given the number of hours the plane operated without a crash, they were somewhat successful even as the fatal flaw remained and eventually resulted in two disastrous failures overseas.
I don’t know the solution and I am upset at the failure. However, my assertion will continue that I don’t want a bigger government in response to a flawed system on a privately designed and sold aircraft.
That might be a solution far worse than the problem and it is a point we would all do well to remember. I provided two very good examples above and there are many more.