Deregulation never seems to result in more competition, just more consolidation and more and more powerful companies with increased lobbying powers and personal connections to top government officials.
Pre deregulation, the US government set the routes and prices, and even if an airline could exist. Eg. Southwest Airlines was forbidden to fly outside Texas. Prices were way higher and flight routes restricted. Very different today... Affordability and availability way up, overall enjoyment... that’s up to the traveler...
I mean this is facially untrue. We’ve been undergoing a 70-year long period of deregulation, and it’s been overwhelmingly positive. (Not to mention, it’s been copied by nearly every Western European country, and has markedly improved what during the 1970s and 1980s were very weak economies.)
We can get next day packages from Amazon, for example, because of the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries: https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of-the.... Previously, package delivery would take much long because packages would be transferred from carrier to carrier operating on regulated routes with regulated prices.
In the electric industry, deregulation of the generator side of the industry has caused wholesale electricity prices to plummet. Today, more than half the cost of electricity is from the still-regulated, retail distribution side.
We have also largely avoided regulation of the first major post-FDR industry: the Internet. If the US operated the way it did in the 1950s and 1960s, we’d likely have regulated prices per ad impression and things like that. Instead, the industry has flourished in the absence of regulation.
There is a reason anti-deregulation screeds focus on isolated incidents and are heavy on narrative. Why are we fixating in one instance of failure instead of looking at what airline safety records have looked like over the past decades overall? Objective views of numbers and long term trends make the situation look far more rosey.
Well, that is exactly to be expected and is exactly what is predicted by economic theory: Markets only actually function under regulation, unregulated markets lead to monopolies or monopsonies.
>Deregulation never seems to result in more competition
Deregulation won't result in more competition when there are big players that can use their money for advertisement, consolidation, buying smaller competitors, cartels, and so on.
What can result in more competition is regulation that favors competition. Breaking up behemoths after a certain size (a la AT & T) is one good way...
This does not look like deregulation, but corruption: having FAA regulate, but delegate to Boeing to "self-control". Like building prisons and asking convicts to guard themselves. I think I saw similar stories about FCC, but with no people dead as a result.
When has the US gov ever moved away from the pseudo market of mega firms anointed to succeed like Boeing in the last few decades?
After the financial crisis the regulations added only further excluded small firms from the banking market because they had ridiculous rules meant for mega banks applied to all banks. So why wouldn’t all the small banks just sell their firms to the big ones?
“Too small to exist” is the reality, not simply “too big to fail” (aka too well connected to fail). Now we only have 5 mega banks further entrenched. Aircraft manufacturer market is even more limited (the incident with Canada’s Bombardier vs US Boeing showed everything you need to know about that ‘private’ market).
I’m not sure what fantasy world people live in when they talk about deregulation of these markets as a common phenomenon, especially airlines, finance, health care, telephony etc (all of the worst industries for consumers in the US, which I should note has nothing to do with the value of public gov run markets which these are not). Absolutely none of those have less administrative oversight than a few decades ago. I guess they listen to politicians instead of any indicators from the market place or history.
If the ‘deregulations’ all further entrench the massive companies, while leaving all of the barriers to entry for the small firms. What outcome did you expect? More competition between the 3-4 mega companies that remain? Is that how we were supposed to benefit from competition?
> In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left.
> In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years earlier.
This is how you grow an army of YES-men without any substantial backbone. The type that makes good middle managers and keeps the process moving smoothly. Unfortunately for these engineers, they might ultimately be responsible for the system they signed off on.
Kind of BS. Yes the regulations and oversight should be amazing and effective, but Boeing should have redesigned the airframe from the beginning when it became clear that the more efficient engines didn’t work with the frame. Let’s not misplace the blame here. Their business driven goals (don’t require simulator training) were smart until they couldn’t be made to work. Instead they forced it, resulting in death of human lives and possibly Boeing itself.
There are so many underlying threads here: the revolving door between government and industry, the influence of lobbying, lack of competition within critical American industries, deregulation, lack of funding for regulatory agencies. All sums up to regulatory capture. Sickening.
Time and time again regular people are getting screwed by the same patters, the previous paragraph basically summarizes what led to the 2008 financial crisis as well.
One issue the article didn't cover, but I wish it did, was the obvious corruption of the FAA by industry lobbying. The revolving door of industry -> government -> private industry leaves any regulation weak and often ineffectual. We call it "lobbying" but the reality is that it's just corruption and bribery under a nicer name.
One specific example to highlight the issue...
Ali Bahrami works for the FAA, lobbies to delegate oversight to the airlines, then leaves for a lobbying job, then is back at the FAA again at a higher position. It's hard to believe he's always acting in the public's interest with so much industry money and connections.
Probably true but not nafarious/corrupt. It's just human nature that if you watch something and it appears to be safe for long enough, you stop watching so closely.
It's also alkind of a paradox: the safer something appears to be, the more the safety is taken for granted and pushed to unsafe levels. C.f. the mortgage crisis or a million other examples.
From what data are you deriving this theory of inevitable entropy? The safety record of the airline industry overall does not appear to be declining or regressing. On the metric of commercial jet fatalities, 2017 was the safest year ever [0]. Or are you suggesting that the 737 MAX is the canary in the coal mine of an imminent era of airline disasters caused by complacency? Why is that more likely than the lobbying and bureaucratic changes documented in the article?
That is so true. From ancient times all the way through to today. People lose their sense of hazard.
From the idiot in their car, "Last time I drove I texted, and there was no problem...."
To ancient Babylon: the ruling class was partying the night they were invaded by Persia because they thought there was no way the Persians would ever be able to breach their walls. They had no sense of hazard.
Kind of reminds me of politicians today. They actually have no idea that their stupidity has a real chance of breaking things.
A major problem is that regulatory capture leads to less competition, yet the common solution proposed is "more regulation/government". The US federal government effectively forced Boeings 2nd biggest competition to shut down their business in 2017 (Bombardier's C Series program, now sold to Airbus for pennies on the dollar). It seems to me that if a democratic government is given broad arbitrary regulatory power, it is a given that it will be used to limit competition for special interest's groups benefit. If anyone has any examples of a large federal agency that hasn't been captured, I would be interested to know more.
> A major problem is that regulatory capture leads to less competition, yet the common solution proposed is "more regulation/government"
Neither "regulation" nor "government" are single dimensional quantities that can be compared with a simple "more" or "less".
Having regulatory agencies act in the public interest is probably going to require constant oversight and guidance. It's a hell of a lot harder to have conversations like that when more than half of the political influence in the US is able to dismiss any suggestions with reflexive "more regulation = bad" arguments.
Some regulations decrease competition. Some regulations increase competition. Some regulations provide incentives aligned with the public interest. Some regulations don't. They need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Except the bombardier issue had literally nothing to do with regulation and to claim it did is misleading. That was 100% Trump with his tarriff BS. The FAA and safety regulations played 0 part in it. We could have literally an unregulated airline industry and it wouldn't have changed the bombardier situation.
> So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing’s new 737 MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor — a type of sensor that was known to fail. Boeing’s rival, Airbus, has typically depended on three such sensors.
“A single point of failure is an absolute no-no,” said one former Boeing engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with The Seattle Times. “That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can’t imagine how.”
The background of all of this is increased corporate power in American society relative to individuals. Regulatory capture happens more quickly and fluidly when government is more accountable to corporate money than to voters.
I think it's more a lack of long term thinking. Leaders that do not have a long term stake in the company but who can profit from a rise in the stock price in the short term.
What if executives could only sell their shares five years after they acquired them? What if they experienced losses when the company does?
Boards and shareholders need to get smarter. I'm hesitant to regulate it but I see no problem the SEC rating companies for their incentive structure. It should be updated whenever leadership changes or the company changes compensation.
Companies lad by founders who still have most of their wealth in company stock should garner the highest rating. Companies that don't require CEOs to invest and who allow CEOs to exercise options stock and sell stock whenever they want might get the lowest.
How executives can sell stock should be part of that rating. If executives can only sell an amount of stock gradually, say in 8% increments every month for the next year and can't change that schedule, that is safer for shareholders than allowing them to sell whenever they want.
> What if executives could only sell their shares five years after they acquired them?
This is something like what Salomon Brothers did. Results were mixed.
That said, I like the idea of spreading them out a bit. CEOs and top execs do behave a lot like how agency theory predicts, it's just that if you can come up with the perfect monitoring scheme, you don't need a CEO.
It's seems easy to dogpile on Boeing in this situation - there is likely even truth to narratives of under valuing engineering at Boeing, I should know. But the story of corporate greed and callous corner cutting is too easy and starts to feel like group think. Boeing, as the plane manufacture, has the task of ensuring safety under a vast array of conditions. And in truth, they, along with industry have made flight incredibly safe. Not only are planes complicated, they are complicated systems composed of many more complicated subsystems operated by Airlines across the world under different regulatory agencies, with differing training and maintenance standards. It's complicated and it's always easier to see flaws in hindsight. Second, don't think that Boeing doesn't know that there business hinges on consumer confidence. Every time there is an incident with a plane - manufacturer's fault, operator's fault, or whatever, Boeing gets a black eye. Regulation is critical, but not a blanket solution to industry challenges. It may not be right, or ideal, but there are good reasons the faa delegates. How much more funding should we give them to make us feel safe? Fatality frequency is measured in "per billion" today. We want a bad guy when there is tragedy. I fear that want will further damage a company already fighting for it's life with Airbus. Let's not let them off the hook, but neither are the causes or solutions simple.
It's interesting how this lesson is never learned. We constantly see how oversight is reduced or removed because companies decide that the costs are too high and the rules too stringent. But as soon as the rules are relaxed the companies immediately begin to cut corners and things begin to fail.
It's human nature to find ways to get from point A to point B using the least amount of energy even if we need to break the rules. We should all keep that in mind.
Seems like another anecdote of where seniority and experience in engineering is something that can't be quite replicated/replaced by technical qualifications:
> In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left. The engineers, who had a combined 50 years of experience, had joined the office at its creation...In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years earlier. People who worked with the two engineers said they seemed ill-equipped to identify any problems in a complex system like MCAS.
I assume engineers new to the industry (and government regulation) would be lacking in "big picture" thinking and in confidence and skill in navigating and investigating bureaucracy – the NYT notes that Boeing's early MCAS report "didn't prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers". But the NYT also reports that the engineers made what seemed to be a straightforward technical misjudgment:
> In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking.
Though it's hard to tell from that paragraph and its context whether the misunderstanding came from simple technical error and incompetence – e.g. misreading or not fully reading the specs – or deliberate deception/obfuscation from Boeing, and/or inexperience and naivety in doing regulatory work.
The underlying assumption here seems to be that if only the FAA had examined in detail every aspect of the development of the plane, of course they would have found all the problems. Underlying this assumption is the idea that Boeing is either trying intentionally to create unsafe planes (as though this is good for Boeing) or that the FAA could hire engineers that are way better than Boeing's engineers.
The latter half of the article makes specific claims to how lack of FAA expertise and manpower, and increasing deference and complacency to the industry's self-reporting, led to missed signals. For example:
> When company engineers analyzed the change, they figured that the system had not become any riskier, according to two people familiar with Boeing’s discussions on the matter...So the company never submitted an updated safety assessment of those changes to the agency. In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking.
> Under the impression the system was insignificant, officials didn’t require Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS. When the company asked to remove mention of MCAS from the pilot’s manual, the agency agreed.
The "change" mentioned is Boeing overhauling MCAS to have a four-fold increase in magnitude of control over the stabilizer (2.5 degrees vs 0.6 degrees). Your belief is that the FAA, even with a better-staffed review team, and less of a culture of rubber-stamping industry engineer assessments, would have reached the same conclusion? And/or do you think the MCAS change is actually not a problem it's scapegoated to be, and that Boeing was right to tell FAA to remove it from the pilot's manual?
No one intentionally makes shitty products. Or at least I’ve never heard of anyone who does.
But I can sympathise with the people that made the decisions to put the plane in the air.
I never intended to make products that customers wouldn’t like. But I’ve shipped things that didn’t meet my own (low?) standards due to financial and social pressures for me and the companies I worked for.
Most employees have done the same. Most business owners have as well.
And you “don’t buy it” because? Blind faith in Boeing and the FAA not being corrupt?
Fact is, the FAA has outsourced large parts of certification to the very manufacturer whose plane it was to certify. Either physically (by using Boeing manpower) or conceptually (by not testing everything because Boeing told them nothing has changed even though that was not true).
This was not regarded as a new aircraft development but a variant of an existing design. This meant less scrutiny. Variants deliberately push the boundaries of what it means to be the same design to avoid the scrutiny given to a new design
Systems are getting too complex for traditional methods of validation and certification to operate. Safety and correctness of intelligent machines should be validated by even more intelligent machines.
Another big problem is that there is very little competition. In reality there are only two players. Smaller manufacturers get absorbed by big ones. As a result grounding a single model causes economic catastrophe in many airlines - leading to significant ticket price increase!
I wonder if critical systems such as this would become more or less reliable if a law forced the companies to release the source code to the public so that anyone could audit. Something like the rewards Tesla gives to the hackers that compromise their systems should be set up by the government for critical software.
How on earth does 'airline creating startups' live in the same sentence as 'Boeing'? Boeing is an aircraft manufacturer, not an airline.
Airline creating startups do not compete with Boeing, they compete with Lufthansa, Air-France-KLM, Delta and so on.
And even if they did create airplanes, small start-ups do not usually directly compete with giants the size of Boeing on their home territory. Airline manufacture - even with shitty regulation - of a new model passenger plane is not something a 'smaller airplane creating startup' would successfully pull off. It will take a very large amount of money and a huge team to do this.
For anyone to try to compete with Boeing today, from zero, in that aircraft segment, they would need at least, as in bare minimum, $10Bi dollars. Minimum
And that would be to get the plane out of the door. Boeing (and Airbus) has several other non-tangible advantages to their product such as: extensive maintenance and parts logistics (including used parts that can be acquired), well known product, etc
There is one possible competitor in the future: COMAC
If your Boeing or Airbus plane suffers a non-trivial failure that makes it unable to fly, both companies have a team that are able to go and fix it there.
It’ll probably be Airbus that eats a portion of Boeing’s lunch (but not all of it). And whatever Airbus can’t eat will just go back to Boeing. An MVP for a passenger airplane requires considerably more effort and experience than an app, or even a car. You can’t just ship then iterate quickly.
[+] [-] mevile|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wingspar|6 years ago|reply
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...
https://m.aviationweek.com/blog/law-changed-airline-industry...
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
We can get next day packages from Amazon, for example, because of the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries: https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of-the.... Previously, package delivery would take much long because packages would be transferred from carrier to carrier operating on regulated routes with regulated prices.
In the electric industry, deregulation of the generator side of the industry has caused wholesale electricity prices to plummet. Today, more than half the cost of electricity is from the still-regulated, retail distribution side.
As to airline deregulation: fatality rates per million passenger miles has trended linearly down since the 1960s. So have ticket prices. https://www.fastcompany.com/3022215/what-it-was-really-like-....
We have also largely avoided regulation of the first major post-FDR industry: the Internet. If the US operated the way it did in the 1950s and 1960s, we’d likely have regulated prices per ad impression and things like that. Instead, the industry has flourished in the absence of regulation.
There is a reason anti-deregulation screeds focus on isolated incidents and are heavy on narrative. Why are we fixating in one instance of failure instead of looking at what airline safety records have looked like over the past decades overall? Objective views of numbers and long term trends make the situation look far more rosey.
[+] [-] jgeada|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|6 years ago|reply
Deregulation won't result in more competition when there are big players that can use their money for advertisement, consolidation, buying smaller competitors, cartels, and so on.
What can result in more competition is regulation that favors competition. Breaking up behemoths after a certain size (a la AT & T) is one good way...
[+] [-] AdrianB1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|6 years ago|reply
After the financial crisis the regulations added only further excluded small firms from the banking market because they had ridiculous rules meant for mega banks applied to all banks. So why wouldn’t all the small banks just sell their firms to the big ones?
“Too small to exist” is the reality, not simply “too big to fail” (aka too well connected to fail). Now we only have 5 mega banks further entrenched. Aircraft manufacturer market is even more limited (the incident with Canada’s Bombardier vs US Boeing showed everything you need to know about that ‘private’ market).
I’m not sure what fantasy world people live in when they talk about deregulation of these markets as a common phenomenon, especially airlines, finance, health care, telephony etc (all of the worst industries for consumers in the US, which I should note has nothing to do with the value of public gov run markets which these are not). Absolutely none of those have less administrative oversight than a few decades ago. I guess they listen to politicians instead of any indicators from the market place or history.
If the ‘deregulations’ all further entrench the massive companies, while leaving all of the barriers to entry for the small firms. What outcome did you expect? More competition between the 3-4 mega companies that remain? Is that how we were supposed to benefit from competition?
[+] [-] std_throwaway|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Camas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] std_throwaway|6 years ago|reply
> In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years earlier.
This is how you grow an army of YES-men without any substantial backbone. The type that makes good middle managers and keeps the process moving smoothly. Unfortunately for these engineers, they might ultimately be responsible for the system they signed off on.
[+] [-] azinman2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|6 years ago|reply
Time and time again regular people are getting screwed by the same patters, the previous paragraph basically summarizes what led to the 2008 financial crisis as well.
[+] [-] jorblumesea|6 years ago|reply
One specific example to highlight the issue...
Ali Bahrami works for the FAA, lobbies to delegate oversight to the airlines, then leaves for a lobbying job, then is back at the FAA again at a higher position. It's hard to believe he's always acting in the public's interest with so much industry money and connections.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/with-...
[+] [-] jeffdavis|6 years ago|reply
It's also alkind of a paradox: the safer something appears to be, the more the safety is taken for granted and pushed to unsafe levels. C.f. the mortgage crisis or a million other examples.
[+] [-] danso|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-safety/2017-safe...
[+] [-] tomohawk|6 years ago|reply
From the idiot in their car, "Last time I drove I texted, and there was no problem...."
To ancient Babylon: the ruling class was partying the night they were invaded by Persia because they thought there was no way the Persians would ever be able to breach their walls. They had no sense of hazard.
Kind of reminds me of politicians today. They actually have no idea that their stupidity has a real chance of breaking things.
[+] [-] bgorman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creato|6 years ago|reply
Neither "regulation" nor "government" are single dimensional quantities that can be compared with a simple "more" or "less".
Having regulatory agencies act in the public interest is probably going to require constant oversight and guidance. It's a hell of a lot harder to have conversations like that when more than half of the political influence in the US is able to dismiss any suggestions with reflexive "more regulation = bad" arguments.
Some regulations decrease competition. Some regulations increase competition. Some regulations provide incentives aligned with the public interest. Some regulations don't. They need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
[+] [-] kartan|6 years ago|reply
Safe regulations are to avoid people dying not to stimulate competition. Without safety regulations, way more people will get sick, injured or die.
And, in this case, it is not about adding more regulation. It is just about making sure that the current one is in place.
Someone though, too much regulation is reducing my profit and 350 people died. Will deregulation bring that people lives back?
[+] [-] tw04|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naikrovek|6 years ago|reply
This is pure WTF, right here.
[+] [-] russdpale|6 years ago|reply
> So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing’s new 737 MAX airplane were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor — a type of sensor that was known to fail. Boeing’s rival, Airbus, has typically depended on three such sensors.
“A single point of failure is an absolute no-no,” said one former Boeing engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with The Seattle Times. “That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can’t imagine how.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lac...
[+] [-] AdrianB1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rectang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Merrill|6 years ago|reply
They stopped being an engineering and production company and became a marketing and accounting company.
[+] [-] vermontdevil|6 years ago|reply
You can read more here
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout
[+] [-] stretchwithme|6 years ago|reply
What if executives could only sell their shares five years after they acquired them? What if they experienced losses when the company does?
Boards and shareholders need to get smarter. I'm hesitant to regulate it but I see no problem the SEC rating companies for their incentive structure. It should be updated whenever leadership changes or the company changes compensation.
Companies lad by founders who still have most of their wealth in company stock should garner the highest rating. Companies that don't require CEOs to invest and who allow CEOs to exercise options stock and sell stock whenever they want might get the lowest.
How executives can sell stock should be part of that rating. If executives can only sell an amount of stock gradually, say in 8% increments every month for the next year and can't change that schedule, that is safer for shareholders than allowing them to sell whenever they want.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|6 years ago|reply
That way, you have a vested interest -- even after you leave the company -- to make sure it does the right thing.
[+] [-] jacques_chester|6 years ago|reply
This is something like what Salomon Brothers did. Results were mixed.
That said, I like the idea of spreading them out a bit. CEOs and top execs do behave a lot like how agency theory predicts, it's just that if you can come up with the perfect monitoring scheme, you don't need a CEO.
[+] [-] p5a0u9l|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|6 years ago|reply
It's human nature to find ways to get from point A to point B using the least amount of energy even if we need to break the rules. We should all keep that in mind.
[+] [-] danso|6 years ago|reply
> In the middle of the Max’s development, two of the most seasoned engineers in the F.A.A.’s Boeing office left. The engineers, who had a combined 50 years of experience, had joined the office at its creation...In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master’s degree three years earlier. People who worked with the two engineers said they seemed ill-equipped to identify any problems in a complex system like MCAS.
I assume engineers new to the industry (and government regulation) would be lacking in "big picture" thinking and in confidence and skill in navigating and investigating bureaucracy – the NYT notes that Boeing's early MCAS report "didn't prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers". But the NYT also reports that the engineers made what seemed to be a straightforward technical misjudgment:
> In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking.
Though it's hard to tell from that paragraph and its context whether the misunderstanding came from simple technical error and incompetence – e.g. misreading or not fully reading the specs – or deliberate deception/obfuscation from Boeing, and/or inexperience and naivety in doing regulatory work.
[+] [-] readams|6 years ago|reply
I don't buy it.
[+] [-] danso|6 years ago|reply
> When company engineers analyzed the change, they figured that the system had not become any riskier, according to two people familiar with Boeing’s discussions on the matter...So the company never submitted an updated safety assessment of those changes to the agency. In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn’t understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking.
> Under the impression the system was insignificant, officials didn’t require Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS. When the company asked to remove mention of MCAS from the pilot’s manual, the agency agreed.
The "change" mentioned is Boeing overhauling MCAS to have a four-fold increase in magnitude of control over the stabilizer (2.5 degrees vs 0.6 degrees). Your belief is that the FAA, even with a better-staffed review team, and less of a culture of rubber-stamping industry engineer assessments, would have reached the same conclusion? And/or do you think the MCAS change is actually not a problem it's scapegoated to be, and that Boeing was right to tell FAA to remove it from the pilot's manual?
[+] [-] dnh44|6 years ago|reply
But I can sympathise with the people that made the decisions to put the plane in the air.
I never intended to make products that customers wouldn’t like. But I’ve shipped things that didn’t meet my own (low?) standards due to financial and social pressures for me and the companies I worked for.
Most employees have done the same. Most business owners have as well.
[+] [-] ulfw|6 years ago|reply
Fact is, the FAA has outsourced large parts of certification to the very manufacturer whose plane it was to certify. Either physically (by using Boeing manpower) or conceptually (by not testing everything because Boeing told them nothing has changed even though that was not true).
[+] [-] pythonic_caver|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PieUser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interestica|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubenhak|6 years ago|reply
Another big problem is that there is very little competition. In reality there are only two players. Smaller manufacturers get absorbed by big ones. As a result grounding a single model causes economic catastrophe in many airlines - leading to significant ticket price increase!
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|6 years ago|reply
And here I thought 'highest standards' meant not creating death traps.
[+] [-] solotronics|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgb223|6 years ago|reply
If there ever was a time to take down a giant, this is it
[+] [-] jacquesm|6 years ago|reply
Airline creating startups do not compete with Boeing, they compete with Lufthansa, Air-France-KLM, Delta and so on.
And even if they did create airplanes, small start-ups do not usually directly compete with giants the size of Boeing on their home territory. Airline manufacture - even with shitty regulation - of a new model passenger plane is not something a 'smaller airplane creating startup' would successfully pull off. It will take a very large amount of money and a huge team to do this.
[+] [-] raverbashing|6 years ago|reply
And that would be to get the plane out of the door. Boeing (and Airbus) has several other non-tangible advantages to their product such as: extensive maintenance and parts logistics (including used parts that can be acquired), well known product, etc
There is one possible competitor in the future: COMAC
If your Boeing or Airbus plane suffers a non-trivial failure that makes it unable to fly, both companies have a team that are able to go and fix it there.
[+] [-] dnh44|6 years ago|reply