[situational87]

Are the simulators run by Boeing or the FAA? Are the test pilots employed by Boeing?

What changes have been made to the regulatory framework to prevent Boeing from signing off on their own safety tests? What changes has the FAA made to bring more public transparency to the flight certification process?

When is the sentencing date for Boeing executives? They are not getting a plea deal I hope?

I'm not worried about the overly complicated flight control software or MCAS, I'm worried about the next system that will fail because nobody at this company seems to care about engineering any more.

[dmos62]

> sentencing date for Boeing executives

Are you talking about criminal court? Call me pessimistic, but I don't think our societal arrangement is such where the people at the top pay the price. I think regulation reform is a more realistic goal.

[macspoofing]

I'm not sure the FAA is at fault here. From a big-picture perspective, the industry has never been safer.

Obviously, continuous improvement is a core part of quality, and the FAA can always learn and improve their processes, but you can't expect a regulator to shoulder the core responsibility of certifying a plane. The primary responsibility is always going to be on the manufacturer because no regulator will ever have the manpower to test and verify everything nor the deep visibility into to R&D process that a manufacturer would.

[salawat]

They absolutely can with the right amount of funding to maintain attractiveness.

The regulator should be adversarial; period. A well-meaning adversary, but adversarial never the less. Cutting manufacturers as much slack as has been is exactly what got us to the point we're at; a regulator that collected rubber stamped reports and only heard about things going wrong after tragedy has already struck.

It is better to have an active regulator able to intercede than to have the manufacturer coordinating everything internally, and asking for help when needed simply out of interest for removing the possibility to hide a problem discovery by never opening the floor to being questioned by the regulator.

If you tie the regulator's hands, then it isn't a regulator anymore. It's a postmortem service.

[situational87]

Yes, I agree that the aviation industry hiding behind the streak of years of no accidents has contributed to how bad Boeing became. They were using that statistic as a shield and a hammer to justify further deregulation.

This is a great example of how looking at the world through the prism of stats really limits your understanding of what's actually happening.