Vanadium 50 said:
The FAA, and indeed the government as a whole, is not allowed to do whatever it thinks is a good idea. In particular, the executive branch needs something called "enabling legislation" to act.
Sure, maybe commercial aircraft manufacturers should be licensed, like run-of-the-mill structural engineering firms who build hotel walkways are?
In theory, the Executive could threaten to disqualify Boeing as a vendor unless there was a management change.
That doesn't require legislation, just an angry executive with a pen.
I expect Boeing would resist and use an army of lawyers to fight.
I know I'm punting here, but I'm pretty sure that happened on a stealth bomber or fighter program and didn't pan-out for the sore loser.
That's what they did with the KC-X scandal and it worked. By the time they got through with it, the only people who went to jail were in the Pentagon.
[googles - I'd forgotten about that.] So, I feel like you're arguing against your point, in that the government wields all the power here. After lots of shenanigans they picked Boeing because Boeing.
As far as the MAX, the defense will say "Golly, try to put in an improved safety system and you get nothing but trouble.
We already know that isn't true. What they tried to put in was a system designed to provide blind feedback to the pilots so they wouldn't require re-training. It wasn't sold as a safety system - Indeed, they used that (lack of safety impact) as an attempted defense: but it was a flight control system impacting safety. Clearly.
The question isn't whether it was a well-meaning mistake. It's who knew of/directed the fraudulent attempt to circumvent safety requirements when they implemented a work-around with safety implications falsely presented as a flight control feel enhancement.
And besides, Mr. Government, aren't you the ones telling us we need to design more fuel efficient planes? And beside s- MCAS was invented precisely to satisfy FAA regulations - and the FAA approved it!"
Neither of those are true. MCAS was invented because the 737 is too short to carry bigger engines to satisfy FAA efficiency regulations. It was Boeing's choice to lie about it and bandaid it rather than doing a more substantial redesign of the 737 to accommodate the change. Or, maybe, design a new plane rather than keep patching a 50 year old one? If your company's product doesn't meet the federal requirements and you kill people to avoid a major change to meet those requirements, that's your company's fault, not the government's. Sheesh.
Further, the accident rate looks to be about 1 in 100,000 flight hours (pre-fix). There are 8000 hours in a year. It is impossible to test systems at this level before releasing them. Their lawyers - and did I mention they had an army of them - will certainly bring this up.
Nonsense. It's not about time/breakdown/wear, it's about test parameters. This isn't a hard drive spinning for 100,000 hours. The failure scenario was highly specific and they failed to test for it (yet another failure). Specifically: pito-tube failure (somewhat common) on climb-out triggers the software bug.
They might also point out that the crash rate of other aircraft is higher - almost 3x as high for the Osprey.
The Osprey is a military plane. Airliners, no.
I don't see them making criminal charges stick.
Quite frankly, all of your handwaving-away doesn't have anything at all to do with the crimes. What is a reasonable standard for safety of military vs civilian aircraft (for example) is interesting, but it has nothing at all to do with lying to the government. That's just plain fraud. Fraud that killed people. And they've already basically admitted to it. The only real question here is whether they've been punished adequately for it.
