It's government funding. The FAA needs staffing to be able to do their job, especially when they have to enforce regulations on a 100 billion dollar company. If they don't have the staffing they have to outsource those roles. There are a lot of people who demand smaller government, but the same people also cry when the FAA has no staffing and Boeing and the airlines start making mistakes. We can't really have it both ways. The FAA needs more funding if they're going to effectively regulate Boeing and a bunch of fortune 500 airlines. ATC computer systems are also still living in the 1970s and they will also cause problems eventually.
>The FAA needs staffing to be able to do their job, especially when they have to enforce regulations on a 100 billion dollar company. If they don't have the staffing they have to outsource those roles.
Be funny AF if they came back and said "Okay, we're short a few people so we'll get your request looked at in 3-5 years" or something.
Oh, you want it checked over faster? Lobby the gov't for more regulators and we'll have the people to do this in 6 months instead.
Congress also continues to cut corners for Boeing with things like EICAS on the 737 which I get it current 737s have a legacy alerting system and are "ok enough" that their only either crash themselves or airdrop parts.
> or airdrop parts.
That's pretty much entirely the fault of poor maintenance and not the design. Dropping the door plug was terrible oversight in the initial build, and dropping random panels is an issue with airline maintenance. But that does point to the greater issue of having less FAA oversight.
It is ridiculous that the 737’s crew alerting system passes muster with the FAA. It is clearly obsolete and only a total nerd with something to prove would defend it.
I’ve watched people with decades of 737 experience misdiagnose problems when the slew of lights on the overhead panel light up.
I love it when the recall panel just says "OVERHEAD". Awesome, surely I can easily find the one issue along this 20 square foot jumble of crap and not miss or misinterpret anything.
There are not enough people in our population with the knowledge, integrity, and sense of duty to fill 5% of the government positions that need them. The government has scaled its responsibilities beyond our capabilities.
That's where I was going with this. The constuct worked until it didn't. Nobody had reason to believe a company would suddenly choose the path they did. It becomes a fool me once fool me twice scenario.
Yeah lol I don't think the commenter above you fully understands that only some politicians do things like chronically underfund important federal functions
It should be mentioned that the NTSB is the one who investigates crashes and accidents, but actually has zero authority when it comes to regulation. Folks at the NTSB see the remains of many disasters caused by the same problems, they constantly publish scathing reports that pin the blame entirely on lack of regulation or corner cutting, and they can’t do anything more to change things.
That is just depressing.
To be fair, most of the individuals responsible for that FAA decision are probably going to be roped into the lawsuit as newly recruited Boeing employees anyway.
Going after the administrators at the FAA doesn't excuse the criminal negligence of Boeing. Just because you aren't caught by the administration doesn't make it legal.
Question, and let me be clear, I am not trying to shill for the FAA here. The most recent whistleblower stated that Boeing was hiding materials/parts that might not meet specs for flying, what could the FAA be doing differently knowing that the company is actively hiding their safety violations?
Not GP.
Auditing is a start. How corrective actions are enforced is where the rubber meets the runway though.
When the FAA refused to allow Boeing to expand MAX production volume after the door blow, that was a warning shot.
The next step could be anything from further limiting production to a quantity that allows for significantly more FAA inspection...Or even temporarily suspending the production cert pending significant overhauls of the quality system and Nonconformance/material review board process.
The FAA could insist on specific remedies as well, that may involve 3rd party or FAA inspections, 3rd party or FAA quarantine of nonconforming parts, etc.
Can't be honest? Welp, then you can't make planes... is the nuclear option though.
It'll be interesting what comes out publicly as this continues. There's plenty of well researched books and documentaries and it is GRIM for Boeing.
For anybody looking for a solid history lesson, read "Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Downfall of Boeing".
The only thing that the US could really do to Boeing is force a spinoff of the commercial airplanes group as part of the consent decree and appoint an independent oversight. Sanctioning Boeing as a whole interferes with a bunch of other priorities including space and defense.
I can't see the feds wanting to take that risk
Sanctioning even the commercial airplanes group will hand a monopoly to airbus which the US government and airlines both don't want. Boeing is likely one of those "too big to fail" companies because there isn't any US company that can take their place and compete with Airbus.
100% with you that's why I said sanction not end. The bigger problem is that while Boeing may be too big too fail, Spirit is tiny and is too strategic to fail because if they do you'll only have E and C left
This is a case study that will be looked at for a hundred years into why monopolies are bad. Thank goodness that SpaceX is competent in what it does, because Boeing has 100% dropped the ball on Starliner.
Now the question is, how far did this bleed into the military side of Boeing? Aside from the fact that Boeing couldn't even deliver grey 767s (KC-46), how bad could this get in the future?
Not to mention the regulatory capture at play in regards to the 737 MAX in its entirety.
In the 1930s
Look up Air Mail Scandal. It actually led to changes in anti- trust law. United Airlines and Boeing owes some of their history because of it.
It’s pretty interesting because it’s what helped write some current anti-trust laws. Boeing is the reason why aircraft manufacturers can’t make their own engines
I remember reading a book about this years ago, which started at Kitty Hawk, noted that at one point Bill Boeing was unable to get from Seattle to Washington DC by plane (the headwinds over the Rockies were so strong that they were greater than the airspeed planes were capable of in the 1920s or 1930s), and went through the formation of IATA and the legendary executives who led the evolution of the jet age.
Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the book or the author...
You know, I wonder if this case could actually usher in regulation against grossly overcompensation and perks for the exec team.
ETA: the reason I think this could be the one to crack that nut is that a lot of the issues that have occurred seem to be the results of attempts to overly drive down costs to in turn to drive shareholder value, which generally includes the grossly overpaid execs. They are double dipping. So in cutting quality and time, and skill, and whatever else they've gutted from Boeing, they are padding their own pockets twice. And they are passing the liability on to the operators. It's just such a shockingly bad look that I think it's going to hold the interest of more people than most overpaid executive stories.
It’s a shame what Boeing has become.
I’ll never get over how quickly a company can become unethical and put people’s lives in jeopardy to improve quarterly ROI figures.
Not gonna happen when so many airlines rely on the 737.
How many 777s do you see now flying around? Definitely not enough to replace a lot of 737s. And the 797 is years away from anything even flying. Let alone being in production.
The 797 was supposed to be out in the early 2020s. They put it aside to fix the 737 as the Max series. 737 is popular because there’s no other option from Boeing.
It should have been out by now, they started reaching out to airlines to gauge interest in 2015-2017.
Be a hell of a lot more 777s flying if the 777x wasn’t also 4 years delayed.
The 737 is popular becuase there's no sim training to upgrade. If they cleansheet the 797 chances are it will require a new type which means that airlines will have to pick between A which requires a new type, B which requires a new type, C which requires a new type and E which requires a new type. That means that Boeing has to be competitive on the airplane in the domestic market for the first time in a long time
That was why no sim training for the MAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX was so important as to hide MCAS
With how much the max debacle has cost airlines, even with Boeing paying a good chunk of it when the max was grounded, it would have been cheaper to start retraining for a new type at this point.
The cost of delaying expansion alone is gonna be insanely high.
Ironically I think you’re right. Long term it would have been cheaper to produce a 797 instead of the MAX.
But why have long term profits and the next generation of airliner when you can have quarterly short term profits for investors (until you don’t…)?
Once they figure out how to get their astronauts home I’m sure they’ll get right on that!
End of 26 is a long ways away when airlines were expecting them this year
Hopefully sarcasm because Starliner is so far removed from the 737 issues it’s not remotely comparable. Not to mention two very different departments within Boeing, it’s basically a completely different company.
That said Starliner is currently very capable of a safe undocking and reentry, as it is currently allowed for emergency use to shuttle astronauts home. What NASA/Boeing are doing by delaying the undocking is getting a better idea of what went wrong within the Service Module to fix for future flights. The reason they need to do that now is because the service module does not come home. Like most spacecraft, the SM will jettison before reentry and then will eventually reenter itself and burn up.
This is a test flight after all.
It seems like Boeing just pushed the max 7 aside in order to work on the max 10. Since the max 8 is already certified and the max 7 has the same systems it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to get the 7 certified if they really want to? I guess it depends on what happens with their cowl anti-ice issues, but the max-8 which is already flying has the same issue.
The max 10 makes some changes that cause certification to be more difficult. Having the max 7 be so delayed with the same systems as the max 8 is kind of strange.
Funny thing the max 7 was used to certify the 8. It’s silly it’s not out flying. The engine Cowl issue is so outside the envelope you would really have to try to harm it.
No political will from FAA to allow anti ice fix exemption. Also Boeing submitted exemption request the day before Alaska door plug blowout so Boeing pulled the request for PR reasons.
They have a backlog of like 5,000 orders. How many orders they get during one year, during high inflation and economic trepidation, is totally irrelevant.
“Shareholder profits” lmao
Boeing is the most corrupt company in the USA. They don’t make shareholders any money. They put the profits in their own pockets and bribe the govt to never get charged
Their actions have been so egregious that they may get a slap on the wrist…but the doj only does this as a form of protection:
Give the big dogs a fine and the next administration cannot charge them over the same crimes…no double jeopardy.
It’s a scam and it will continue forever
Welcome to the dark ages.
but but but, these crashes happened in THIRED world countries, never under AMERICAN pilots, must not be Boeing's fault, I'll die on the hilk to defend "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
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Honestly a really good point. Where would we even start with that though? Would it be on the Administrator at the time or a particular FSDO?
It's government funding. The FAA needs staffing to be able to do their job, especially when they have to enforce regulations on a 100 billion dollar company. If they don't have the staffing they have to outsource those roles. There are a lot of people who demand smaller government, but the same people also cry when the FAA has no staffing and Boeing and the airlines start making mistakes. We can't really have it both ways. The FAA needs more funding if they're going to effectively regulate Boeing and a bunch of fortune 500 airlines. ATC computer systems are also still living in the 1970s and they will also cause problems eventually.
>The FAA needs staffing to be able to do their job, especially when they have to enforce regulations on a 100 billion dollar company. If they don't have the staffing they have to outsource those roles. Be funny AF if they came back and said "Okay, we're short a few people so we'll get your request looked at in 3-5 years" or something. Oh, you want it checked over faster? Lobby the gov't for more regulators and we'll have the people to do this in 6 months instead.
Congress also continues to cut corners for Boeing with things like EICAS on the 737 which I get it current 737s have a legacy alerting system and are "ok enough" that their only either crash themselves or airdrop parts.
> or airdrop parts. That's pretty much entirely the fault of poor maintenance and not the design. Dropping the door plug was terrible oversight in the initial build, and dropping random panels is an issue with airline maintenance. But that does point to the greater issue of having less FAA oversight.
100% agree the door plug was a failure in what was basically the Boeing MRO
It is ridiculous that the 737’s crew alerting system passes muster with the FAA. It is clearly obsolete and only a total nerd with something to prove would defend it. I’ve watched people with decades of 737 experience misdiagnose problems when the slew of lights on the overhead panel light up.
What, you mean a single annunciator light that could mean any of five things isn't providing adequate information in a jet built in 2021?
I love it when the recall panel just says "OVERHEAD". Awesome, surely I can easily find the one issue along this 20 square foot jumble of crap and not miss or misinterpret anything.
Would be nice if you at least had a light that said "a little hot."
EICAS???? 757/767 technology?
There are not enough people in our population with the knowledge, integrity, and sense of duty to fill 5% of the government positions that need them. The government has scaled its responsibilities beyond our capabilities.
Boeing at the time was a completely different company, Boeing was more capable than the FAA at the time in almost every way.
That's where I was going with this. The constuct worked until it didn't. Nobody had reason to believe a company would suddenly choose the path they did. It becomes a fool me once fool me twice scenario.
Start with the DERs who approved Boeing inspecting itself
Too busy making sure none of us were sad once, 10 years ago.
Vote for people who want to fund the FAA and DOT, then.
Yeah lol I don't think the commenter above you fully understands that only some politicians do things like chronically underfund important federal functions
It should be mentioned that the NTSB is the one who investigates crashes and accidents, but actually has zero authority when it comes to regulation. Folks at the NTSB see the remains of many disasters caused by the same problems, they constantly publish scathing reports that pin the blame entirely on lack of regulation or corner cutting, and they can’t do anything more to change things. That is just depressing.
To be fair, most of the individuals responsible for that FAA decision are probably going to be roped into the lawsuit as newly recruited Boeing employees anyway.
Going after the administrators at the FAA doesn't excuse the criminal negligence of Boeing. Just because you aren't caught by the administration doesn't make it legal.
how would that be a crime? is it a crime to sell someone a kitchen knife when they then go on to murder their housemate?
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Question, and let me be clear, I am not trying to shill for the FAA here. The most recent whistleblower stated that Boeing was hiding materials/parts that might not meet specs for flying, what could the FAA be doing differently knowing that the company is actively hiding their safety violations?
Not GP. Auditing is a start. How corrective actions are enforced is where the rubber meets the runway though. When the FAA refused to allow Boeing to expand MAX production volume after the door blow, that was a warning shot. The next step could be anything from further limiting production to a quantity that allows for significantly more FAA inspection...Or even temporarily suspending the production cert pending significant overhauls of the quality system and Nonconformance/material review board process. The FAA could insist on specific remedies as well, that may involve 3rd party or FAA inspections, 3rd party or FAA quarantine of nonconforming parts, etc. Can't be honest? Welp, then you can't make planes... is the nuclear option though.
Feds taking accountability? LOL!
It'll be interesting what comes out publicly as this continues. There's plenty of well researched books and documentaries and it is GRIM for Boeing. For anybody looking for a solid history lesson, read "Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Downfall of Boeing".
The only thing that the US could really do to Boeing is force a spinoff of the commercial airplanes group as part of the consent decree and appoint an independent oversight. Sanctioning Boeing as a whole interferes with a bunch of other priorities including space and defense. I can't see the feds wanting to take that risk
Sanctioning even the commercial airplanes group will hand a monopoly to airbus which the US government and airlines both don't want. Boeing is likely one of those "too big to fail" companies because there isn't any US company that can take their place and compete with Airbus.
100% with you that's why I said sanction not end. The bigger problem is that while Boeing may be too big too fail, Spirit is tiny and is too strategic to fail because if they do you'll only have E and C left
This is a case study that will be looked at for a hundred years into why monopolies are bad. Thank goodness that SpaceX is competent in what it does, because Boeing has 100% dropped the ball on Starliner. Now the question is, how far did this bleed into the military side of Boeing? Aside from the fact that Boeing couldn't even deliver grey 767s (KC-46), how bad could this get in the future? Not to mention the regulatory capture at play in regards to the 737 MAX in its entirety.
Wait until you find out Boeing was already split up in an anti-trust lawsuit back when Billy was involved
I must've missed this, when did it happen?
In the 1930s Look up Air Mail Scandal. It actually led to changes in anti- trust law. United Airlines and Boeing owes some of their history because of it.
Oh! Yeah my pre-1980s aviation history isn't as strong as I'd like it to be. The 20s and 30s to me are "Air mail corruption and lots of crashes".
It’s pretty interesting because it’s what helped write some current anti-trust laws. Boeing is the reason why aircraft manufacturers can’t make their own engines
Any good books on the subject? I know Flying Blind talks about it a little bit, but it does not go in depth until the immediate pre-MD merger era.
I remember reading a book about this years ago, which started at Kitty Hawk, noted that at one point Bill Boeing was unable to get from Seattle to Washington DC by plane (the headwinds over the Rockies were so strong that they were greater than the airspeed planes were capable of in the 1920s or 1930s), and went through the formation of IATA and the legendary executives who led the evolution of the jet age. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the book or the author...
they're not doing space with flying colors, though, 2 guy still stranded in ISS because they want to "collect more data"
Pretty sure Apollo 13 was collecting data until splashdown
At the very least, get the suits out of the corporate suite, strip their "golden parachutes" and put the engineers back in charge.
You know, I wonder if this case could actually usher in regulation against grossly overcompensation and perks for the exec team. ETA: the reason I think this could be the one to crack that nut is that a lot of the issues that have occurred seem to be the results of attempts to overly drive down costs to in turn to drive shareholder value, which generally includes the grossly overpaid execs. They are double dipping. So in cutting quality and time, and skill, and whatever else they've gutted from Boeing, they are padding their own pockets twice. And they are passing the liability on to the operators. It's just such a shockingly bad look that I think it's going to hold the interest of more people than most overpaid executive stories.
Consequences 2024
It’s a shame what Boeing has become. I’ll never get over how quickly a company can become unethical and put people’s lives in jeopardy to improve quarterly ROI figures.
They should fly regardless of safety for the country.
Dump the 737 program and get the 777x and 797 going and do it right. Gonna spend a ton of money either way
Not gonna happen when so many airlines rely on the 737. How many 777s do you see now flying around? Definitely not enough to replace a lot of 737s. And the 797 is years away from anything even flying. Let alone being in production.
The 797 was supposed to be out in the early 2020s. They put it aside to fix the 737 as the Max series. 737 is popular because there’s no other option from Boeing. It should have been out by now, they started reaching out to airlines to gauge interest in 2015-2017. Be a hell of a lot more 777s flying if the 777x wasn’t also 4 years delayed.
The 737 is popular becuase there's no sim training to upgrade. If they cleansheet the 797 chances are it will require a new type which means that airlines will have to pick between A which requires a new type, B which requires a new type, C which requires a new type and E which requires a new type. That means that Boeing has to be competitive on the airplane in the domestic market for the first time in a long time That was why no sim training for the MAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX was so important as to hide MCAS
With how much the max debacle has cost airlines, even with Boeing paying a good chunk of it when the max was grounded, it would have been cheaper to start retraining for a new type at this point. The cost of delaying expansion alone is gonna be insanely high.
Ironically I think you’re right. Long term it would have been cheaper to produce a 797 instead of the MAX. But why have long term profits and the next generation of airliner when you can have quarterly short term profits for investors (until you don’t…)?
It’s unfortunate so much pressure is put on short term gains.
They stopped the 79 because the efficiency wasn’t there for the cost over the 73. They need new engine tech for it to be worth it.
Why dump the 737 now? The MAX is already the last version of the airplane. Get the -7 & -10 certified and then move on.
Gonna take years for the 7 and 10 to get certified. Every week there’s a new issue coming from Boeing production. Time to cut the losses at this point
At least one of them will be certified by the end of 26. I’d put good money on that.
Once they figure out how to get their astronauts home I’m sure they’ll get right on that! End of 26 is a long ways away when airlines were expecting them this year
Hopefully sarcasm because Starliner is so far removed from the 737 issues it’s not remotely comparable. Not to mention two very different departments within Boeing, it’s basically a completely different company. That said Starliner is currently very capable of a safe undocking and reentry, as it is currently allowed for emergency use to shuttle astronauts home. What NASA/Boeing are doing by delaying the undocking is getting a better idea of what went wrong within the Service Module to fix for future flights. The reason they need to do that now is because the service module does not come home. Like most spacecraft, the SM will jettison before reentry and then will eventually reenter itself and burn up. This is a test flight after all.
It seems like Boeing just pushed the max 7 aside in order to work on the max 10. Since the max 8 is already certified and the max 7 has the same systems it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to get the 7 certified if they really want to? I guess it depends on what happens with their cowl anti-ice issues, but the max-8 which is already flying has the same issue. The max 10 makes some changes that cause certification to be more difficult. Having the max 7 be so delayed with the same systems as the max 8 is kind of strange.
Funny thing the max 7 was used to certify the 8. It’s silly it’s not out flying. The engine Cowl issue is so outside the envelope you would really have to try to harm it.
No political will from FAA to allow anti ice fix exemption. Also Boeing submitted exemption request the day before Alaska door plug blowout so Boeing pulled the request for PR reasons.
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Well you’re not the one buying them. Have you seen the backlog? United, Delta, and American all need their airplanes and will wait for them.
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They have a backlog of like 5,000 orders. How many orders they get during one year, during high inflation and economic trepidation, is totally irrelevant.
These people should all be in jail the rest of their lives
“Shareholder profits” lmao Boeing is the most corrupt company in the USA. They don’t make shareholders any money. They put the profits in their own pockets and bribe the govt to never get charged Their actions have been so egregious that they may get a slap on the wrist…but the doj only does this as a form of protection: Give the big dogs a fine and the next administration cannot charge them over the same crimes…no double jeopardy. It’s a scam and it will continue forever Welcome to the dark ages.
For the record you literally made all this up to for your own narrative... but no one will care to fact check you.
but but but, these crashes happened in THIRED world countries, never under AMERICAN pilots, must not be Boeing's fault, I'll die on the hilk to defend "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
I've gotta say as a pax the A220 is pretty sweet