Commercial aviation is one of the most regulated industries in America, so you'd expect that if deregulation were the cause something like this would happen somewhere else first...
Like the Volkswagen emissions scandal? The various times when mining waste enters drinking water supplies? The many times when E. coli or other diseases enters the food supply (up 10% since 2013 says https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/17... ). The sorry state of effectively unregulated cyber charter schools where students have "extremely lower learning growth in cyber charter schools ... when compared to other schools" - https://theconversation.com/what-cyber-charter-schools-are-a... .
By American standards the process is working correctly. The free market has responded by avoiding Boeing or carriers that fly the 737. Only slight loss of life required.
There is only one way to fix this problem folks. Privatize the FAA, deregulate airplane manufacture, and use the money saved to give the rich a tax cut. The rich will then trickle down on the planes to save us from these software issues.
Boeing hid the new system so that they could avoid the regulatory process that makes it very difficult to introduce anything new. Hiding the new system was the problem that cause unsafe situation.
Another problem of same regulatory process: most private airplanes manufactured today use leaded gas combined with 80 year old engines designed in the 1950's. These engines have carburetors that are quite finicky.
Other aspects of this problem:
Most of us speed about 6 miles above the speed limit on the freeway - if you travel exactly at the speed limit you'll have a new set of problems.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's necessary to suspect that regulations that are over-burdensome can introduce odd behavior and counter intuitively make the very problem they're trying to address (in this case safety) worse.
You shouldn't be downmoded as that's a perfectly valid point.
Yet, it looks like this time the details Boeing hid from regulators were incredibly relevant and regulations were right in placing a high evidence burden on their safety.
> [Boeing's] own engineers ... “concluded that the system complied with all applicable FAA regulations.” Four years after the engineers wrote that opinion, the system failed twice, killing more than 300 people.
It is a really big leap to conclude that this system would not have failed 4 YEARS after inspection if the FAA had done the inspection itself. This conclusion assumes that both:
1. FAA certifiers would have found something that the Boeing engineers did not.
2. The system was not modified for four years.
#1 is debatable and hard to prove. And I doubt #2 is how things work in the real world.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 50.0 ms ] threadBoeing hid the new system so that they could avoid the regulatory process that makes it very difficult to introduce anything new. Hiding the new system was the problem that cause unsafe situation.
Another problem of same regulatory process: most private airplanes manufactured today use leaded gas combined with 80 year old engines designed in the 1950's. These engines have carburetors that are quite finicky.
Other aspects of this problem:
Most of us speed about 6 miles above the speed limit on the freeway - if you travel exactly at the speed limit you'll have a new set of problems.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's necessary to suspect that regulations that are over-burdensome can introduce odd behavior and counter intuitively make the very problem they're trying to address (in this case safety) worse.
Yet, it looks like this time the details Boeing hid from regulators were incredibly relevant and regulations were right in placing a high evidence burden on their safety.
It is a really big leap to conclude that this system would not have failed 4 YEARS after inspection if the FAA had done the inspection itself. This conclusion assumes that both:
1. FAA certifiers would have found something that the Boeing engineers did not.
2. The system was not modified for four years.
#1 is debatable and hard to prove. And I doubt #2 is how things work in the real world.