Cold comfort to the 300+ lives, and families destroyed.
Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2tuKiiznsY
This isn't just some "oops, these were badly trained pilots" – the whole premise of MCAS is seriously screwed up and smacks of non-engineers running the place.
The mindset of "quick to imprison" can also run the risk of creating a society that is overly averse to risk taking, which can hinder technology and scientific advances. For example, it may take 10 times as long to get a new, more advanced traffic light implemented in your city because now everyone wants to make sure no stone was left unturned, otherwise someone will get into an accident and a staff/group will be imprisoned. Or a new software is implemented but 3 months later it is found that failure under very specific scenarios has caused over 50 deaths. There are millions of potential scenarios that may fall under similar conditions as exemplified above.
Please note that this writing is not advocating for or against either views, it is simply shedding light on risks that should be considered.
The result is that developing new drugs got enormously more expensive, far fewer new drugs get developed, long delays in effective treatments getting approved, diseases that don't affect large numbers of people don't get cures developed, etc.
The net result was a negative for patients.
This was all discussed in "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Sam Peltzman.
There have been a lot of deadly aviation crashes due to mistakes, false assumptions, oversights, incompetence, human failings, etc. But somehow we've wound up with incredibly safe airline travel. Millions of flights with no incident. Do we really want to start jailing people now? What improvements will we forsake if we give airframe makers powerful incentives to hide mistakes? or simply avoid making improvements to safety, because who wants to risk jail for making a mistake?
If you wanted to reduce auto accident rates, opiod deaths etc you'd put these folks in charge, not put the law enforcement lobby in charge (yes, they will arrest lots of low level offenders but will not systematically address the issues and do not chase the folks at the top).
Not only that, it beats almost all other regulated modes of transit and even other regulated hazards (OSHA controlled worksites etc).
As always, it could be better - but it's actually amazingly good already - these planes are incredible safe in a challenging environment (miles, landing cycles, tolerances etc).
The demand for prison time here, when we have so many many areas where prison time can be MUCH more closely and immediately linked to bad actions (and goes unpunished) is misguided.
If you look at where fault lies part lies with boeing and part lies elsewhere in the safety chain. In contrast to many other areas - the evidence of ill intent is relatively weak here. Even without prison Boeing is facing major financial impacts as a result of this issue (as it should).
It's looking like evidence from the airlines that proper maintenance was done may have been faked.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-15/pictures-...
We know lots of maintenance issues unaddressed and repeated warnings by the plane itself that there were sensor issues were not properly addressed.
We know response was not ideal on pilot side which overlaps with some training and other items around stab trim cutoff and/or automation dependency.
These factors are partly why there have been no accidents in 737MAX in US despite lots of flying.
Yes - boeing should design a totally safe plane. Part of that is going to be designing plans to accommodate a wider range of pilot skill (what they are calling "future pilot populations") and to better accommodate maintenance and ground handling training assumptions to allow for greater risk of problems there. This is already being implemented.
Ironically, one element may be to REDUCE the reliance on pilots as a key flight safety control and then increase automation and redundancy in the automation.
By what metric?
By every metric I can find (passenger deaths per trip/flight leg/flight mile, hull losses per delivery/year, etc) the MAX is an outlier.
In fact, I can't find any other airframe in the last 50 years that even comes close (including the DC-9 and TU-154). What other airplane has killed 300+ passengers in its first 4 years of operation?
So, what metric have you selected to show that the MAX isn't dismal?
(and please, no lie-with-statistics stuff like hiding the MAX in 737NG data, or claiming that crashes by foreign pilots or on foreign soil don't count)
Most people are referring to negligence, not ill intent. "Let's make more money and rush this thing out! (Even though this could kill people)", not "Let's deliberately design a system to kill people".
Regardless, one sensor failing should not induce a plane to fly itself into the ground, despite the best efforts of the pilots to recover (and despite the fact they were not necessarily the best trained pilots). 2 / ~400 complete hull losses of brand new jets is completely unacceptable. That is dismal. Don't try to downplay it.
Absolutely - Boeing is going to be designing much safer planes in future to accommodate different pilot populations. That is clear and necessary. This will make us all safer. Boeing obviously screwed up with a primarily US based mentality.
This system was PARTICULARLY fragile in the face of poor maintenance and reliance on automation - which boeing was unreasonably dependent given a US centric view.
Look into history of comets and concorde if you want to look at hull loss rates (note - both stopped flying forever when safety issues became clear). I predict almost no chance that the max will be taken out of flying forever.
