Hmm. I wonder if that’s a checklist item. After landing after an emergency, turn off CVR.Not erased - overwritten. Airplane sat long enough on the ground with the CVR running to overwrite the pertinent period.
My understanding is that is a checklist item to pull the CVR breakerHmm. I wonder if that’s a checklist item. After landing after an emergency, turn off CVR.
I was only using SWA as an example, but yes they have many more customers that all wanted the common type rating for a new aircraft.FYI: it was a much larger market than SWA. It was an international market across dozens of countries. SWA simply had the right business model to take advantage of that exploding overseas market. And just to add, Boeing did lose AA to the NEO which sparked the move to the MAX.
In this case you’re wrong. Different market and legend. Airbus had already screwed the pooch with their “long term planning” on the A380. And you saw how that ended. Boeing eclipsed them with their “long term planning” offer the 787.
However, in the short term, when Airbus responded to the exploding single aisle market in Asia and similar areas with the NEO it light a fire under Boeing to catch up. No clean sheet, ie, innovative design, could compete on the same time schedule.
So the move was to the MAX. The only problem was the 737 had short landing gear vs the 320’s higher gear length which was designed for a different era of pax loading/unloading. Unfortunately, that short gear led to the MCAS requirement and the rest is history.
You can blame Boeing all you want, but they are hardly the only hole in the block of Swiss cheese to line up and cause the issues of the MAX. And to include the door plug falling out if those 4 bolts were actually missing.
Hmm. I wonder if that’s a checklist item. After landing after an emergency, turn off CVR.
TBH, in this one I would give the crew a pass. It sounds like the cockpit door had blown open during the decompression, and that the cockpit in general was a bit of a mess of papers... not to mention the crew probably wanted to get off the airplane/debrief/hit the bar... Whatever... not to point fingers but I would be focusing on maintenance in Portland... they were calm and levelheaded... pull that breaker as soon as you get onboard.
Yeah, just saying I have heard (not here) people angry with the crew for not pulling that CVR breaker... I just think they get a bit of a pass for forgetting that one in this case. I was shocked to see the FA walking around during what appears to be flight when the plug was out. Juan at the Blancolirio channel on Youtube has been providing great daily updates.Oh for sure. In the heat of the moment the crew does not know the extent of the situation. They had a rapid depressurization event. The flight attendants are reporting a hole in the side of the airplane. I wonder if the attendants even knew about the presence of that door or thought the wall of the cabin failed.
Yes and No. At the upper level as the PC holder Boeing is responsible for the overall quality control. However, at the lower levels especially at the vendor level, that direct QC responsibility is held by those FAA-approved vendors themselves. And it has yet to be determined if the direct QC failure was at Spirit or at Boeing. Time will tell.the door plug falling off is all on Boeing. They are responsible for quality control, both of their manufacturing and any subcontractors they are using.
You can blame Boeing all you want, but they are hardly the only hole in the block of Swiss cheese to line up and cause the issues of the MAX.
Yesand No. At the upper level as the PC holder Boeing is responsible for the overall quality control.However,...
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Ron Wanttaja
To an engineer, integrity is more important than ability.Yes, but....
Part of the culture problem at Boeing is the role of engineers, and at least some of the blame for that falls on the company chief engineer and the engineers themselves. Boeing engineers ceased behaving as professional and viewed themselves as labor, forming unions and going on strike. They did not exercise proper professional autonomy, and they abandoned the ethics of their professional societies and of their oaths by not calling adequate attention to the problems. When they were overridden by program managers, they had a professional obligation to go directly to regulators, to the FAA, and to the media and public if necessary, and they reneged.
To an engineer, integrity is more important than ability.
Never seen a checklist with the CVR breaker on it. It's procedure to do it in case of incidents/accidents like this, but not an item on the checklists I have used on Boeing/Airbus.
You can trace Boeing's problems back to the merger with McD. Prior to that, the relationship between the company and its engineers was pretty good...most of my managers had come up through the ranks. The union, then, was pretty minor. Membership wasn't required, and only about half the engineers were members.Yes, but....
Part of the culture problem at Boeing is the role of engineers, and at least some of the blame for that falls on the company chief engineer and the engineers themselves. Boeing engineers ceased behaving as professionals and viewed themselves as labor, forming unions and going on strike. They did not exercise proper professional autonomy, and they abandoned the ethics of their professional societies and of their oaths by not calling adequate attention to the problems. When they were overridden by program managers, they had a professional obligation to go directly to regulators, to the FAA, and to the media and public if necessary, and they reneged.
Exactly. That’s the hierarchy of desired traits in the engineering world but I’m preaching to the saved.Yes but integrity also requires admitting the limits of your ability and alway striving to improve your abilities.
I think that's true for people in general. I can teach people IT skills. I'm not good enough to teach an adult to have integrity that doesn't already have it.To an engineer, integrity is more important than ability.
What????Never seen a checklist with the CVR breaker on it. It's procedure to do it in case of incidents/accidents like this, but not an item on the checklists I have used on Boeing/Airbus.
You can trace Boeing's problems back to the merger with McD.
McD executives, in turn, hired their flunkies to take over the mid-level management jobs. Managers seemed to now have business degrees, not engineering ones.
The executives seemed to take delight in alienating the engineering staff. One called us "prima donnas" in a news interview.
The Starship, on the other hand, sounded more like engineers run amuck…although they were largely inexperienced engineers, as Raytheon wasn’t going to let some old fuddy duddy King Air engineer ruin the vision.Concur. One arbitrator compared legacy Boeing engineers to the legacy McD managers as Boy Scouts going up against hunter-killer assassins.
But I'll expand on that a bit. Stonecipher and others who moved from McD into Boeing executive slots were acolytes of Jack Welch. Welch's scorched-earth approach to raising profits and stock prices has been the downfall of several companies, and that philosopy has wrecked Boeing. Welch's methods work (for a little while) when you're building toasters; they're entirely inappropriate for building airliners.
Exactly. And that's the heart of the problem.
Boeing's org structure is fatally flawed for addressing this problem, because they have engineers answering to program managers. At LockMart, at least my part of it, that's not the case. Program engineering teams report to a program chief engineer, who works with the program manager but not for the program manager. The program chief engineers, depending on the size and nature of the program, report to the chief engineer department manager (me, before I retired) or to a line-of-business chief engineer. The CE dept manager and the LOB CEs report to an engineering VP, and he reports up the corporate chain ultimately reaching the CTO. The CTO reports to the CEO.
In that way, engineering management and program management only converge at the CEO, and God help anyone who can't resolve a conflict before it reaches that level. The program managers have no authority to override an engineering decision, so the PM and the CE must collaborate. There's often a lot of conflict here, and sometimes it gets elevated a level, but done properly conflict is healthy and provides a fire that burns off the dross and refines the gold.
In fact, just last night a fellow retiree and I were discussing all this. We both recalled many instances where we had stopped a delivery or blocked a flight test until engineering concerns could be addressed, and never once were we overridden. There would be questions and follow-on discussions, of course, but no PM ever even tried to say "Screw the engineers; ship it."
I saw execs make similar statements a couple of times. I never saw one progress any further in his career afterward.
At LockMart, at least my part of it, that's not the case. Program engineering teams report to a program chief engineer, who works with the program manager but not for the program manager.
So, the strike happened. I wrote an email to friends describing the background from my point of view and what the experience was like. Dave Martin at KITPLANES suggested I send it to Avweb. They published it, and it's still there, albeit without the original photos.
Someone said it was on the evacuation checklist. Since this deplaned normally, they never ran it.Wh
What????
One thing I should make clear is that I never worked in an area at Boeing where human safety was at risk...worked unmanned/space programs for my entire career. So can't speak to the safety/whistleblower issues you raise.You've seen Boeing from the inside, so I hope you'll give some consideration to this aspect of the issue and perhaps share an opinion or two.
I’ve never known it to be procedure, even if not on checklist.Someone said it was on the evacuation checklist. Since this deplaned normally, they never ran it.
...Now, it was the kind of thing I should have brought a lawyer to...but finding lawyers with TOP SECRET/CODEWORD security clearances is difficult. But under union rules, I could request a shop steward to be present. She was an engineer in my office, and had the same clearances. She didn't get involved in the questioning, just took copious notes. It was rather a relief to have ONE neutral observer at the meeting; to keep the company from running me over. The union would have been there anyway, whether I was a member or not, but I liked knowing that I had been supporting it for the past ten years.
One thing I should make clear is that I never worked in an area at Boeing where human safety was at risk...worked unmanned/space programs for my entire career. So can't speak to the safety/whistleblower issues you raise.
Do have to point out that one engineer is known to have raised concerns with the earlier issues with the Max. He got transferred away...if not for union protections (e.g., the company having to show cause), he probably would have been fired.
I'm not from a "union family"; my father managed a heavy-equipment repair company that underwent unionization and he pointed out the problems with it. I joined SPEEA in the early '80s. Not in belief of its mission, but when I discovered that the union provided protection and did the negotiations for *all* engineers (not just union members). I don't take freebies.
Did the strike have a lasting financial benefits for the engineers? Beats the heck out of me. Most of the stuff the union was fighting against eventually happened anyway...reduction in medical coverage, disappearing pensions, etc. Took another ~20 years, but it did happen. I retired about eight years ago with the full, traditional pension that the union had preserved...but the company had already gone to a two-tier system, where new hires don't get one and instead are offered more "modern" options involving 401Ks. Maybe it's better, I dunno. But in my case, it was automatic, like a military pension...I put in the time, I now get the monthly check without having to depend on my own financial decisions. A number of my co-workers from the pre-strike era left the company after the strike but never returned. Most of them are still working, as they didn't have a big fat Boeing pension check waiting for them.
Union membership paid off for me about 25-30 years ago. An individual publicly claimed I was under investigation by the FBI, and printed in a national magazine that I was the "dupe of terrorists." Since I had high security clearances, this caused some problems. I underwent an interview with the security folks.
Now, it was the kind of thing I should have brought a lawyer to...but finding lawyers with TOP SECRET/CODEWORD security clearances is difficult. But under union rules, I could request a shop steward to be present. She was an engineer in my office, and had the same clearances. She didn't get involved in the questioning, just took copious notes. It was rather a relief to have ONE neutral observer at the meeting; to keep the company from running me over. The union would have been there anyway, whether I was a member or not, but I liked knowing that I had been supporting it for the past ten years.
Ron Wanttaja
This is what unions do. Plumber's unions aren't concerned with toilets, teacher's unions aren't concerned with students, pilot's unions aren't concerned with passengers or airplanes, engineer's unions aren't concerned with bridges. Regardless of what you've heard, unions are concerned with their member's continued employment and payment of dues.My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
I’ve never known it to be procedure, even if not on checklist.
This is what unions do. Plumber's unions aren't concerned with toilets, teacher's unions aren't concerned with students, pilot's unions aren't concerned with passengers or airplanes, engineer's unions aren't concerned with bridges. Regardless of what you've heard, unions are concerned with their member's continued employment and payment of dues.
To start, Ron's description sounds spot-on to much of what I've heard about the Puget Sound side of Boeing as viewed from another part of the same company.My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
At my company the CVR is on none of the checklists.
The securing of CVR by pulling the CB part we have on a separate incident/accident guide. No idea how Alaska does it.
Seems like there's been another example of an airplane company run by the engineers in the news recently.The Starship, on the other hand, sounded more like engineers run amuck….
I'd have to see a sample case, where engineers had an opportunity to stop an unsafe process but didn't. There's a lot of ways management can mollify engineers... "Oh, don't worry, they'll add the additional training for the MAX that covers that" or "That'll be part of the pre-acceptance review, out of your area" or "Engineer XXXX says there's nothing to worry about, so we're going with him." This sort of thing can tend to take the wind out of one's sails as far as protesting.My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.