Delta bears no responsibility for failing to stop someone from boarding without a boarding pass?

(Written on 2019/10/11)(Permalink)

Sounds like confirmation bias to me. Practically every mainstream media outlet has beaten us with the “Boeing is evil, profits over people” rhetoric for the last 6 months that the general public has been conditioned to disbelieve anything contradicting that. This is why it’s important for us in the scientific community to review everything for ourselves and not just blindly accept the “consensus” of others, since even we aren’t immune to it.

(Written on 2019/10/01)(Permalink)

If that’s how the article describes it, then it’s not worth reading.

(Written on 2019/09/22)(Permalink)

You lose all credibility with nonsense like “self-hijacking plane”. Such is the state of so-called “journalism” these days.

(Written on 2019/09/22)(Permalink)

I agree with you that the root cause was a design flaw; my point was just the “profits over people” rhetoric is an oversimplification that implies this was some sinister ploy by Boeing rather than an honest mistake (drive by perhaps an overestimation of crew competence). I have confidence the MAX will be fixed, but accidents will continue to happen at an alarming rate in the developing world if the crew competence issue isn’t addressed (as they have been since long before the MAX entered service). The rhetoric by the media and the general public has completely ignored that aspect up until now (NYT included, ironically).

(Written on 2019/09/22)(Permalink)

And Indonesia has an abysmal record of training and safety culture.

(Written on 2019/09/21)(Permalink)

Rhetoric like “profits over people” are just gross oversimplifications designed to elicit an emotional response. I’d say the article was petty balanced in its assignment of blame, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that the two crashes occurred in developing countries with known flaws in their pilot training programs, while western airlines with orders of magnitude more flights on the 737 MAX have not had such crashes. And claiming the worldwide grounding of the fleet proves the aircraft is unsafe is textbook begging the question - in the wake of the second crash, governments worldwide were under political pressure to “do something” by an uninformed public, fueled by an uninformed media.

(Written on 2019/09/21)(Permalink)

How is this different from a cancellation due to maintenance/mechanical failure? By this logic they get to claim those are rare and unanticipated and wash their hands of any responsibility.

(Written on 2019/09/20)(Permalink)

I’ll take a stab at it though I may not be terribly qualified either. (I am a pilot but only private and I haven’t flown in years, and an engineer but no longer in aerospace.) As I understand it, the larger engines positioned higher up on the wing resulted in instability in some situations that’s mitigated by software (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS). This was to mimic the handling of the previous generation 737 in order to prevent the need for additional training for current 737 pilots to be certified on the MAX. This change wasn’t well documented, and in the case of the 2 crashes, it was disabled by a failed angle of attach (AOA) sensor, which resulted in the autopilot adjusting (trimming) the pitch to a stall condition. The lack of training on this feature and the single point of failure (AOA) being enough to disable it were a failure on Boeing’s part, but the situation didn’t need to result in a crash - most pilots know that in a runaway trim situation

(Written on 2019/09/09)(Permalink)

That’s a pretty gross oversimplification and I think you know it. These kinds of knee jerk reactions do nothing but polarize.

(Written on 2019/09/09)(Permalink)