How is it obvious to you that they didn't investigate the first crash sufficiently?

I'd say some time after the first accident it was reasonably well understood what had happened, and the FAA (and many others!) concluded that it was still safe to fly the plane, as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain by doing the right thing quick (as the pilots on the Lion Air flight preceding the accident flight had done).

Why that assessment was wrong is a complicated story that has to be examined carefully.

From what I gather, in aviation safety circles "jail time" is very rarely considered a wise answer. As soon as you threaten jail, people will cover their ass and obstruct investigations. Instead, the goal is and should be to examine the entire system to ensure accidents don't repeat, and by and large, the system works exceedingly well.

"as the pilots could easily interrupt the accident chain" -- No they couldn't!

To survive a runaway trim, pilots had to know the rollercoaster maneuver and have enough altitude to aerodynamically relieve airloads off the jackscrew so they could manually trim the plane back. If FAA and many others knew this then they should have instantly communicated it to all boeing max pilots. Instead none of that happened.

This jives with what I've seen from blancolirio, MentourPilot and others sources. The pilots should've had memory items to disable automation control of trim for the duration of the flight rather than all electric control of trim (including yoke-mounted switches), because aerodynamic forces were too large and altitude was too low to manually spin the trim wheels. I do hope Ralph Nader sues the pants off Boeing for murdering his goddaughter through negligent homicide. The FAA is also culpable for failing to oversee self-certification properly and getting too cozy (regulatory capture) with Boeing. As a consequent, equipment models including the whole line of 737 NG (-600 to -900; 2010 Ducommun structural parts scandal), 787 Dreamliner failures and 737 Max 8 and 9 are models I would not step foot on without a gun to my head.

I have read some of the earlier reports that they changed how the electric trim works. On earlier 737's, there were two switches: one to kill automated input, one to kill all electrical input.

On the MAX's, the switches only kill all electrical input. So those procedures literally didn't apply.

I've never quite understood that argument that only little people benefit from jail time and important people do not. Surely if we can put someone in jail for a year for having a forbidden plant in their pocket then we could put someone in jail for - how about a week? Three days? An hour? - for choosing to cut corners on safety and smashing two planes full of people into jelly?

The root cause here is "Boeing management wanted to get a plane out quick so they didn't lose market share". The way to examine the system and make sure this doesn't repeat (for now...) is to put someone in jail for it. Then the next time that some plane company wants to cut corners and get an unsafe plane out quick, some manager who doesn't want to go to jail will put a stop to it.

Show me the flaw in my logic.

This idea that there's one guy or set of people to be found whose fault it is that you have a systemic problem is so uniquely American.

In this case you're proposing to punish the smallest cog in the machine, some middle-manager or executive at Boeing.

It would be just as logical to throw every single American in prison for around 45 minutes (~1 person dead in 737 MAX crashes for every million Americans, 80 years (let's call that life in prison) / 1 million =~ 45 minutes).

After all those are the people responsible for electing the people whose job it was to oversee Boeing. Shouldn't we blame them for their disinterest in the activities of the FAA? Maybe give people who complained about the FAA's rubber-stamp regulatory policy before the 737 MAX parole?

All you'd accomplish by throwing people in jail is to incentivize these companies to restructure decision making to be more diffuse, and make all subsequent air crash investigations much more difficult due to everyone involved being afraid of having made some prison-worthy mistake.

The simple answer is to make the entire C-suite criminally liable - collectively and individually.

Because the usual argument is that the C-suite and especially the CEO are personally responsible for the successes of a company.

So it's not unreasonable to hold them personally responsible for the failures too - especially when those failures amount to suspected criminal negligence.

This is not the same as assuming guilt. Due process should still apply.

But the risk of personal liability should absolutely be present as a deterrent.

And if some executives don't want to operate in that environment - that's absolutely fine. The system should encourage responsible actors, and allow the removal and punishment of those who prefer to act irresponsibly.

I'd recommend using monetary penalties, including clawbacks, for motivational purposes. I suspect jail isn't quite the same level of deterrent as money for people who value those extra 0s on their net worth. Civil litigation is easier to win, too.

I would kinda like to see them get bullets in their heads. That's what China does to corporate executives convicted of corruption.

These people make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, truly obscene amounts of money compared to the workers they manage. Why should they live risk-free lives when the lives of so many people rest on their decisions in the C-suite office, and their decisions are clearly not made with safety in mind, but rather profit?

Yup, jail or prosecute them all. Maybe some of the lower-level people will want to cut plea deals to limit their exposure. We need to apply pressure to get people to flip.

Actually, that idea is pretty interesting--throwing a whole group of people in jail for some trivial amount of time. A symbolic slap on the wrist, but maybe at scale it would actually cause some group shame without resorting to draconian collective punishment.

The voters elected people whose job it was to oversee Boeing, but those elected people failed at their jobs. Why should the voters be held responsible for that? It's not the voters' job to oversee Boeing, that's why they elected people to choose other people to run that agency. The whole purpose of representative democracy is that laypeople aren't qualified, nor do they have the time, to make every decision collectively needed to run a society, so they select qualified people to do that full-time for them. If those people can't do the job properly, or do an especially negligent job of it, they can rightfully be punished or even prosecuted.

Your argument is like claiming that a taxi company owner should go to jail when one of his drivers rapes a passenger, even if there was no way the owner could have known the driver had this propensity. It's totally nonsensical.

The executives at Boeing are the ones ultimately responsible for the decisions that led to these crashes, because they prioritized profits over safety, and directed their engineers to work towards that end. For that, they should go to jail.

Jailtime for those in management who are responsible for cover-ups and cut corners. Not jailtime for those who actually design and handle the equipment.

I would not be so hard on the investigation of the first crash, they take time, and the second crash happened before the end of the first one.

Nope. They should have grounded the literally brand-new, undocumented-feature aircraft immediately.

But the FAA and Boeing are worse than useless.

Wow.

We have an drug problem that kills 40,000+/year from overdoses. Over a million people die driving in the world PER YEAR.

A small bit of perspective.

Plane flying used to be much MORE dangerous before the "corrupt" FAA got involved with the airplane companies to regulate things more closely. The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots. The record of safety in aviation in the last few years within the US has been extremely strong.

Just interesting that big pharma walks free, but Hilary Clinton and the FAA are getting the "lock them up" chants.

> The 737 MAX has had no US passenger fatalities flying with US licensed pilots

As a non-US citizen, I find that comment really disturbing.

> Just interesting that big pharma walks free

"Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson must pay $572m (£468m) for its part in fuelling Oklahoma's opioid addiction crisis, a judge in the US state has ruled."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49452373

I understand other states are lining up too.

US / FAA airlines, particularly on a per passenger mile flown basis (which for US carriers is a huge number) are incredibly safe - both against other modes of transit and same mode in a number of other countries.

I won't get into all the reasons - many understandable, many addressable. But one small point - it generally takes a chain of issues (from design to maintenance to PIC) to result in an fatality these days.

Paying fines is not jail time. The big white collar criminals never seem to actually do jail time. Many don't even pay back their bonuses or sell their second homes. A guy selling MJ can get jail time and someone killing 10K people get's a vacation home in the bahamas.

As a human being (that happens to be a US citizen), I find OP's comment really disturbing.

The whole comment is whataboutism, so maybe this was just an intentional red herring.

If you think folks who have a record in the US (where they can enforce regulations around maintenance, training, ATC, airport design) should be in JAIL for creating a system which has an incredible safety rate among ALL modes of transit I find that disturbing. Seriously - we need MORE folks attracted to public service, not going to jail because armchair quarterbacks on the internet are upset.

The safety chain in the US has an absolutely incredible record. And there have been PLENTY of design and other failures along the way even in the US BTW

Pick this apart why don't we. (edit: that came across rude, sorry)

> If you think folks [...] should be in JAIL

Who is 'folks' here - the entirety of the FAA and boeing? Or more likely just the very few at the top who messed up; those in the FAA who didn't do their job (maybe, maybe not) or those at boeing that took advantage of self-certification to cut corners?

Top boeing executives probably earn millions a year, basically they are paid to make the right decisions. That's key. Seems they didn't.

FAA probably less. Now you mention it, it seems likely FAA's share of the blame is the lesser, maybe.

> which has an incredible safety rate among ALL modes of transit

True, and still does, but we now have a case of 2 planeloads of people dead, and a very major US manufacturer that's... well, I don't know but having 5,000 orders frozen for an unknown time can't be good. If that could have been avoided then it should have.

Those responsible, should there be a penalty? If so, in your view, if not jail then what? There are plenty of people in US jails far more trivial things. Can this be right?

So... You're not keeping up with the news are you?

If there's anything that's causing the pharma controversy to stall, it's that the cross section of companies involved have significant non pharmaceutical revenue bases to pull from in funding their defense.

Also, to be quite frank, pharma is getting legislative, not just judicial attention as well. There is a reckoning in the works for quite a few industrial verticals.

However, where things are different with aviation is that every last person on each plane had absolutely no ability to influence what ended up happening. The documentation around the process is also far better and more auditable than the collective sales activity of every actor in the pharmaceutical industry.

Give it time. These things require proof, and proof takes time to collect and sift through.

Any reason you think that this crashes would not have ever happened in US? Before the first crash the pilots did not even known abut MCAS existence so I am not sure why you think that US pilots are extraordinary, I assume that not all MAX pilots are ex fighter pilots with super skills and whatever you imagine that makes ALL US pilots superior to the rest of the world.

So is it merely luck that this crashes doesn't happen in US ?

The majority of the delivered ones were so outside the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...

IMO yes, but even if US pilots are in average 10x better there still was a chance that you would fly with a 1x pilot and because he would have followed the checklist and crash the plane.

Do you have facts that say that the probability of this happening in US was 0 ?

I don't think anyone insinuating that the probability of this happening in US was 0 but the fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0.

The fact is, Greece also has 0 crashes. Your statement doesn't make any sense.

What is different about the US? (Other than we had fewer MAX-8 deliveries than the rest of the world)

Which of my statement doesn't make any sense ?

>What is different about the US?

Thats the question that I asked.

"fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0" makes zero sense.

And you even got an answer to your question. The number of deliveries is different. What's your point?

> "fact remain that the number of crash so far is 0" makes zero sense

My statement is not a fact ? okay

>And you even got an answer to your question. The number of deliveries is different

And I didn't refute or deny that either.

As far as I remember no Greek airlines (p.e. Aegean) have MAX-8s.

Well, except for the major airlines, Boeing, and the FAA were saying pretty much that after the first crash, with absolutely no technical basis for saying it.

Those parties continued to assure the public that the aircraft were completely safe until the entire rest of the planet ground the aircraft and the US President ordered the FAA to ground the aircraft.

Do you even studied statistics?

There was no crashes in Canada or X country , what conclusion can you make from this?

This is a good question.

A number of possible answers (and no, pilot skill not the only one - though everyone is focusing on that and boeing).

Maintenance.

This issue develops IF the computer gets bad data from a sensor.

Question - would this sort of thing get fixed more quickly in the US?

For the Ethiopian crash we have in days leading up to crash errors in the system - all different flights

* Capt side altimeter erratic, showed a decent and lower level then back to normal.

* During approach at 1000' the aircraft started to roll right with the auto pilot engaged.

* During approach at 8K altimeter rapidly descended and returned to normal - caused autopilot problems.

* During takeoff altitude and vert speed on both PFDs showed erratic indications

For Lion Air in days leading up an increase in warnings. Some excerpts.

* Speed trim fail light and mach trim fail light * Auto throttle diconnect * Speed and Alt flag * Feel diff pressure - fail light illuminated * Maintenance light illuminated during landing

Regulatory regime

What's the local situation in terms of check rides, maintenance monitoring and cross checks, airline procedure monitoring etc. Ethiopia has a relatively stronger reputation here.

Training

The memory item in this situation is basically a revert to manual flight. There is a possibility that manual flight is not as common in some countries, particularly if they don't have a large General Aviation pool to pull from. This is a concern in US as well (automation reliance).

The path to getting onto a jet in US is currently different than other places. To be a first officer takes 1,500+ hours and an ATP. That's a pretty high bar.

This is a design issue I think as well -> should Boeing reasonably consider that there may be differences between pilot groups in terms of training pathways. I would suggest obviously yes. Is the FAA at fault because other countries may choose different approaches? That's less clear to me. BTW the FAA did a terrible job for a while with small charter operators in financial distress with bad maintenance for example - so the FAA has blindspots but their Part 121 stuff has a good record so far.

The US system has had some amazing saves -> failures with airport bird control -> capt sully etc. Often these pilots aren't jet fighter pilots but have things like glider or small plane experience that is helpful. So systems break down in US, but saves happen.

My US worries are maintenance given cost pressures and actually Air Traffic Control (given fatigue and some weakening of standards there around new hiring).

In all seriousness, i believe the reason why many think the crashes would not have happened in the US is because Southwest and others all ordered the planes with redundant sensors (in the area where it pertains to these crashes) whereas many overseas airlines did not.

It was my understanding that such redundancy for automation purposes did not even exist, and that despite having 2 AoA sensors only one was selected before a flight, with the computer switching the one to be used between each flight.

Also Southwest certainly did not have all of the indicators at first, because they added some: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines... (note that pretty much nobody used that kind of indicator before, so I don't say that to put blame on Southwest)

It was also my understanding that some alarms including the AoA disagree were optional and for a fee even though probably activated by only needing to switch a bit somewhere in the software. So if Southwest had AoA disagree from the beginning (I don't know), well that's cool, but my interpretation is more like: that's not cool that some other airlines did not have it because of the dubious commercial practices of Boeing.

Correct - limited / no redundancy tech side.

The design redundancy was the pilot in the loop - ie, in a stab trim situation pilot would follow a memory item. So this meant much less automation protection compared to systems without pilot in loop.

But did the checklist had the correct instructions on what to do in the case the extra alarm light would turn on? I think since MCAS was not disclosed there must not have been mentioned in the checklists either

The checklist for runaway stab trim is the same with MCAS -> but more likely and so a much more critical issue. Boeing should have updated pilots for sure - BUT many MCAS events may have occurred and been saved by the existing checklist which overlaps the issue.

And, the grounding of these planes probably indirectly causes more deaths than keeping them flying.

Imagine how many more people choose to drive to their destination? Or who have to keep using older models of plane which pump out more tons of CO2, killing the environment and people who might not even be born yet?