[Raion]

I took an engineering ethics course in college 8 years ago. We had to study several aero, mechanical and electrical engineering cases that are a result of ethical issues. 

I was recently reminded by this reading articles of the trainwreck that is the 737MAX, and this reminds me of another aircraft: The DC-10

For those who don't recall, there's multiple instances of crashes either involving the DC-10 or that were caused by the DC-10. 

I'll go through four such cases:

AA Flight 96
Turkish Air Flight 981
United Flight 232
Air France 4590

So, the first two cases involve cargo door failures that led to explosive decompression and damage to the hydraulics. 

Flight 96 took off and had its cargo door blow off, collapsing the floor and damaging 2 of 3 hydraulics systems, jamming the rudder and breaking Engine No. 2 (the tail engine). The pilots had little control over the surfaces, and ended up using differential thrust. There were only a few injuries, and no deaths. This miracle, is the only one we will review though. The plane had no flaps and couldn't land normally, hence the pilot Bryce McCormick had to basically land at over 220km/h. 

The door on the DC-10 is NOT a plug door like most planes. It swings out. This was done to reduce the amount of weight and wasted space, but because it's not a plug door, it has to use a latch bar and pins to ensure it's secured. The latch wasn't fully secured, and the pins weren't engaged, and there was no indication to the pilots that the door was not properly closed, hence disaster. 

The FAA didn't ground the DC-10. They made a backdoor deal with McDonnell Douglas, and let them "work it out." This was disastrous for Flight 981. 

Unlike Flight 96, everyone died because ALL 3 hydraulic systems failed, and the pilots lost control. 

The door was recovered and it was TERRIFYING. Not only were repairs performed, but a Turkish engineer had filed down the pins to make the door easier to close. The pins thus didn't engage. The baggage handler additionally couldn't speak Turkish or English, and had little training to double check the door was closed. He wasn't stupid, he was fluent in French, Arabic and Berber and literate in all 3. This wasn't Turkish Airlines' fault, since these handlers are often hired by airports, not airlines.  But all the same, it's terrifying. 

This time, the FAA couldn't ignore the issue and grounded the fleet. And just now McDonell Douglas had to actually, you know, do the work. This shit is ridiculous. The design is clearly flawed, and the DC-10 should have never been allowed to fly.

But oh, it gets MUCH worse. United Flight 232 AGAIN had hydraulic failures, this time due to Engine No.2 exploding and taking out all three engines. The plane diverted to Sioux City entirely under differential thrust on the remaining engines, and broke up upon attempted landing, killing nearly half of the people on board. The pilots did the best they could, it's not a case of pilot error. No recalls or groundings were issued.

This segways into the final case. The air france 4590 is an example of flawed design and company negligence at its worst. This was a concorde flight out of Charles DeGaulle Airport. Just before taking off, the runway  had debris on it from Continental Airlines DC-10 - a piece of the thrust reverser came off. This part had come off in Israel, and was sent back to Texas where Continental had it repaired with an aftermarket part. McDonnell Douglas had apparently no repair procedure outlined, so it was welded on and pushed out. 

The strip ruptured the Concorde's tires, sending debris into the fuel tanks. This fuel caught fire when the engines no. 1 and 2 ingested it through the nacelles, which disintegrated the wing and caused the plane to crash into a nearby hotel, because it was already past V1 speed.

In court, Continental tried to deflect responsibility by pointing out the plane was slightly overloaded (800KG or so) and that it hit something after going airborne. As IF that matters, because the load numbers do have some wiggle room, and it wasn't until it veered off course due to your piece of shit airplane's parts coming off and blasting a hole through the tires causing a fire. Like seriously, that court case's arguments made me mad.

Thankfully, the engineer responsible for the hackjob was found civilly liable and forced to pay money. In my opinion, he should be in prison for manslaughter, along with Continental's head of engineering. Had the FAA forced the DC-10 to never be airworthy again, this would have never happened. 

Furthermore, there's actually nothing wrong with the tri-jet design. The L-1011, the main DC-10 competitor, was/is a fine plane. Never anything like the piece of shit DC-10's myriad of accidents ever happened on the same scale. Some of the engineers will argue the DC-10 was by and large perfectly safe. And I'd agree, but a plane is not remembered for statistics. It's remembered by its events. And in this case, the DC-10 is a deathtrap. So many horrific accidents that could have been much worse with less competent pilots. 

Back to the 737MAX. There's a larger argument to be had about increased automation leaving flight crews unprepared for emergencies, combined with the removal of flight engineers (Which I HEAVILY disagree with. A third set of eyes in the cockpit is incredibly helpful.) has left us virtually unprepared for when crises happen. The 737MAX is a death trap that Boeing falsely claimed was the "Exact same as the 737NG". How wrong they were. They don't get it! History has repeated itself. I'll never fly on a 737MAX. I also avoid flying airbus for the accidents where airbus has failed through all of its computing and automation to make a safer craft. 

What do the engineering nerds here think? Am I making sense somewhere in this? Or is this just nonsense?

[Irinikus]

This says it all for Boeing!

---

The Max is going to cost them dearly, as it will take allot convincing to gain public trust concerning the safety of this aircraft. This will negatively impact the balance sheets of the airlines committed here!

This is what you get for putting the stock market above all else!

[commodorejohn]

At this point in the history of our society, it's hard to think of an area of life that hasn't been negatively impacted by people cutting corners or fudging facts so that the bean-counters can present the Boys Upstairs (and/or the shareholders) with numbers that make them 3.575% happier than they might theoretically otherwise be, and the Friends In High Places helpfully sweeping everything under the rug for them, so that nobody (or at least no Important People) suffers any consequences and consequently nobody learns anything. These days all you have to do is turn on the freakin' news to watch it happen in real time.

[jan-jaap]

I took an engineering ethics course in college 8 years ago. We had to study several aero, mechanical and electrical engineering cases that are a result of ethical issues. 

I was recently reminded by this reading articles of the trainwreck that is the 737MAX, and this reminds me of another aircraft: The DC-10

That's not an accident. The article how-boeing lost its bearings sums it up nicely: Boeing took over McDonnell Douglas but

it was McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnell’s culture that became ascendant.

Cost cutting, outsourcing and loss of engineering culture. At the same time the FAA delegated much of it's job to Boeing. What could possibly go wrong?

[biigD]

The 737MAX is a death trap that Boeing falsely claimed was the "Exact same as the 737NG". How wrong they were. They don't get it! History has repeated itself. I'll never fly on a 737MAX. I also avoid flying airbus for the accidents where airbus has failed through all of its computing and automation to make a safer craft. 

What do the engineering nerds here think? Am I making sense somewhere in this? Or is this just nonsense?

I'm not an engineer, but I do fly the airplanes. To be honest, I don't consider the MAX to be all that different than an NG. Airliners that go through generational changes (ex: 737 Classic->NG->MAX) will typically require some degree of change to the underlying systems, and the MAX was no different. In this case the new engines changed how the airplane handled at high AOA, and some code was added (MCAS) to the existing Speed Trim System to make it handle more like the NG in that flight regime. That by itself doesn't mean the design is somehow flawed - every airplane model that's been around awhile goes through similar changes as technology evolves.

So from my perspective, the fact that MCAS exists to begin with wasn't an issue (that we didn't know about its existence until after the first accident certainly *was* however)  - it was just the manner in which Boeing chose to implement it. And now that everyone's been digging into this further, we've uncovered an underlying culture issue that's allowing decisions that go against even the most basic of engineering principles to occur. I'll let the engineering types talk more about that - it's all above my pay grade.

[Irinikus]

So from my perspective, the fact that MCAS exists to begin with wasn't an issue (that we didn't know about its existence until after the first accident certainly *was* however)

That's the criminal part of it!

As a pilot myself, I think it's incredibly important for aircrew to have a complete understanding of all of the systems and subsystems which constitute the aircraft they fly. On top of that, you should be able to disengage any system that's malfunctioning. (If you don't know of its existence, due to corporate coverups, how can you disengage it?)

It takes two seconds to loose someones trust, and a lifetime to regain it! (Corporatism is the problem here!)

[weblacky]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought there was more to the Air France 4590 story? I remember it in the news, and I remember the expert being interviewed on the US news claiming that this exact scenario had actually been planned and thought out by the designers (or had come up before in previous flights) and wouldn't have normally been a huge (deadly) issue. British airways was also running Concordes and had several previous tire blowouts. Leading to them making changes to tire designs to lessen blowout events.

The expert claimed, the Concorde had large protective panels (plates) on the underside, around the rear of the landing gear area strike zones, that (in the event of the tire failure or runway debris encounter with the tire) would deflect the debris and keep the plane intact (safely). We were told that Air France REMOVED THESE PROTECTIVE PLATES, to save fuel costs in weight years ago. Because they had never had an problems, they removed the safe guards designed for this exact scenario.

I can't find supporting references online, I'm going off memory...

[Raion]

I believe the guards were added after the fact.

Have the Concorde less fuel in its tank it might have survived but regardless we are talking about stupid engineers who think they know better than the laws of physics. and cheap aircraft companies who continued to run unsafe planes despite numerous serious design flaws. The Concord was fine, I believe that all culpability rests on Continental airlines and McDonnell Douglas and the engineer who installed the aftermarket part incorrectly.

[Trippynet]

If I recall, the fixes were actually to add additional kevlar linings to the tanks.

Regarding the 737 Max, my biggest issue with it is that MCAS relies on data from a single sensor (with two fitted to the plane) - meaning no redundancy for the system. Boeing have been talking for a while now about a "software update", but this cannot properly address the issue. The Max should have 3 sensors minimum, with onboard software capable of "voting out" one of those sensors if its readings disagree with the other two. That is how critical systems should be implemented if safety (rather than profit) is the primary concern.

Boeing may be looking to modify the software to allow for readings from both current sensors, but in the event of a sensor problem it still doesn't answer the question of which sensor is at fault? In short, it's a bodge and no matter what they do software wise, the plane will still have a weakness due to only two AOA sensors being fitted.

[weblacky]

Ah, I stand corrected on the Concorde topic.

Regardless of intent, I agree with what has been pointed out. In that, early designs and advances in science have a human cost (medicine, machinery, finance, environment, etc...). One hopes they aren't the victim, but people have paid the ultimate price throughout history in these areas. I certainly don't believe we need to exploit people to gain advances, but I do believe accidents happen, the best we can offer is to take them seriously, learn from them, and try to ensure serious rules and policies are put into place to help prevent their re-occurrence.

We have to deal with arrogance (already brought up), ill intent, laziness, self centered know-it-all idiots (dangerous), ignorance, and finally indifference. It's sometime hard to know which one you're looking at. Often a great first product is put out, pretty perfect, then it's cheapened, changed, and whittle at, until the current revision of said product is unsafe, fraudulent, otherwise undesirable.

In some cases, not following policy leads to a machine being unsafe. A designed machine can't cover all situations, is not following proper operation or policy a strike against the machine? No, it's against the machine's operator (not the designer's fault if you didn't follow an instruction). Machinery that goes beyond human limits (speed, strength, etc) is certainly dangerous if not operated/maintained correctly, there is no getting around that fact.

But I'll put this out there (perhaps it's obvious) that many of the issues brought up are actually a symptom of, not only placing the fraud and profits above customer value but also, a failing financial system which (by eroding our currency and past work's worth) strives to "do more with less" (due to inflated costs) and leads to cut corners by mostly knowingly putting out a poor product because it's too expensive to employee the right people, take the needed time, needed testing, and needed feedback to develop a product because you don't HAVE to do those things...and while you're working on the perfect product (burning money), someone else beats you to market with a shoddy product, but get sales because you don't have your product out yet (a race to release). In my previous employment, by bossed loved to use the term "good enough". The product doesn't need to be perfect, just "good enough". I don't work there anymore...

Technology used to move slow and iterative, now it moves faster and often re-designed to cost or life-span over functionality in an effort to ensure short product lifespan to force re-purchasing the same product over and over as it's "used up".

Human effort (physical work) is outdated. Business and work/tools need to happen faster than a human can operate to be successful in this world (automation). We're not only in our own way, but everyone has a sob story, vices, skeleton's in the closet, etc. Putting up with people's weird and dangerous personal lives is the bane of many employers. So the best course is to do as little with humans as possible, and automated the rest for high consistent, low-touch, production.

Oh sure, you need humans to buy stuff, but you don't want them gumming up the works because they're hung over, aren't feeling well, or distracted. Humans are too expensive to employ (insurance, medical, leave, office space, HVAC, cleaning, plumbing, electricity, noise, etc). Man, compared to what machines need, why would you ever employ another person unless you needed to?

I've worked in a few environments, there are always those that are grateful for the job and keep a professional tone and don't complain too much. Then there's everyone else...

Too many cooks in the kitchen. The average human is obsolete, we just need them to spend money on products, otherwise they are a net negative in consumption. Customer expectations already surpass human limits (design, production, shipping time, support), nothing slower will be tolerated any longer.

I'm unsure why there needs to be a new car model or a new phone model every year (I guess because they can). But I'd rather have a customer (and their family) for life and not make as much per-person then rip off people (who will never buy from you again) for shot-term gain. But given real inflation, costs, and the unexpected, short-term wealth is now the mindset of US businesses. I think many of them are so insolvent that they need to act this way, or they will go bankrupt. One misstep and it's over. Any sane person would choose a life-long customer relationship, but when you're living hand-to-mouth...the only kind of relationship you can have in short-term profits.

And once profits (over customer safety and value) are put first...well all other questions (often ethical) are given a back seat, now that they aren't top priority.