Designation/Delegation to manufacturers is SOP in almost every regulated industry, worldwide. Unless the regulators have unlimited funding and personnel (including for continuing, cutting-edge education), it literally must be the case. The key is objective, circumspect regulatory oversight and questioning new technology and innovation.
I wonder when and how pilots are involved in a design. Certainly, pilots would ask about whether and how a plane is flyable when major systems have failed.
Redundancy is an important part of planes’ control systems. Did Boeing leave out redundancy here somewhere? If all the software fails, a plane should still be flyable by an average pilot trained on that plane.
FAA’s Cozy Relationship With Boeing Under Scrutiny After Two Deadly Crashes
And don’t get me started with the cozy relationship of Boeing with the Air Force. That’s what pisses me off when Boeing bitches about government subsidies to Bombardier or Airbus.
Dear America,
This is what happens when you vote consistently on the mantra of “cut taxes”.
Taxes pay for stuff like the FAA. So when you reduce taxes, cuts happen, and shortcuts are designed for “more efficient” operations.
If you’d like your planes to not be shipped with an automated RtE (Return to Earth) module, maybe should do more thinking about what happens with those tax dollars first.
Luvs,
The Other America
The delay, to the point of reluctantly bringing up the rear in world-wide reaction, leading to the eventual FAA grounding of the Max jets proves that the FAA currently can not be trusted. That should be recognized for what it is: a blaring alarm about the assault on the proper role of the US government.
Do you anticipate anything changing under this administration? The inmates are running the asylum. Seems to me that each and every cabinet head and departmental heads have conflicts of interest while running their organizations.
The FAA has a decades-long history of not acting on complaints until there are bodies. From a simple cost-benefit point of view that might even be efficient. As long as it’s not your body lying there in defense of industry advancement and profit.
Clive Irving over at the Daily Beast has written extensively on this subject. He references one test flight filled with Boeing engineers and embedded (!) FAA inspectors which went into a nosedive, had to make an emergency landing which was made possible only by the relatively low altitude, and yet the FAA inspectors signed off on the system as safe.
The key takeaway for me is the omission from the training AND the manual any information about the new software and its potential performance; in fact there was no mention at all that it existed.
Let’s cut to the chase: this whole fiasco and moral corruption that underpins it go back to the Reagan mindset and America’s embrace of it. Who could have predicted in 1980 that cutting taxes and gutting government agencies was not a great way to improve airplane design and safety?
The FAA concedes that it doesn’t have resources to keep up with a growing aviation industry, …
Weird that this article would leave out why FAA doesn’t have needed resources.
Like the IRS and FDA iit’s by Republican design.
The FAA has really never been good at this kind of thing. They have a dual mandate, and a conflict. Occasionally they come down hard on a manufacturer or airline, but it’s a rare thing.
And, not just dismissing these two incidents, but it seems like aviation safety records are pretty good and typically getting better, even if they sometimes drop a bit when a new product or model comes out.
While that might be true agencies responsible for safety and regulation have been favorite Republican targets for cuts (or increases smaller than needed) for decades.
Chickens and their roost.
One issue that needs to be investigated is how the decision was made to treat the 737 Max 80/90 as a simple update to the 737 and not as a new aircraft. Calling the Max an update allowed Boeing to cut back on testing and training requirements.