Boeing and its supporters spent a lot of time and effort trying to blame the crash on (the very conviniently non white) pilots. They even had a massive article in the NYT last year.
All of the emails, messages, etc, can be downloaded at these links if you are interested. I have read through all of the first bunch and it doesn’t paint a very good picture. A company trying desperately to fudge things so that simulator training is not required for their new jet.
There is a lot of jargon and abbreviations in the documents that make it a difficult read at times. MCAS itself has come up rarely. They were dealing with multiple other issues that threatened their ability to have a “level b” (computer based training) differences course for NG pilots to convert to the MAX.
Let’s focus on the messages and the people who shouldn’t have put that stuff in writing. Please ignore the underlying problems that prompted those messages, that’s not important. :rolleyes:
I think they already setting the civil claims with the passengers on those two flights, but if they hadn’t, this stuff would have really hurt their case.
Those of us in the software industry are very familiar with issues like this. Cost cutting pressure leads to “ship it first, we’ll fix it later” which then leads to “there’s not enough money to do it right the first time but plenty to do it over again later”. I think I butchered that last saying, but maybe you get the gist. It’s pretty endemic, but extremely sad and horrifying when it happens in products that people’s lives depend on.
Also, and yes I’m cynical, but I can smell the scape-goating that’s about to happen. It’s a shame that upper management in companies never listen to the engineers when it comes to quality and safety.