That there was no override in the software for the MCAS system will 100% be down to whoever wrote the actual specification for the software…NOT the people that wrote the code from the specification.
Why would a coder or team of coders take it upon themselves to leave something like that out?
If Boeing followed standard software development protocols then the testcases that prove the software is working properly are written from the spec. The problem was not picked up because if something is not in the spec then testcases simply won’t get written so nobody would know that that particular piece of code was even missing.
The fact that MCAS wasn’t in the manual or properly briefed to the pilots shows that Boeing were, for want of a better expression, in denial about it so I suspect the spec was kept at a bare minimum. All of the other failures within Boeing meant that the software was implemented with this massive design flaw.
I’ll say it again. None of that can be blamed on the coders.
When the 737Max is eventually allowed to fly, who will want to fly on one? Ryanair has said it wouldn’t allow a passenger a refund if one discovers the 737Max is the plane to be used on their flight. Many airlines have committed to large numbers of these aircraft so it will be hard to avoid using one.
Boeing is probably down in history if they don’t put a true experienced engineer at the helm, they have been promoting incompetent management and outsourcing engineering outside the company.
The 376 MAX is a cheap rework of the previous design, instead of implementing a true N+1 redundant compute system in the MFCAS they implemented software unit which does not meet the requirements established on previous flight control systems to utilizing a manual overriding solution. The results is a loss of the public trust, hundreds of lives lost, and a possible destruction of the company.
I stand by my previous statements on this topic, and no apologies for speaking my mind.
LESSON: This is what happens when you move your critical path software to low quality off-shore cheap labor.
Billions of dollars are lost every year because nitwit executives think they are getting a bargain offshore when in fact you are buying a defective product most of the time that must be reworked or scraped and rewritten on-shore.
WAKE UP: 20 years of this problem should be enough for you to think straight.
Boarding aircraft direct from the terminal can make it difficult to check the aircraft type when boarding, so I doubt many would actually turn round at that point. I believe I’m in a minority of people who check the aircraft type when booking flights and who actually check the aircraft type on the safety card. I wonder how many refer to the Am I Going Down app?
Well, I would almost certainly demand deplaning as soon as I become aware of the aircraft type. In general, I would avoid airlines that use the 737MAX which would include Ryanair (although I would never fly with them anyway) and likely BA in the future.
Clive, up til now, few people would have felt the need to check which aircraft they’re flying on for safety reasons. Comfort, yes, but there’s been nothing like this situation before. ‘If’ these aircraft come into service with European airlines, I think we will see a mass boycott of them.
People power is significant and it will only rake a few cases of people walking off planes posted on social media to cause the travelling public to vote with their feet. I would not bet my life on the price of an airline ticket. Being delayed is inconvenient but nothing compared to sharing the fate of the poor souls that perished.
Sadly Boeing have reached this position through poor corporate governance and executives not reacting well to pressure. Pressure from shareholders, other manufacturers, customers for new planes etc.
Have you been in a role, John, trying to cooperate with youngsters from the IT companies in India?
I have personally mixed experiences, which go all the way from friendships and visiting their weddings to complete failure of big investments where the people were leaving on our side and managers in India were busy managing there vast collection of excel sheets.
My current employer - a big London based company - let me fly every now and then to create a kind bridge / knowledge transfer between the far east and us. It is an exception. I believe that cooperation between cultures can work well, but the challenge is far underestimated.
I’m not sure the evidence points to poor quality software. This seems to have been a conscious design decision to use software to change the handling characteristics of the plane to mimic previous models to avoid retraining pilots. The architectural decision was fundamentally flawed as we have seen, all the evidence seems to suggest the code worked exactly as the manufacturer wanted it to, apart from the fact that it had consequences they hadn’t thought through.
Rather than blame others think the blame clearly lays at the feet of Boeing and typical of cost cutting of these huge corporations. My understanding is the software that could have avoided these crashes was an optional extra.
Yes I have. I was a manager and hands-on test team leader for BT at Martlesham Heath when our local team was taken over by a company from India. I ended up as the only BT permie doing the quality checking on their software and their testing. Was it of a similar standard? To be truthful, not always. BUT, if the requirement was in the specification they coded it and I tested it using the test cases I had written from the requirements. If it failed testing then I rejected that part of the code until it was right.
The thing is developers would never simply just leave something out and that’s my whole point. If Boeing hadn’t got the requirements right or hadn’t even put that requirement into the documentation then the best software developers in the world would not have known to code it so you cannot simply blame the developers.
The story of my involvement with off-shore companies doesn’t actually end there. In the end I left BT because of what was happening with the out-sourcing and subsequently got a job as a test team manager in the private sector. After a couple of years doing that an ex BT colleague contacted me to see if I wanted some contract work back at BT. That was great for 18 months until my contract was taken over by the same Indian company and because they fill the roles with their own people that was the end of my contract.
So, I think you’ll agree that I have every right to feel aggrieved by companies outsourcing software development and test. However, I strongly believe that holding them responsible for this dreadful disaster with the 737 MAX is narrow minded in the extreme.