I fly at least once a month. I'll be avoiding MAX until agencies other than the FAA recertify the plane. FAA cannot be trusted because of regulatory capture so I won't take their word over this anytime soon.
I wonder how much of the apprehension is because dying in an airplane is more likely to come with a longer period of being terrified before impact. I suppose, for some reason, not offset by a higher likelihood of suffering after impact in a car.
Unfortunately people die all the time. Whether it's through the extremely rare passenger aicraft, the more common car crash, or through violence or poor health choices. I think most people have an irrational fear of death. I don't want to die, but it happens, and when you least expect it. I try to mitigate that by being safe, but a meteor could fall out of the sky on my head any time. It's natural and the only thing garunteed in life.
True, but because the FAA has (historically) done an excellent job on airline safety, people expect zero risk from air travel. Everybody knows cars are dangerous (at least in principle, even if they think they personally will never be in a crash).
I don't think it's the loss rate of 737 Max vs other models that is what's relevant either. I said safety of driving to an airport vs flying in a 737 Max. We have to get total number of passenger hours/miles for both methods of transportation and compare those with deaths. I'm not sure if those numbers specifically for the 737 Max are available.
Considering Boeing already participates or works in tandem with the FAA to write the rules, it is pretty sick they are trying to work around the rules. This is all about profit and they are doubling down, likely due to contract obligations with Southwest and others that this plane will not require a new type rating or any sim. time. Lets hope EASA actually reviews this rather than the FAA letting boeing self audit ...
I'd like to see the EASA ban 737max flights over Europe permanently, by requiring them to have a new type rating for the aircraft, which Boeing won't do. They should also criminally prosecute Boeing executives, in absentia if necessary, and seize Boeing assets in Europe.
Everything in regulated markets is made to get slightly around the regulations. If it wasn’t you either couldn’t make it at all, wouldn’t have an advantage over your competitors, it wouldn’t perform as needed.
Regulations are a double edged sword. Now... a cheap extra sensor and better choices would have saved lives here, but the reason they made the choices they did was because of the regulations placed on them.
To your wording, complying with a regulation doesn’t mean landing dead in the middle of a range, but teetering on the ragged edge if needed.
One non-redundant sensor is completely within the regulations though. All the choices they made comply with regulations. You don’t have to like that, but it’s the truth.
If your immediate thought it “well just add more regulations” I’m afraid you may not grasp how building things in regulated markets work. There is always something to skirt. Government can never be big enough.
One non-redundant sensor is completely within the regulations though
Apaprently only when it's determined that the sensor is in the hazardous and not in the catastrophic category.
While Boeing self certified it as hazardous I, for one, would think that two losses of brand new planes within month of each other is a pretty catastrophic event.
I dealry hope that the Europeans and others are not as complacent to accept the "no simulator training required" shtick by a borderline criminal organization.
Isn’t that what they were trying to do? Reasoning that the MCAS failure mode was runaway trim and the fact that pilots are trained for runaway trim? (Obviously in reality this reasoning is flawed)
Boeing's actions are absolutely mind boggling. All consumers want is _some_, _any_ evidence that they take passenger safety seriously.
Pilots have to take less training to operate a proven deadly aircraft, with software patch on top, than I have to take to work in an office job... that's fucking insane.
How can we make Boeing feel some pain for this? You know, actually enough for them to start taking this seriously.
Nothing mind boggling. Boeing are trying desperately to avoid new type rating. That would leave them in the same business position where they were before developing MAX and with a bad image to boot.
Not saying they are right, but they just don't have many good moves.
Doing the Right thing leaves them years behind. It will also limit airline expansion. Airbus cannot pick up slack and there are no other players in the market.
It is a clusterfuck but like it or not 737 MAX is too big to fall(pun intended) .
Except it has failed, twice. It’s not as though shoving it back out the door and crossing fingers isn’t potentially going to lead to more tragedy and an even worse image, plus the potential for ruinous lawsuits. Boeing is in a terrible position they created and the only way out will hurt them, but less than staying the course.
>They neglected safety and lied to their customers and the public to gain competitive business advantage; they DESERVE to be years behind.
No, they don't.
They deserve for their executives and PEs to be behind bars, and for the company to go out of business. Let Airbus or the Chinese buy it and take it over. We've shown that we're completely unable to properly regulate companies like this where safety is so critical, so we need to let someone else take over that task. Foreign ownership of Boeing would put those regulators in charge, which would only be an improvement.
>The impression I've gotten from China is that regulation is often worked around
Sounds a lot like America these days...
Worse, regulation is seen as bad here, and Trump has directed everyone under him to eliminate as much regulation as possible, and then some. Why would you trust regulation from a country that explicitly doesn't believe in regulating?
This isn't some stupid race. This is making a machine that can safely be flown.
The market doesn't need a risk profile that drops plane loads out of the bloody sky Because a company pushed their people into hiding things from their customers.
I'm normally all for free market optimization when it makes sense, and all actors act in reasonably good faith concomitant with the magnitude of lives they are endangering. That didn't happen here, and the regulatory agency responsible for making it happen was powerless to do it's job to stop or raise a red flag on it either.
By no definition of sound risk assessment should this plane have flown without training. Period. Boeing failed its job at being a trustworthy corporate citizen in a high-impact infrastructural industrial vertical.
Honestly, I'm not sure how to get over this one. I don't believe some sort of fine and move on is really sufficient in terms of contrition. It won't bring those people back, and it seems a bit too "cost of doing business"-like to successfully act as a deterrent to future malfeasance.
Breaking up maybe? Clearly competition in the sector seems to have devolved into a duopoly to some degree.
>Honestly, I'm not sure how to get over this one. I don't believe some sort of fine and move on is really sufficient in terms of contrition. It won't bring those people back, and it seems a bit too "cost of doing business"-like to successfully act as a deterrent to future malfeasance.
>Breaking up maybe? Clearly competition in the sector seems to have devolved into a duopoly to some degree.
You can't really break up a company like Boeing; they aren't even vertically integrated anyway. Just like a carmaker, they get their components from other companies. They don't even make their own engines (those come from Pratt & Whitney, GE, Rolls Royce, etc.) the way car companies do.
How we "get over" this is simple, though I don't see it happening in Trump's America any time soon: you prosecute Boeing executives and engineers (the PEs) for criminal negligence, and throw them in prison. The company goes under, and gets bought out by one of its competitors.
As for duopoly, that's currently the case, but China's aircraft manufacturer is working hard on getting their aircraft certified, so if that happens there will now be 3 big competitors in the market, which is generally the sign of a mature but competitive market. If Boeing gets bought out, it'd probably be 2. But I'd feel much safer with Airbus using Boeing's facilities to build Airbus-designed airplanes, which have been properly certified by European regulators.
The criminal investigations would single out the employees, undeniably, but I'm not sure that would necessarily set up the right incentives, seeing as the next act of malfeasance would just be more likely to come with more CYA attached, and chilling effects on new, innovative research could be disincentivized.
In my estimation, a culture change is critical. There cannot be an attitude that sees airworthyness certification as something to be gotten around. There cannot be a tolerance for short cuts. The project isn't done until it is done. A baby takes 9 months as it were.
Perhaps review the practice of type certificate grandfathering? Seems like if anything, any new plane, even if based on an old design should still have it's own type, even if most of the data is the same as the old one.
Prove negligence as the facts allow, keep a thumb on Boeing until ample evidence of cultural improvement has taken place, and possibly tune up the regulatory framework to make sales oriented pitches like "no-retraining required" less likely? Or at least define some degree of modification that legally requires pilot/operator retraining?
Then just let the legal system resolve the remaining civil suits?
I don't think the entire company needs to be rendered no more, but a line in the sand was crossed, so I believe regulatory escalation is in this case both warranted and justified.
Once again - is the strategy boeing doing rational for them? Yes. So it's not mind boggling. We can call it dishonest, showing disregard, careless, whatever... but the fact that boeing are trying desperately to save the type certifications is not somehow beyond grasp of the human mind.
Rationality, and specifically the exercise of it, rationalization, is a double edged sword. Smart people can rationalize their way into horrible things. An act being rational alone does not magically elevate it to the status of being correct, or as an . Like an argument, you can have valid reasoning, but if that reasoning is from a flawed premise, the course of action cannot be deemed to be sound.
The type certification could have been a non-issue with proper communication. That didn't happen because someone at Boeing made a terrible call, and persists in asserting they've done nothing wrong, when the fact of the matter is that the error is so obvious in it's nature, that the rest of the world is capable of piecing the failure together even without having seen the actual data, which as it comes out, proves to only be reinforcing the case against Boeing.
Maybe it isn't enough to stand up in a court of law...yet. Everything that has been publicized thus far, however, paints a picture where criminal negligence is looking more and more like a foregone conclusion.
In short, rationality be damned. Someone made the irrational decision that the upside of getting to market sooner by cutting corners was worth risking 300+ innocent lives. People who put their faith in Boeing that they did their due diligence as required by law of executive and PE alike.
I agree with you ReptileMan. It isn't somehow beyond the human mind. Only a human being would put a financial windfall ahead of ensuring the safety of eventual passengers, have the decision blow up in their faces, then dig in and insist they did nothing wrong despite evidence to the contrary.
The corporation will be fine if they can manage to maintain goodwill. I don't envy those involved with approving the MAX however.
They deserve to go out of business, and for their executives to go to prison (along with whatever PE signed off on this atrocity).
As for airline expansion, Airbus can certainly pick up the slack and double their production capacity in short order. All they have to do is buy up the facilities from a now-defunct airplane manufacturer in the Seattle area. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of recently-unemployed engineers, technicians, and other manufacturing personnel happy to take a job there too.
Whatever. That is beyond the point. The point is that this is rational strategy from boeing given the circumstances and not mind boggling. Feel free to condemn their actions, but they are not the action of a crazy or stupid person.
Not stupid or crazy, but definitely evil. Why are you defending their evil actions? There is no valid excuse for this kind of negligence. Are you so morally deficient that you would have done the same in their shoes? Stock price is never worth murdering hundreds of people.
I wholeheartedly agree and am going out of my way to not fly 737max and 787 (those aren’t any better. Their batteries still burn up, just now in a “metal container”. Just google ‘787 smoke’ and you’ll get tons of incidences, the last one was two days ago. And those planes fly over-water for thousands of miles - https://simpleflying.com/united-787-noumea-diversion/).
A once-proud engineering company that has become nothing more than a money-grabbing machinery it seems.
Bingo. This is the end state of capitalism, a total lack of concern for brand on the part of the companies; a total lack of loyalty and trust on the part of the customer.
Still better than famine and genocide. And since we have a representative liberal democracy, the institutions and the state have recourse and are solving the problem.
The core issue with Boeing is that they have captured the government. Boeing the largest defense contractor, and one of the biggest lobbyists. Boeing recently successfully blocked Bombardier from competing with the 737 by getting the US government to effectively ban the C-series aircraft. (Bombariders "solution" was to give Airbus a controlling interest in a joint venture to build the C-series). I don't think this is really capitalism, it is corporatism - where the government and mega-corporations are indistinguishable and they only care about profits (and consequently about preventing competition)
It is the unavoidable end state of poorly regulated capitalism. When a player achieves regulatory capture, there is no amount of market that can fix the issue.
Exactly. They have capitalism in Europe too, where the Airbus is made, but they don't have these problems because they have much more effective regulation.
I'm going to let the pilots decide whether it's reasonable. I don't know anything about flying a 737 and I'd wager that 99% of the people posting here don't either.
If the US pilots unions are okay with it, I'll be okay with it. They haven't crashed any 737 Max yet.
The US airlines all purchased some/all of the "optional" safety features that would have made it obvious to the pilots that the system was malfunctioning.
A system they weren't told about, weren't trained on. What they have is an "AOA disagree" indicator, among dozens of indicators. There's no reason for them to see it or go looking for it in the example cases of MCAS upset where they're reacting to an urgent situation. The indicator might be useful for a maintenance squawk report.
Ordinarily sensor disagree would give you some idea what could be affected because you've had training to tell you this. Not in the MCAS upset due to faulty AOA sensor case.
Until the reports are complete, I think it's getting out over one's skis to say would would have been obvious to U.S. pilots.
Of the three US airlines that have Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 jets in their fleet, only two — American and Southwest — paid for these upgrades, the Times confirmed. A United Airlines spokesperson told the Times that its jets don’t include these upgrades because its pilots use other data to fly their planes.)
I think "other data" means "not those particular two optional lights that let you know when there are angle of attack issues". But yeah, I think it's spin.
I can't agree more. The existence of MCAS is a testament that the behavior of the plane wrt. to the pitch axis is vastly different. Handling this needs training and anyone doubting that please spend a moment on what happens when this savior MCAS has to be switched off. Yes, the pilots need to be able to handle the plane without. And they have to handle the plane at that point in time in an odd flight situation, are stressed themselves and have their hands on hypersensitive engine and rudder controls. Pilots train to handle airplanes with only one engine - there is a reason for that.
Anyone doubting that Boeing needs to have its authority wrt. to airplane certifications cut should ponder what they are proposing here.
I'd highly recommend anyone who wants to see what an MCAS runaway looks like and the steps needed to correct it watch the following video by Mentour Pilot.[1] He's a 737 pilot for a European budget carrier, and I believe he is qualified to certify other pilots.
In the video he goes over what an MCAS failure/runaway stabilizer would feel like to the pilots, the troubleshooting steps, and at the end of the video he shows a simulated runaway MCAS failure in a sim.
He also has a few other videos on the MCAS accidents. I'd highly recommend watching all of them; he does a very good job at putting everything into perspective in a way that the news does not.
The thing that was the most chilling to me was the fact that the last item on the memory checklist is to try and prevent the trim wheel from moving using physical force. At that point it almost seems like "well, you are probably going to die, but you might as well keep yourself busy in the process."
I thought the communication was really interesting. Air France Flight 447[1] crashed due to the pilot flying pulling back on the stick for over a minute while in a stall, overriding the command inputs of the pilot monitoring. The other pilots realized that the pilot flying had been pulling the stick back the entire time only a few seconds before impact, and at that point it was too late to recover. The transcripts from the cockpit voice recorder are pretty chilling.
That exact situation isn't exactly possible in a Boeing because the sticks are linked, but there were a several crashes in the modern era that occurred because of communication issues in the cockpit. Of course, in addition to better communication, we have systems like MCAS which are designed to prevent pilots from repeating the mistakes of AF447. In this case it obviously didn't work out that well.
I can’t watch the video at the moment, but I’m of the understanding that the manual wheel actually easily overpowers the electric trim motors—-that it is simple to stop them from spinning and not to difficult to manually spin them as required.
In the video there is a suggestion on how to hold the wheel without breaking your wrist, so I assume it's not too pleasant to do. They also manually spin the wheel and it looks quite hard and slow (the monitoring pilot alone, which is using his left hand, can barely do it; when the flying pilot helps him with his right hand things go better)
I doubt that there would ever be need to physically overcome the jackscrew motor (trim motor), as there is an electrical cutout switch in ready reach. The issue the GP discusses is when due to whatever reason the trim runs away (electrical or otherwise), the 737 has two physical wheels that the flight crew can turn, _OR CATCH_ while it is turning. That is like stopping a spinning bicycle wheel by grabbing it. It is physically dangerous to the crew member.
I wouldn't say "easily": at some point in the video the guy on the right tries to trim manually but fails -- it only starts working when the guy on the left starts helping him.
Great video, thanks for sharing. That simulator work at the end was a fantastic demonstration of team work. Crew Resource Management.[1] I still remember DAM CLAS from the Navy.[2] Numerous examples in the video. Sad and terrifying thinking about what it must have been like for the pilots and passengers of the crashed airlines. If the issue was MCAS, the slowly worsening situation, never disabling the trim, just one step to remedy the situation that’s never taken, and the intuitive solution of pulling back hard on the yoke not working, because Boeing removed it in the latest version--a sad example of awful decision making on the ground.[3]
I'll need to check for relevant sources, but I'm fairly sure that the idea that boeing removed the "trim brake" is wrong. It's simply that the MCAS doesn't respect it. I think this is consistent with the Speed trim system which may be trimming opposite the pilot in normal operations.
And the reason MCAS doesn't respect it is because MCAS is designed to activate in high AoA situations. You get into a high AoA situation because you're already pulling back hard on the yoke, likely in an attempt to avoid something bad happening such as avoiding a collision. If MCAS did cutout when the yoke was pulled back hard, it would disable itself at precisely the time it is actually needed. This design decision does make sense. The real problem is not telling the pilots about it.
And the obvious solution is "tell pilots about it" which is going to piss off the public because a procedural change (training), a new UI to make it more obvious (like IIRC Southwest implemented) and a minor code fix (comparing the AOA sensors) will not satisfy everyone who's out for blood.
In that video, I think he's primarily talking about handling runaway stabilizer trim. It just so happens that solving runaway stabilizer trim works with MCAS failures which may have been the case with the Lion Air flight the day before the fatal accident. Unfortunately, therein lies the problem: From what I've read, an MCAS failure is different enough from runaway stabilizer trim that it might not be immediately obvious what went wrong before it's too late. Juan Browne[1] discusses this in his latest video on the MAX 8[2]--namely that pilots get so conditioned to hearing the trim wheels operating that they may not notice periodic adjustments by the flight computer when MCAS fails and starts adjusting full nose-down.
(I'm posting this as ancillary information, not to be contrarian! I might be entirely wrong; that was just my interpretation of Mentour Pilot's video. His resources are absolutely fantastic[3], and I think anyone interested in aviation should certainly take a look!)
[1] Juan Browne is a former USAF pilot who's currently an FO on the 777 and has 40 years flying experience. I don't think he has experience with the 737, but I think his coverage is valuable too.
[3] You're absolutely right! Mentour is a training captain on the 737 (737-800, I believe) and oversees certifying new pilots/captains. One of the things I like about him most is that regardless of seniority, he's incredibly humble and has said in earlier videos that he occasionally flies right seat to maintain that skill for training others. Great guy! I really wish more people were like him.
I assumed the failure in the simulator was an MCAS failure, but I'm not sure. I think that the MCAS system pauses for 5 seconds every time you hit the trim button, so it kinda seems like it might be MCAS but I have no idea.
The checklist to fix MCAS and runaway trim is supposed to be the same, so I guess the question is whether the trim wheels move in a substantially less noticeable way with an MCAS failure. I certainly can't say.
I could totally see someone hearing the trim wheels running when they are trying to trim out the MCAS adjustments and assuming that the wheel is moving in the opposite direction that it actually is. In a high-stress situation a mistake like that seems incredibly plausible.
AFAIK in a runaway trim situation the trim wheels move continuously, while in an MCAS activation or in normal operation of the auto-trim systems they move in bursts. The fix is the same, but the recognition is very different.
What they should do, is give some pilots their training course they propose, then simulate the issue on a simulator. Prove they response appropriately with the training proposed.
Even if this is right from technical point of view (which I am not qualified to comment on), Boeing being perceived as dragging their feet on safety and training is very bad for the image of the airplane.
I think that they are still trying to save the type rating, but I feel this ship has sailed.
Do the non-American regulatory bodies have the power to effectively override anything the FAA decides is okay by simply saying, "these X remedies are also mandatory or the 737 MAX is banned from Canadian/EU/Chinese/etc. Airspace"?
I imagine that effectively cripples the value of using the plane without those remedies.
Each country sets its own rules for their airspace, so they can do whatever they want. But most have historically deferred to the FAA, but then also Boeing and airlines, and all the regulatory bodies work with ICAO to try and be on the same page as much as possible.
There may in fact be some obscure treaties and trade deals, among ICAO complexities, that complicate sovereignty on this issue.
I think one of the long term implications of this message is that the European aviation authorities will defer less to the FAA and another bit of US 'soft' power is eroded.
They did until the 737MAX had two crashes within a month. This changed everything: the FAA refused to ground this plane until literally every other ATC organization in the world stood up and restricted it from their airspace. The FAA only capitulated to save face after the plane was effectively banned from leaving US airspace.
Licensed nuclear plant control room operators go through 40 hours of training every 6 week. Generally 5 weeks of operations rotation then 1 week of training, all year, every year. Twenty hours of classroom and 20 hours of simulator training, the week includs a written and simulator exam. Failing either and the operator is taken off shift until his remediation training is complete and exams passed.
If pilots rotated into training time these changes could be addressed in simulators on a scheduled basis the airline could plan for.
Actually all western nuclear power plants are designed to withstand a 737 strike, as that was the largest plane flying when the regulations were written.
> Actually all western nuclear power plants are designed to withstand a 737 strike, as that was the largest plane flying when the regulations were written.
The 737 was a smaller complement for the 707 and 727 when introduced, it was never the largest plane flying.
In any case, the 1960's foreign body impact regulation has not been updated so far as I know, and at the time it was designed for the largest civilian passenger aircraft then flying. The 737 fits in, the 747 (introduced only two years later if I'm not mistaken) does not.
Pilots are rotated into training time already. One pilot may fly different type of plane. Each type have their own set training, simulation and examination.
That's why having the same type number is attractive.
The more I read about Boeing's malfeasance here, the more certain I am that I will refuse to fly in the 737 MAX if and when it's ever recertified, unless the airframe is substantially redesigned and substantial retraining of pilots occurs. A software patch is not going to cut it for me to trust the aircraft going forward.
How is it that Boeing doesn't realize how f'ed up they are at this point? They need to bend over backwards to restore trust in this plane or they'll be bending over for a different reason.
They don't believe they're f'ed up because they have effective control of the American government and FAA in regards to this issue. The only way this is really going to hurt them is if foreign air regulators don't go along with the FAA in rubber-stamping whatever lame fix Boeing comes up with.
Is there anyone who would willingly get on one of these planes, regardless of software patches and extra training, when we know they have a compromised airframe, whose design prioritized cost over safety?
I'm not a nervous flyer at all and I'm very used to flying (over 15 flights this year so far), but currently I'm scheduling a flight for next week and every flight I look at I now check what aircraft it is. This is something I had never done previously
I would get on and/or put my family on a -MAX flown by a US or major European carrier, where the crew training and experience requirements match my sensibilities of what should be required for airline transport operations.
That trip would no doubt be statistically safer than the flying we already do in single engine piston aircraft (itself an operation that prioritizes cost over the safety of flying a twin turboprop or twin jet that we can’t afford to own and feed).
Claims that the airframe is fundamentally unsound have been exaggerated. I would fly on one of these airplanes, even as they are now, as I am confident that the crew will be very well aware of the issue and capable of dealing with it.
Boeing's decision not to require simulator training may backfire on it, however, if enough passengers say that's not good enough, and vote their concerns by avoiding flights on this model, or if other regulators (or even the FAA) insist on simulator training. Boeing is doubling-down on the issue.
Boeing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lower than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have been OK for a US airline need to be dumbed down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
Boeing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lower than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have been OK for a US airline need to be dumbed down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
Boeing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lower than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have been OK for a US airline need to be dumbed down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
Boeing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lower than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have been OK for a US airline need to be dumbed down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
Boeing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lower than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have been OK for a US airline need to be dumbed down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
Boéing fails to take into account that the IQ of a typical third world pilot is lowér than IQ of a Chinese or a white American pilot. Thus the systems and training that in the past would have beén OK for a US airline need to be dumbéd down for an African or an South East Asian pilot. This is a new reality given the Boeing's market shift.
> Boeing was able to gain FAA approval for the MCAS system with one angle of attack sensor and pilots as backup.
Over the years I've designed/ implemented small scale industrial systems and whenever there was an important set of data to be read in via sensors, there'd always be a backup, or ideally triple redundancy. Sensors are cheap & using multiple can simplify a whole lot of issues.
Even once, I made an uber simple 'level' sensor on a front end loader (using two slightly rotated Mercury switches). It's only time I didn't consider redundancy, because it was not important at all if it failed.
What I don't get is how the engineers at Boeing didn't use redundant sensors. Have I misunderstood something? I just assumed that working on aircraft means that something like sensor failure should be baked into all decisions and implementations because of the -ve ramifications of things going wrong: like 2 planes dropping out of the sky!
reply