(08-25-2024, 09:19 AM)mikesez Wrote:

(08-24-2024, 05:26 PM)jagibelieve Wrote: I think the decision to bring the craft back without the astronauts is the right choice.  I personally at this point question whether I want to fly on a Boeing aircraft or not.  I realize that many of the "mishaps" being reported are not a Boeing problem, but rather an airline maintenance problem.  However, it appears that much of Boeing's problems are caused by "engineers" sitting in front of a computer screen rather than the people that actually build these aircraft.

I hate engineers, even though that was my job title at a couple of points in my career.

The Starliner hypergolic valve problem is probably the fault of an engineering team or two.  They needed to be in the lab testing those valves to failure and they clearly were not. Boeing is blaming Aerojet Rocketdyne because they made the valves, but with a new critical design, the vendor needed to test to failure and the customer needed to either observe the test or demand a high level of documentation for them.  All of that falls on engineers at both companies.

The 737 max issue was entirely caused by the sales, marketing, and management teams.  There may have been some engineers who knew enough about piloting aircraft to realize they were doing something wrong, but most would not know enough about how pilots are trained to realize what they were participating in.  And it seems the pilots who work for Boeing, testing the aircraft and helping prepare training materials, also weren't given enough information to realize something was wrong. Sales and marketing never should have dreamt up the "let's build a new aircraft but only train pilots as if it's an old aircraft" and management clearly acted to prevent the kind of collaboration that would have exposed the issue.