Episode 3 – The Context of Failure: Setting the Stage, Part 1
In this episode, we explore the fascinating historical and economic backdrops of commercial transportation, the Boeing Company, and the evolving landscape of commercial aviation. We will examine how these elements influenced decisions that ultimately led to the creation of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, including the program's key priorities and design philosophy.
This episode addresses two of the four forces that have shaped aircraft design and manufacturing: the airline marketplace and aeronautical technology. Episode 4 addresses the other two.
Please share your views, insights, and opinions through the MAX8 Podcast Comments form. Episode 12 will be dedicated to feedback from listeners such as you.
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EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(0:48) – What are “context” and the “Context of Failure”?
(2:07) – Introducing the four sections of the Context Phase.
(3:07) – Brief history of disasters and regulation in commercial transportation.
(12:39) – Brief history of Boeing, notably their commercial jets.
(27:23) – Boeing’s merger with McDonnell Douglas.
(30:39) – Takeaways from the history section.
(31:35) – Forces shaping the industry: Marketplace.
(33:06) – Forces shaping the industry: Aeronautical Technology.
(35:48) – “Airmanship” versus “airlineship”.
(41:10) – Software engineering and the “black box”.
(42:00) – The design engineers' diminished perspective of pilots.
KEY POINTS:
What are “context” and the “Context of Failure”?
Context explains the histories, circumstances, forces, and factors that shape new problems and needs. It includes a wide range of business and organizational factors, from external market dynamics and technology trends to internal “culture” and goal setting. Context molds people’s perspectives, drives priorities, lays out the available courses of action, and influences decisions.
For the 737 MAX 8, Context of Failure captures the business, technological, and workplace settings where the need for MCAS emerged and the seeds of failure and disaster were sown.
Why the historical background is useful.
This helps us understand how Boeing, airlines, the government, and the public might have been thinking at the time of the MAX.
The origin stories of steamboats, railroads, automobiles, and airplanes are discussed, highlighting the economic drivers, technological challenges, and resulting accidents and disasters. This also highlights the importance of government regulation in stabilizing transportation sectors and guiding their success in the public realm.
We then see how the 737 emerged as a critical aircraft model, serving the needs of airlines, and how it continued to evolve, remaining essential for over 50 years. Finally, we consider how Boeing’s 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas began a transformation of Boeing that greatly influenced its direction as a company.
Takeaways from the historical review for the MAX 8.
First, the evolution of the jet engine has proven to be central to airplane innovation and market success.
Second, the airlines have a substantial influence on aircraft design. This is often manifested in meeting immediate needs rather than technological innovation.
Third, risks are inherent in technological innovation and change. They can also be costly and introduce safety issues.
Therefore, fourth, established designs have long lives. Variants on those designs are often preferred over new models.
As a result, the 737 remained very popular with airlines, outlasting later competing models and thriving in a rapidly growing marketplace.
The expanding marketplace for commercial air transportation.
Low-cost airlines are, by nature, particularly aggressive at attacking costs. Critics state that this goal is often achieved through inadequate aircraft maintenance and the employment of young, modestly paid, and insufficiently trained pilots. It also means flying lower-cost aircraft maintained at lower costs.
For Boeing, these markets have been the largest buyers—but they also pose a challenge. Boeing has worked closely with young airlines to improve safety, including pilot training and maintenance operations. Some of these efforts have had mixed results.
Aeronautical technology: Airmanship versus airlineship.
Airmanship is defined as a pilot’s effective use of knowledge and skills. Here, pilots are the first and last lines of defense. Central is a pilot’s common sense and situational awareness—the knowledge of oneself, the aircraft, the other flight crew, the environment, and potential risks, and an ability to balance an understanding of conditions and events with a gut feel for the best course of action when things go wrong.
Airlineship is a systematic organizational standardization of the pilot’s role that places it firmly within a larger socio-technical design of strictly defined procedures. The goal is predictable, safe outcomes. Procedures are assumed to be the best, safest flying methods, and pilots should not deviate from them. Airlineship has defined a high degree of automation, including a tight human-machine interrelationship that shapes human action. This is the realm of the “checklist pilot.” This has led to a profound shift from the pilot flying the plane to the plane flying itself, with pilot assistance. Here, the pilot is beholding to memorized procedures and written checklists.
The emergence of the new generation of global airlines is making airmanship archaic through less rigorous pilot training and experience and through changes in the design of cockpit operations focusing on the use of the airplane’s automated systems and written checklists for all stages of flight.
Aeronautical technology: Software engineering.
Automation often operates within a "black box," a part of a system that users can only observe in terms of inputs and outputs but without understanding its internal dynamics. Its logic is outside a user’s understanding and oversight. In fact, designers don’t want users to know what’s inside – it would be distracting.
In addition, the culture of software engineering can be characterized by a mindset of system “releases” and “upgrades.” This is at odds with the traditional “get it right the first time” design culture of aeronautics.
Aeronautical technology: The role of Human Factors in Design.
Because of the airlineship trend, a diminished perspective of pilots by engineers has occurred during Design. If the aircraft is more automated and the pilot is trained to do less and to do it in highly standardized ways, a false sense of the pilot emerges in the designer’s mind. A sort of “the pilots will do what they are told” mentality. Or worse, an assumption that “commercial pilots behave as engineers and test pilots think they do.”
Also, in the airlineship world, human factors thinking has been losing its significance. As the pilot becomes de-emphasized in cockpit operational design, so too has the role of human factors in informing that design.
USEFUL EPISODE RESOURCES:
Robison, Peter. Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing. Doubleday, 2021.
Haavik, Torgeir, Trond Kongsvik, Rolf Johan Bye, Jens Olgard Dalseth Røyrvik, Petter Grytten Almklov. 2017. “Johnny Was Here: From Airmanship to Airlineship”. Applied Ergonomics 59, pp. 191-202.
THING YOU CAN DO:
Let me know your thoughts.
Please share your views, insights, and opinions. Episode 12 will be dedicated to feedback from listeners such as you.
You can contact me through the MAX8 Podcast Comments form. While I may not be able to respond to all comments, I will read each one carefully. I’m very interested in your thoughts.
Download my Framework of Failure description.
The Framework of Failure is summarized in a six-page PDF that can be downloaded. Access is at the bottom of the Home Page at BradIvie.com.
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