No Proof of Muilenburg’s Claim Boeing’s Self-Certification Makes Skies Safer

October 30, 2019 / 4 Comments

Among the many claims made by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg that does not pass the smell test is the one he made on Tuesday, asserting that America’s broken process for certifying the airliners is in fact, enhancing air safety. Boeing has attained never-before-levels of autonomy in self-certifying the airworthiness of its designs after lobbying Congress for that authority and in fact, actually helping to write the new laws, according to The New York Times. 

“The creation of the delegate authority has enhanced safety,” Muilenburg told members of the Senate’s Commerce Committee on Tuesday. “There has been a 90 percent improvement in safety, a portion of that I believe can be attributed to the delegation process.”

Nevermind that this “90-percent improvement in safety” is devoid of context that would make it meaningful, Muilenberg’s belief that the FAA has done us all a favor by ceding its oversight to manufacturers is sheer nonsense.

By any objective measure, commercial aviation is safe. The reasons for this are many as I reported for Travel + Leisure several years ago.  But I can find no study that examines the role of delegating certification authority in safety. Simple logic suggests its an independent view that results in safer designs because it is free of business pressures and creators’ bias.

The members of the Senate Commerce Committee seem to be warming to this idea. During the second half of its hearing, Chris Hart, chairman of the Joint Authorities Technical Review of the 737 Max accidents and NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt both indicated certification practices could use some tweeking.

“In the two accident flights”, Sumwalt said of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines disasters, “pilots did not perform in accordance with the scenario that Boeing expected.”

One must wonder if the FAA had understood and challenged Boeing’s assumptions, would that have prevented the crashes that together killed 346? If new oversight of manufacturers’ delegated authority is the result of Congressional scrutiny now underway, Muilenburg may be able to claim in the future that the failure of self-certification led to safer skies.

Categories: Flying Lessons


4 responses to “No Proof of Muilenburg’s Claim Boeing’s Self-Certification Makes Skies Safer”

  1. Muilenburg’s argument — that Boeing certifying its own airliners has enhanced air safety — is invalid because it is classic Post Hoc reasoning. “After, therefore, because of.”

    In essence, it is tantamount to claiming that since the Sun rose AFTER the Rooster crowed, THEREFORE the Sun rose BECAUSE the rooster crowed.

    It amounts to nothing more than taking a position of “the facts be damned, I will believe what I want to believe.”

  2. Muilenburg’s argument — that Boeing certifying its own airliners has enhanced air safety — is invalid because it is classic Post Hoc reasoning. “After, therefore, because of.”

    In essence, it is tantamount to claiming that since the Sun rose AFTER the Rooster crowd, THEREFORE the Sun rose BECAUSE the rooster crowed.

    It amounts to nothing more than taking a position of “the facts be damned, I will believe what I want to believe.”

  3. Pete P. says:

    “…its an independent view that results in safer designs because it is free of business pressures and creators’ bias.”

    You failed to realize something huge: the freedom from creator’ bias is aka incompetence in the state of the art in design, which makes that independent review rather DOA. The designing company’s engineers will have to explain things to the “independents” so the latter can then conduct their review. Rather silly. Which is why the regulating agencies of most tech industries around the world have adopted the delegation-with-oversight model. Congress’ knee jerk reaction and the legislation it spawned to fund the FAA to “acquire competence” is destined to fail. Oh, it may work for three years or so… Assuming the FAA can lure top notch engineers out of their spot in industry, into a non-designing, review-someonelse’s-design job, in about 3 years they will no longer be top notch. Back to square one?

  4. Pete P. says:

    Robert Boser, I think you’re getting your sun and rooster mixed up. True, the sun doesn’t rise because the rooster crowed, but the rooster certainly crowed because sunrise was imminent. Likewise, safety (of design) ensues when certification is done right. Of course, to claim that an improvement in certification processes resulted in improved safety, you have to isolate safety of design from safety of manufacturing, operation and maintenance and show a time-sync’d correlation between implementation of the new processes and the improvement in design safety. His claim is not illogical, but I seriously doubt Muilenburg has concrete data to back it up.

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