Sci-Tech

How Boeing Favored Speed Over Quality for the 737 Max

Published

5 months ago

March 29, 2024

Niraj Chokshi, Sydney Ember and Santul Nerkar

In February last year, a new Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max plane was on one of its first flights when an automated stabilizing system appeared to malfunction, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing soon after they took off.

Less than two months later, an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane with eight hours of total flight time was briefly grounded until mechanics resolved a problem with a fire detection system. And in November, an engine on a just-delivered United Airlines 737 Max failed at 37,000 feet.

These incidents, which the airlines disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration, were not widely reported. There were no indications that anyone was in danger, and it was not clear who was ultimately responsible for those problems. But since Jan. 5, when a panel on a two-month-old Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 jet blew off in midair, episodes like these have taken on new resonance, raising further questions about the quality of the planes Boeing is producing.

“There’s a lot of areas where things don’t seem to be put together right in the first place,” said Joe Jacobsen, an engineer and aviation safety expert who spent more than a decade at Boeing and more than 25 years at the F.A.A.

“The theme is shortcuts everywhere — not doing the job right,” he added.

Such reports, and interviews with aviation safety experts and more than two dozen current and former Boeing employees, paint a worrying picture about a company long considered to be at the pinnacle of American engineering. They suggest that Boeing is struggling to improve quality years after two crashes of Max 8 planes in 2018 and 2019 killed nearly 350 people.

Some of the crucial layers of redundancies that are supposed to ensure that Boeing’s planes are safe appear to be strained, the people said. The experience level of Boeing’s work force has dropped since the start of the pandemic. The inspection process intended to provide a vital check on work done by its mechanics has been weakened over the years. And some suppliers have struggled to adhere to quality standards while producing parts at the pace Boeing wanted them.

Under pressure to show regulators, airlines and passengers that the company is taking its latest crisis seriously, Boeing announced sweeping changes to its leadership on Monday. The chief executive, Dave Calhoun, will leave at the end of the year, and Stan Deal, the head of the commercial planes division, which makes the 737 Max, retired immediately. The company’s chairman, Larry Kellner, stepped down from that position and will not seek re-election to the board.

When he took the top job in January 2020, Mr. Calhoun said he was determined to improve the company’s safety culture. It added directors with engineering and safety expertise and created a safety committee on its board. Boeing said that it had increased the number of quality inspectors for commercial planes by 20 percent since 2019 and that inspections per plane had also risen.

After the Max 8 crashes, Boeing and its regulators focused most on the cause of those accidents: flawed design and software. Yet some current and former employees say problems with manufacturing quality were also apparent to them at the time and should have been to executives and regulators as well.

After the Jan. 5 mishap, a six-week F.A.A. audit of Boeing’s 737 Max production documented dozens of lapses in Boeing’s quality-control practices. The agency has given the company three months, or until about late May, to address quality-control issues.

Federal officials have traced the panel blowout to Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., where the 737 Max is assembled. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the panel was removed but appeared to have been reinstalled without bolts that secured it in place. That panel is known as a “door plug” and is used to cover the gap left by an unneeded emergency exit.

Current and former Boeing employees said the incident reflected longstanding problems. Several said employees often faced intense pressure to meet production deadlines, sometimes leading to questionable practices that they feared could compromise quality and safety.

Davin Fischer, a former mechanic in Renton, who also spoke to the Seattle TV station KIRO 7, said he noticed a cultural shift starting around 2017, when the company introduced the Max.

“They were trying to get the plane rate up and then just kept crunching, crunching and crunching to go faster, faster, faster,” he said.

The Max was introduced in response to a new fuel-efficient plane from the European manufacturer Airbus. Boeing increased production from about 42 Max jets a month in early 2017 to about 52 the next year. That pace collapsed to virtually zero soon after the second crash, in Ethiopia, when regulators around the world grounded the plane. Flights aboard the Max resumed in late 2020, and the company began to increase production again to avoid falling further behind Airbus.

Now, some Boeing executives admit that they made mistakes.

“For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right, and that’s got to change,” Brian West, the company’s chief financial officer, said at an investor conference last week.

Mr. Calhoun has also acknowledged that Boeing must improve but has defended the company’s approach to production. “Over the last several years, we’ve taken close care not to push the system too fast, and we have never hesitated to slow down, to halt production or to stop deliveries to take the time we need to get things right,” he said in January.

Current and former Boeing employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters and feared retaliation, offered examples of how quality has suffered over the years. Many said they still respected the company and its employees and wanted Boeing to succeed.

One quality manager in Washington State who left Boeing last year said workers assembling planes would sometimes try to install parts that had not been logged or inspected, an attempt to save time by circumventing quality procedures intended to weed out defective or substandard components.

In one case, the employee said, a worker sent parts from a receiving area straight to the factory floor before a required inspection.

A worker currently at Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner factory in North Charleston, S.C., described seeing numerous problems on planes being assembled, including wires being routed incorrectly, raising the risk that they could rub against one another, resulting in damage.

Employees would also sometimes go “inspector shopping” to find someone who would approve work, the worker said.

Some of the concerns echoed accusations of quality lapses by several whistle-blowers at Boeing’s South Carolina factory who spoke to The Times in 2019.

Several current and former employees in South Carolina and in Washington State said mechanics building planes were allowed in some instances to sign off on their own work. Such “self-verification” removes a crucial layer of quality control, they said.

Boeing said in a statement on Wednesday that it had eliminated self-inspections in South Carolina in 2021 and that the practice accounted for less than 10 percent of inspections at other sites. The company inspects each plane before delivery to make sure that wire bundles are appropriately spaced, the statement said, and it does not allow inspector shopping.

Another factor at play in recent years has been that Boeing’s workers have less experience than they did before the pandemic.

When the pandemic took hold in early 2020, air travel plummeted, and many aviation executives believed it would take years for passengers to return in large numbers. Boeing began to cut jobs and encouraged workers to take buyouts or retire early. It ultimately lost about 19,000 employees companywide — including some with decades of experience.

In late 2022, Boeing lost veteran engineers who retired to lock in bigger monthly pension payments, which were tied to interest rates, according to the union that represents them, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. More than 1,700 union members left the company that year, up from around 1,000 the year before. The members who left had been at the company for more than 23 years on average.

“We warned Boeing that it was going to lose a mountain of expertise, and we proposed some workarounds, but the company blew us off,” Ray Goforth, executive director of the union, said in a statement, adding that he thought the company used the retirements as an opportunity to cut costs by replacing veteran workers with “lower-paid entry-level engineers and technical workers.”

Boeing now employs 171,000 people, including in its commercial plane, defense, services and other divisions. That figure is up about 20 percent from the end of 2020. But many new workers are less seasoned, current and former employees said.

One Boeing employee who conducted quality inspections in Washington State until last year said the company did not always provide new employees with sufficient training, sometimes leaving them to learn crucial skills from more experienced colleagues.

Boeing said that since Jan. 5, employees had asked for more training and that it was working on meeting those needs, including by adding training on the factory floor this month.

District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union, which represents more than 30,000 Boeing employees, said the average tenure of its members had dropped sharply in recent years. The proportion of its members who have less than six years of experience has roughly doubled to 50 percent from 25 percent before the pandemic.

After the Jan. 5 incident, Boeing announced changes to improve quality, including adding inspections at its factory in Renton and at the plant in Wichita, Kan., owned by a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, that makes the bodies of Max planes.

Boeing recently said it would no longer accept Max bodies from Spirit that still needed substantial work. It previously tolerated flaws that could be fixed later in the interest of keeping production on schedule.

Addressing its problems could take Boeing time, aviation experts said, frustrating airlines that need new planes.

Some carriers said recently that they were rejiggering their growth plans because they expected fewer planes from Boeing. Airlines may try to buy more from Airbus.

“They need to go slow to go fast,” Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, told investors this month, referring to Boeing. “I think they’re doing that.”

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Sci-Tech

Thieves snatched his phone in London

Published

1 day ago

September 6, 2024

Graham Fraser

Akara Etteh had his phone stolen as he walked out of a Tube station.

Akara Etteh Akara Etteh — Akara Etteh had his phone stolen as he walked out of a Tube station.

Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike – Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 “snatch thefts” in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months.

The prosecution rate for this offence is very low – the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

Victims of the crime have been telling the BBC of the impact it has had on them – ranging from losing irreplaceable photos to having tens of thousands of pounds stolen.

And for Akara, like many other people who have their phone taken, there was another frustration: he was able to track where his device went, but was powerless to get it back.

Phone pings around London

He put his iPhone 13 into lost mode when he got home an hour or so later – meaning the thieves couldn’t access its contents – and turned on the Find My iPhone feature using his laptop.

This allowed Akara to track his phone’s rough location and almost immediately he received a notification to say it was in Islington. Eight days later, the phone was pinging in different locations around north London again.

In a move says he “wouldn’t recommend” with hindsight, he went to two of the locations his phone had been in to “look around”.

“It was pretty risky,” he said. “I was fuelled by adrenaline and anger.”

A map showing the phone's locations popping up across London, before appearing in China.

He didn’t speak to anyone, but he felt he was being watched and went home.

“I am really angry,” he said. “The phone is expensive. We work hard to earn that money, to be able to buy the handset, and someone else says ‘screw that’.”

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again – his prized possession was now on the other side of the world – in Shenzhen, China.

Akara gave up.

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen – where if devices can’t be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

The city is home to 17.6 million people and is a big tech hub, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley.

Police could not help

In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did.

A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Akara subsequently submitted the pictures and information he had gathered from the locations where his stolen phone had been. The police acknowledged receipt but took no further action.

The Metropolitan Police had no comment to make on Akara’s specific case, but said it was “targeting resources to hotspot areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community”.

Lost photos of mum

Many other people have contacted the BBC with their experiences of having their phones taken. One, James O’Sullivan, 44, from Surrey, says he lost more than £25,000 when thieves used his stolen device’s Apple Pay service.

Meanwhile, Katie Ashworth, from Newcastle, explained her phone was snatched in a park along with her watch, and a debit card in the phone case.

“The saddest thing was that the phone contained the last photos I had of my mum on a walk before she got too unwell to really do anything – I would do anything to get those photos back,” the 36-year-old says.

Again, she says, there was a lack of action from the police.

“The police never even followed it up with me, despite my bank transactions showing exactly where the thieves went,” she said.

“The police just told me to check Facebook Marketplace and local second-hand shops like Cex.”

‘Battle against the clock’ for police

So why are the police seemingly unable to combat this offence – or recover stolen devices?

PC Mat Evans, who has led a team working on this kind of crime for over a decade within West Midlands Police, admitted that only “quite a low number” of phones that are stolen actually get recovered.

He says the problem is the speed with which criminals move.

“Phones will be offloaded to known fences within a couple of hours,” he said.

“It’s always a battle against the clock immediately following any of these crimes, but people should always report these things to the police, because if we don’t know that these crimes are taking place, we can’t investigate them.”

And sometimes just one arrest can make a difference.

“When we do catch these criminals, either in the act or after the fact, our crime rates tank,” he said.

“Quite often that individual has been responsible for a huge swathe of crime.”

But the problem is not just about policing.

In a statement, Commander Richard Smith from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which brings together senior officers to help develop policing strategy, said it would “continue to target” the most prolific criminals.

“We know that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” he said.

“Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets.”

Tracking and disabling

Mr Evans told the BBC phone snatchers will often wrap stolen phones in tinfoil to block its signal – meaning the device will only give a location when it is shown to others to be sold

PC Mat Evans PC Mat Evans — Mr Evans told the BBC phone snatchers will often wrap stolen phones in tinfoil to block its signal – meaning the device will only give a location when it is shown to others to be sold

Stolen phones can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as “Find My iPhone” and “Find My Device”, from Android.

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen phone could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs will also be tasked with gathering more intelligence on who is stealing phones and where stolen devices end up.

A growing demand for second-hand phones, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a major driver behind the recent rise in thefts, the government said.

The Home Office is to host a summit at which tech companies and phone manufacturers will be asked to consider innovations that could help stop phones being traded illegally.

PC Evans said there was “no magic bullet”, but he said there was one thing manufacturers could do which would be “enormously helpful” to the police – more accurate tracking.

“At this moment in time, phone tracking is okay,” he said.

“But it’s not that scene in Total Recall yet, where you’re able to run around with a tracking device in your hand, sprinting down the road after a little bleeping dot.

“I appreciate it’s a big ask from the phone companies to make that a thing, but that would be enormously helpful from a policing perspective.”

Apple and Android did not provide the BBC with a statement, but Samsung said it was “working closely with key stakeholders and authorities on the issue of mobile phone theft and related crimes”.

Additional reporting by Tom Singleton

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Sci-Tech

Google abusing ad tech dominance, UK competition watchdog finds

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2024

Chris Vallance

Google uses anti-competitive practices to dominate the market for online advertising technology, a UK watchdog has provisionally found.

The potentially unlawful behaviour could be harming thousands of UK publishers and advertisers, an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has warned.

It accuses Google of preventing rivals from “competing on a level playing field” with its own tech for the billions of pounds spent by UK businesses on online advertising.

Google said the watchdog’s findings were “flawed” and said it would respond.

According to the CMA, the vast majority of businesses use Google’s services when placing digital ads on websites.

Google maintains it has a strong business incentive to help UK firms thrive, and argues that advertisers choose to use Google because its products work well and help their businesses grow.

The watchdog will now consider representations from Google before deciding what action to take.

If Google is found to have broken competition law, the watchdog could impose a financial penalty of up to 10% of annual worldwide group turnover and issue legally binding directions to the firm.

“We’ve provisionally found that Google is using its market power to hinder competition when it comes to the ads people see on websites,” Juliette Enser, the CMA’s interim executive director of enforcement, said in a statement.

She pointed out that many businesses were able to keep their digital content free by using revenue from digital adverts, which reach millions of people across the UK.

“That’s why it’s so important that publishers and advertisers – who enable this free content – can benefit from effective competition and get a fair deal when buying or selling digital advertising space,” she wrote.

But Google’s vice president of global ads, Dan Taylor argued the search giant’s advertising technology helped websites and apps fund their content, and effectively reach new customers.

“The core of this case rests on flawed interpretations of the ad tech sector. We disagree with the CMA’s view and we will respond accordingly,” he wrote.

Google’s activities in ad tech are also subject to continuing probes by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission.

Competition economist Dr Cristina Caffarra, told the BBC that while the CMA’s statement of objections certainly presented “another headache” for Google, the regulator was merely “joining the club” of those who have already taken action.

“The UK is by no means some sort of pathfinder here,” she said.

The Department of Justice, state of Texas – which along with nine other states sued Google over alleged abuse of its ad tech dominance in 2020 – and the EU are all far ahead, Dr Caffarra added.

In 2023, EU competition regulators told Google it might need to sell part of its ad-tech business to address their concerns.

But the tech-giant has argued this would be a “disproportionate” step.

Separately, Google is seeking to appeal a UK court decision in June to allow a £13.6bn collective-action lawsuit against it to proceed.

The case alleges the search giant behaved in an anti-competitive way which caused online publishers in the UK to lose money.

Google has vowed to oppose the claim “vigorously and on the facts”.

Additional reporting by Liv McMahon

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Sci-Tech

Could PS5’s old-school adventure be a lesson for Sony?

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2024

Tom Richardson

Bot the difference: Astro Bot features dozens of cameos from well-known PlayStation characters

Sony A screenshot of Astro Bot - a white, cute robot with light blue eyes - dressed to resemble Kratos, the protagonist from God of War. Astro has a beard, and wears a leather outfit with lots of buckles and a fur collar. Astro stands next to a chopping block, holding a large axe and is surrounded by logs. — Bot the difference: Astro Bot features dozens of cameos from well-known PlayStation characters

It’s just a few hours before reviews of one of the year’s biggest PlayStation 5 releases arrive, and its director is talking about food.

Buffets, to be precise.

You might get a lot for your money, but how do you feel afterwards?

“Bloated, you’ve eaten too much and you just want to go and sleep,” says Nicolas Doucet, head of Sony-owned studio Team Asobi.

Gamers are fond of food metaphors. Developers don’t just make games, they “cook”. If you’re spoilt for choice with high quality new releases, you’re “eatin’ good”.

But Nicolas is referring to the sense that blockbuster publishers have tended to have an all-you-can-eat approach when it comes to making games.

For a while now, the industry’s biggest players have been focused on producing open-world titles offering dozens of hours of gameplay, or on attempts to muscle into the lucrative online market.

Both genres have produced some huge hits, but Nicolas wonders if there is an appetite for something more like “that two-course meal that is going to be just the right amount”.

Astro Bot could be just the recipe Sony has been looking for.

Earlier this week the Japanese company announced it was pulling Concord – one of its other recent big games – from sale after a tepid response from critics and players.

The online shooter is the latest high-profile bid to corner the so-called “live service” market dominated by the likes of Fortnite and Apex Legends that’s failed to attract a large audience.

But in a quiet year for first-party PlayStation releases, Astro Bot has received some of the highest review scores of 2024 and some critics say it’s one of Sony’s best in ages.

At its heart it’s an old-school 3D platformer that’s crammed full of references to PlayStation’s 30-year history.

The game’s main objective is to rescue 300 Astro Bots hidden around various themed levels, with about half of those decked out in cosplay to resemble characters from the console’s past.

But as much as it’s a nostalgic reminder of Sony’s great successes, could it also be a lesson for the company’s future?

Catstro Bot: Astro Bot picks up powers throughout the game that allow it to change size, shape and, in one case, species

Team Asobi Five white, robotic cats with black screens for faces train their bright blue LED eyes on a board decorated to look like a piece of cheese with a mouse in the middle. A smaller robot peeks through a hole in the middle of the board, his blue eyes looking nervously to the side. — Catstro Bot: Astro Bot picks up powers throughout the game that allow it to change size, shape and, in one case, species

If you’re one of the world’s 60 million PlayStation 5 owners, you’re almost certainly familiar with Astro Bot.

The cute mascot character appeared in 2020’s Astro’s Playroom, a short, three-hour adventure pre-installed on every machine.

It was designed to act as a tech demo for the hardware and its advanced controller, but people loved it.

“And it did highlight perhaps the fact that people are craving for these kind of games,” says Nicolas.

Releasing a 3D platformer in 2024 is, on paper, a daunting prospect. Nicolas admits the genre – a staple of the PlayStation 2 era – isn’t very common these days.

And, he says: “The ones that do exist are very, very high quality from people who’ve been making them for years and years.”

It’s also a genre Sony has moved away from recently, and its biggest releases have been more adult, cinematic titles such as God of War and The Last of Us.

Nicolas thinks this is a sign of audiences, and the developers making games for them, maturing.

But he admits that left a gap which Team Asobi – a relatively young studio – was eager to fill.

“I think there needs to be more games that are there just to relax, have a little bit of fun, that are not dramatic, that are not necessarily heavily story driven, where you can just mess around with a game and it’s fun,” says Nicolas.

“But, of course, it needs to be executed well.”

Astro Bot’s been widely praised for its polish, attention to detail and the way it plays, drawing comparisons with Mario – for many, the undisputed king of 3D platformers.

Nicolas considers descriptions of Astro Bot as “old school” a compliment and that going “back to basics” helped with the game’s development.

As concerns grow over spiralling budgets, Astro Bot was made in three-and-a-half years by a team of about 65 people – a relatively short time and small staff by modern standards.

Nicolas says the game’s bite-sized nature – it’s divided across 50 short, playable stages – helped to simplify development and made it easier to “swap things around”.

“Whereas when you’re tied to something that is one storyline, one timeline that is set, it’s very difficult,” he says.

“You have less flexibility.”

The PS5’s DualSense controller is a key part of the Astro Bot experience, throbbing and humming as players jet into a new level

Team Asobi A screenshot shows Astro Bot clinging to a flying PS5 controller as it swoops close to the surface of the sea, throwing spray up into the air. Rocky obstacles line the route to his destination - a distant island with a wrecked ship on its shore. — The PS5’s DualSense controller is a key part of the Astro Bot experience, throbbing and humming as players jet into a new level

Sony will now be hoping that Astro Bot’s glowing reception translates into big sales, but comparisons with Concord’s swift fall have already begun.

It’s also shone a light on characters Sony could revive, and prompted some people to question whether the company will shift its recent focus on the live-service market.

Under previous PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, the company announced plans to launch 12 online-focused games. It’s since scaled that back to six.

As for single-player titles, some of Sony’s biggest in-house studios haven’t yet revealed PS5 projects.

Hermen Hulst, one of two new CEOs in charge of Sony’s gaming division, told the BBC in a statement it was “very important we offer a wide variety of titles to our community” and that “Astro Bot fills an important part of our portfolio”.

He praised Team Asobi for creating “something special that is light-hearted and delightful” with “incredibly fun gameplay”.

Astro Bot is also “a great opportunity for families to game together”, he said.

Nicolas opts not to comment on the Concord situation or bigger, strategic moves, but he does agree with his boss that Astro Bot has given PS5 a game that can “bridge generations”.

Many reviewers have remarked on how cameos from the past have reminded them of growing up with Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter or the cast of Ape Escape – characters that set them on the path to becoming gamers.

Nicolas says he often gets messages from parents who’ve played Astro’s Playroom with their children talking about their experiences, and he hopes that the new game will create more shared moments.

“I’m really happy that, besides the game itself, there’s a greater good, if you like, that we’re able to tell stories like that,” he says.

“And I really hope that we can brighten some people’s homes thanks to that experience.”

Additional reporting by Tom Gerken.