Most people by now know that the nearly-failed 787 Dreamliner proj years ago was almost entirely caused by outsourcing to India Incs, in particular Indian’s HCL, which was banned from the project entirely by the FAA because the electrical system OS they wrote for the plane was found unflightworthy.
The Boeing 787: Broken Dreams | Al Jazeera Investigations
The two crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 planes in Asia, and an aborted flight in one over Europe has nearly grounded the entire fleet of planes. Every day a plane sits idle, an airlines loses money.
It’s now come to light both crashes were caused by software failures in the planes.
A similar incident almost crashed a Quantas plane years ago when the autopilot spontaneously disengaged and caused the plane to plunge, nearly crashing it.
Has Boeing been continuing to outsource its work to India Incs to save costs?
If so it should be held accountable for manslaughter at the least for the deaths of those on the Boeing 737 Max planes.
Like so many company failures before it, Boeing’s outsourcing in the end, will be its undoing.
You get what you pay for.
As a footnote, the 787 proj failures of years ago are still being felt around the world today, costing companies tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars due to failures and grounded planes:
- The 787 engine maker, Rolls Royce, outsourced to India Incs and is now paying the price: $500 million in loses due to engine failures on the planes.
- ANA, which bought 30 of the 787s from Boeing has had near catastrophic engine failures, grounding many of the planes, causing millions in losses. ANA now says it will take a full 3 years to replace all the faulty engines on the planes purchased.
- Boeing itself was sued over late delivery of the 787s originally, by several entities.
None of this adds up to cost savings, but to death, and much higher costs due to rework, replacement, repair, and lawsuits.
Outsourcing to India Incs is the kiss of death.
Pilots Complained About Boeing 737 Max 8 For Months Before Second Deadly Crash – Zero Hedge
“The fact that this airplane requires such jury-rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error-prone — even if the pilots aren’t sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don’t I know?” wrote the captain”.
The FAA has mandated Boeing update the plane’s software – further indications that the software was the cause of the deadly crashes.
Even Trump chimed in:
Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
How Software Can Make an Airplane Crash
How Software Can Make an Airplane Crash
“The loss of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max-8 aircraft on March 10, coming as it happens less than five months after the loss of another Max-8 from Indonesia’s Lion Air, is raising questions about how a software glitch can cause an airplane to crash, and it’s led to the subsequent grounding of all 737 Max aircraft worldwide. The answers are complex, and they hold lessons for other mechanical systems that are controlled by software–which are a lot of them
…
Meanwhile, a number of entries in an FAA database turned up reports by pilots that they were having control problems related to the MCAS in the 737 Max series of aircraft. Those reports are submitted anonymously by pilots to the FAA in a variety of ways, and the database exists to reveal safety issues that might not otherwise be noticed, which is the case here. This added to the evidence that the FAA needed to order the grounding.”.
Now dig just a little deeper and it’s clear both of the world’s 2 major airliner mfgs. – Boeing and AirBus, had fallen over themselves to send a lot of engineering work to India – including software:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Boeing-RVW5945452.htm
NYT even ran an article mentioning that higher end US white collar jobs such as “aircraft engineering” were going to India:
https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Emergency_Order.pdf
Nearly 800 IT workers to be laid off at Boeing
Boeing has outsourced work to a number of Indian IT vendors in recent years; the layoffs are part of continuing efforts to cut 10,000 jobs
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2627966/nearly-800-it-workers-to-be-laid-off-at-boeing.html
GM, Boeing, Airbus using India-designed parts
https://www.rediff.com/money/2004/apr/17bpo.htm
Boeing is an InfoSys customer:
Boeing doubles outsourcing from India to $500 million in a year .
Boeing 737 pilots battled confused safety system that plunged aircraft to their deaths – black box
Data suggests one of plane’s many brains was stuck in anti-stall mode
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/27/boeing_737_max_mcas_lion_air/
https://qz.com/1570960/boeing-will-update-the-737-maxs-flight-software-by-april/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/boeing-the-faa-and-why-two-737-max-planes-crashed.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/#87a19a97b1b7
“HCL Technologies, India’s fifth-ranked software services exporter, has over 30 aerospace customers including plane makers Boeing Co and Airbus. “Given the current business scenario, we’re highly optimistic that the future is bright and the sky is the limit,” Kumar said”.
Not for the 300+ passengers + crew on the 2 crashed 737 Max 8’s it’s not.
Isn’t that right Mr. Premji?
