Building the Plane While Flying

Innovation is killing people. Even though we use the word to instill a sense of better in our world it is still killing people. We innovate things like food containers all the way to airplanes. Innovation seems so simple, most would say it means improving something but when we dig deeper innovation doesn’t mean improvement.

Anyone could put a swirly hat on the airplane’s head and a big lollipop on its wing and call that an innovation. No one has ever done that before, so it is new. Did it improve anything significant? Children might laugh at it, making the trip a little less stressful for them. But there’s a reason why no one does that. Airplanes are shaped meticulously to not disrupt the many systems keeping it in the air.

True innovation in aviation starts with the Wright brothers, the two men credited with building and flying the first motor airplane. This event paved the road to understanding when innovation is improvement. From then on it became a balancing act of gain versus safety. Their aircraft could not handle heavy loads, high speed, and high altitude so the following innovations had a high gain and a big improvement of safety. World War One pushed for major innovative improvements in airplanes to handle high speeds and a tougher exterior. While they were still basic machines they had sturdy frames and sheet metal encapsulating the pilot. These innovations were needed as they improved the aircrafts safety and functionality.

Post World War One innovation in aviation focused more on public programs, like mail planes. During these mail plane trips they discovered the profit that could be made with carrying passengers. This led to the industry to focus on the improvement of the plane ride for commercial passengers. 

Once World War Two hit, our planes were turning away from the bi-plane silhouette. We saw large monoplanes develop, they were able to carry heavy loads of people and goods. After this, airplanes became the machines we know today. 

But when do our innovations stop being improvements? All of our modern commercial airplanes have amazing safety records. If we keep innovating at this rate that could change.

The Boeing 737 MAX, which included a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System(MCAS) the pilots were unaware of. The new MCAS was supposed to prevent stalls by pushing the nose of the plane down. Which sounds amazing in theory but the system would detect stalls in moments where there wasn’t a stall present. When pilots would try to fix this by pointing the nose upwards the system would override their input. This resulted in two fatal crashes. Part of the issue is that pilots were not properly informed of the MCAS being implemented. But even with this information Boeing tried to innovate but they didn’t improve. 

So to prevent future crashes we have to determine whether an innovation is an improvement or not. An improvement should be making a plane safer or more efficient. The Boeing 737 MAX MCAS tried to make planes safer but there was a fundamental flaw in their technology. These events showed that pilots can prevent stalls by themselves. If the MCAS wasn’t there or was able to be overridden the pilots could have been able to prevent the crashes.

In the future if we keep innovating but not improving we could see more large fatal crashes. As of right now we have planes that can hold 500 people and ones that can get across oceans in a reasonable amount of time. We shouldn’t put ourselves in danger just to be more automated. Pilots have training to collect all known information and spit out a solution. Computers just aren’t good enough to do what humans can do. Striving to be faster and automated will result in unnecessary suffering.

How is innovation killing us? It’s supposed to make our world better, safer and faster. Innovation protects us, in theory. But the implementation of innovation is useless unless we improve the systems we already have. It can be great but the many factors it takes for an innovation to be an improvement can easily get overlooked. Weighing the possible cost against the possible benefits we have to determine whether or not it’s worth it.

One of the biggest failures that could happen are technical malfunctions. The Boeing 737 MAX MCAS is an amazing idea on the surface but in action it caused the deaths of hundreds of people. This system was supposed to make our planes safer by preventing stalls. Instead it caused planes to nose dive due to a mechanical failure that gave a false detection of stalls to the MCAS. It stems from the Angle of Attack(AOA) sensors, which are known to frequently fail. In other control systems using the AOA sensors they compare data from all of the sensors. In the case with the 737 MAX one sensor started giving MCAS incorrect data, but the MCAS only accepted data from the active sensor. Since the MCAS couldn’t compare its input to the other sensors it was prone to failures. This was innovation without improvement, pilots can already take information from multiple sensors. But the fact pilots were so unaware of this new system they couldn’t even override it is a massive problem. They made a faulty system and then told no one. We already have amazingly safe aircrafts but major flaws like this could happen more and more if we continue to ignore past problems. These sensors were known to read incorrectly but Boeing still used them as a base for the MCAS system, when we know that good pilots can successfully take information from multiple sensors.

The 737 MAX was an extremely rushed project. It developed when Airbus, a Boeing competitor, released the A330neo. Boeing knew prolonging the project would put them far behind Airbus, so they rushed everything. Along with this the budget was tight. This is unethical due to the sheer amount of work it takes to safely produce an aircraft. Human greed has an impact on how safe our innovations are. Instead of taking the time to ensure the safety of their passengers they weighed the consequences of the possible failure to the cost of implementing the better sensor and determined it would be better to risk a crash. There was so much rush on this that the Federal Aviation Administration wrote off an important review of the aircraft. During the investigation it was discovered that the MCAS was changed to have more of an impact than previously reported. When dealing with the lives of hundreds of people we can’t overlook anything, but when major companies are presented with the decay of sales we risk it. We can’t trust in the organizations that are there to keep us safe from innovation without improvement. Until a failure like this is mended innovation should halt.

When the 737 MAX was released pilots were not properly informed of the MCAS. Whether this was due to the rushed release or Boeing just didn’t think it was important doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that a major innovation happened under the radar of pilots. We don’t have the proper systems in place to detect a major flaw like this. Pilots have an extremely stressful job but we undermine their place in the cockpit when we allow changes like this to happen.

Pilots are trained for years to prevent disasters, they have to have at least 1,500 hours flying to even be considered for commercial flight. That’s not even including flight simulator time or in class time. Even with all of these protocols most fatal plane crashes are due to pilot error. Instead of constantly releasing new systems for pilots to learn, why don’t we develop better training systems? Or put more effort into better coursework for pilots new and old? We could have the safest plane ever and still be at the will of a pilot. They will have to relearn how to control a different plane, when we could accept that as of now we are at our limit for technological advancement in the planes. If we could train the pilots more on the same aircraft that mechanically is amazing, why continue to put more stress on pilots?

All in all we are not ready for innovative improvements. We have mechanical failures, organizational failures, human failures, and protocol failures. Innovations can happen, but only if we perfect every step of the processes we have now. As of now we have a lot to work on before we can continue to advance, because we need to equally improve every component equally. Even if we had an innovation that could change the world of flying we don’t have the proper channels to make sure it can thrive in our world. So until we fix all of our current problems innovation is useless because it doesn’t have a sturdy foundation to build on.

The solution to our problem is to work on the systems we already have.

If we were to tighten the policy and processes to innovate. For example if the FAA had strict policies on not letting companies skip past certain tests this whole situation could be a lot different. But since we allowed Boeing to bypass important procedures due to a rushed release we started the path to these crashes.

Or we could incorporate them into the process of innovation more. Pilots have extremely high stakes jobs, people say pilots don’t want to be in the news because most of the time when they are it’s not good publicity. Which is extremely true, everyday they have the chance to kill hundreds of people. By letting the change of the 737 go unreported we instill a sense of uneasiness in our pilots. They were left in the dark about a life threatening change and expected to just figure it out. Our pilots shouldn’t have the responsibility of cleaning up Boeing’s mess.

Along with that we have to improve our pilot training programs. Most plane crashes are caused by pilot error. If we put more effort into our training we could possibly prevent that.

Human lives are more important than money. Most would say this, but when it comes to aviation there seems to be a disconnect to the rest of society. It takes a lot of money to build a plane that meets our expectations, a plane that blows us out of this world is going to be costly to the extreme. People seem to think death is a natural consequence of innovation. When in reality it doesn’t have to be if planes are built to either reach     

Venture capitalists are calling death a natural consequence of innovation. They compare a human life to their monetary value when discussing the risks. They say that the way the government puts value on human life is too high. Right now the value of life statistic(VSL) is $12.5 million dollars, it’s supposed to be the average amount of money an American makes in their life. The opposition claims that this is too high because as the Federal Aviation Administration calculates the possible amount of money lost if a plane crashes the number becomes extraordinarily high causing the FAA to pass regulation even if just one plane is saved.  They say this price encourages the FAA to enact laws that contain insanely hard to reach goals and that it’s halting innovation. From their perspective the risk of death isn’t worth the high cost of investing. They compare aviation regulation to the regulation controlling cars being extremely loose. 

First of all innovation doesn’t have to be deadly, at all. The Airbus A380 has the highest passenger capacity we’ve ever seen. Yet it still has no fatalities associated with it. We still haven’t been able to fully utilize the aircraft. Only major international airports with long runways and large enough fuel networks can handle it. There is no reason to develop larger aircrafts because we have a large aircraft we just don’t use it. Other areas of innovation like speed and fuel efficiency are different. But we had planes like the Concorde that ended up being phased out due to noise pollution, fuel efficiency, and costs. It had one major crash caused by debris on the runway, not even caused by mechanical failure, and it was abandoned. The article argues that we encourage manufacturers to just re-release previous versions. Yes, we do but for a good reason. We know that the fundamental mechanics of that aircraft work safely so why change it? Improving the Concorde or A380 is safer because they haven’t failed us. Starting over would only lead to more costs, testing, regulation and death. No one is arguing against improvements, we are arguing against innovation for the sake of being new, not improving.

Putting a human life to a monetary value is necessary but it shouldn’t be the only factor. Each human life is important, everybody deserves a chance to go about life without the fear of dying. While it is important when discussing the economy we can’t separate the idea that a human’s life doesn’t deserve to be cut short for innovation, especially passengers who are unaware. We live in a world run by money and we are building machines that take a lot of labor. The expectation that it will be easy or cheap is unrealistic. Lowering expectations isn’t going to make building good planes easier, it’s going to make building bad planes easier. The consequences of valuing life lower than it already is could be detrimental to society. A person is a person with their own life experiences, family, job and goals no matter if you are in their life or not. We can’t separate that even in scenarios where logic is the main component.

Comparing aviation to cars is unfair and disrespectful, planes were developed to be amazing feats of engineering. Taking that and saying we should treat plane regulation like we treat our regulation on cars taints the reputation we have built. We have idolized airplanes as a society for years, when the Boeing 747 was first released in the 1970s she was crowned “The Queen of the Skies.” Seeing a 747 was a major event, she sparked a joy in people with her size and luxurious design. Airplanes aren’t supposed to be mediocre, they have to symbolize the hard work put into creating them. 

Our safety record with aviation is one to uphold. Planes carry so many more people in one trip so when they fail it is so much more devastating. We can’t treat them like a car that only carries about four people. Behind the wheel you are also in control of your vehicle or you trust the person who is. But when you get on a plane you have never met the pilot. Despite this you know that they have gone through years of training to be in the position they are in. Almost anyone could go out and drive a car. Most people could easily get a license. Even if you are the best driver there is still an enormous chance you could be in a car accident. We have reasons to be so strict on planes, especially commercial, we have set a safety record that people trust in. Without that trust commercial aviation is nothing.

So no we should not encourage the government to ease up on policies slowing down innovation. There is way too much risk associated with doing so and lowering the cost of a human life to fit investors standards is dangerous. No one expects that they will be on the next plane that crashes, because it happens so little, we need to keep it that way. Opening the door for sketchy companies to make the planes we need to keep us safe is a recipe for disaster.         

Innovation is beautiful when done properly it changes the world. It is extremely counter intuitive to slow innovation because it’s important, but only when it’s a true improvement. As of now we haven’t improved the simple technologies and behaviors that make innovation possible. Eventually we will reach a point where our pilots have more training, our policy is enforced and our current technology is fixed but those things have to happen for any innovation to be an improvement.

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