[SystemSafety] A Gem from Bloomberg

[Robert P. Schaefer]

How is it that, 26 years after it was pointed out clearly in two articles in the
software-engineering literature, and 22 years after Table D.1 in Annex D of Part 7 of the
international standard for functional safety of E/E/PE systems was published, which includes the
necessary figures, engineers can suggest such nonsense to journalists?
Of course, one shouldn’t trust quotes found on the Internet, but here’s a quote anyway:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair

On Nov 9, 2019, at 2:21 AM, Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at causalis.com<mailto:ladkin at causalis.com>> wrote:

An article on the Boeing 737 MAX SW revision:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/delays-in-boeing-max-return-began-with-near-crash-in-simulator?fbclid=IwAR1R6_y2DtwhHi5wq9kaOCRLMEcwE2cxIeAu_-aivpR2k_swaZZxYTQr5ok

which includes this gem: "Manufacturers may have to demonstrate with extensive testing that a
software failure leading to a crash would be as rare as one in a billion."

If that is so, then, to any reasonable degree of confidence, we have a mathematical proof that the
aircraft will never return to service.

How is it that, 26 years after it was pointed out clearly in two articles in the
software-engineering literature, and 22 years after Table D.1 in Annex D of Part 7 of the
international standard for functional safety of E/E/PE systems was published, which includes the
necessary figures, engineers can suggest such nonsense to journalists?

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de





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