I find it weird that the article tries to blame everyone EXCEPT Boeing. This appears to be clearly Boeing's fault and the article smells like a shoddy PR damage control attempt.
> “The problem is, the less-desirable airlines are the ones with the least resources that are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of human resources,” said Martin Craigs, the chairman of Aerospace Forum Asia, an industry advocacy group in Hong Kong.
Fuck you, NYTimes Journalist, for including this quote in a story that seems to inescapably point at a combination of Boeing equipment failure and Lion Air's upper management.
I think poor working conditions in the Asian textile industry is a relevant analogy.
A textile factory collapses due to inexcusabe management decisions or incompetence. The management pulled the trigger, so to speak. However, it's the abusive dynamic of the free-market that incentivised management to cut costs to sustain the business. If they had not met the price offered by the big brands, the contract would go to someone else, i.e. there's an abundance of low-cost supply.
In the Asian textile market, the manufacturers, working at thin margins, are incentivised to cut costs to unreasonable levels, because they'd lose business. The local regulators are incentivised to not regulate, because the demand would move to another jurisdiction.
My point is that sometimes, there's two sides to the guilty coin. There's the isolated incident and the general atmosphere that breeds those incidents.
I can not relate this to the topic of Asian airlines, but you might find this interesting nonetheless.
inability to compete does not justify negligence
Edit: I agree with your remarks about the textile industry though, the customer does not feel the death and destruction for the workers
This situation is different.
It's not like most flights can move and start on different jurisdictions. Besides for the few that can, jurisdictions can compete on safety too, it's something the airline clients care about, not some externality.