It turns out there is a whole company of executives who are so not-worried about it that they’ll continuously cut budgets and decrease the time available to make those planes until multiple planes fall out the sky. And even then are still not really that worried about safety.
For my entire life, the most pervasive theme in executive leadership is that the _only_ responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders.
Boeing may reach a point where it has to stop killing passengers, but dead passengers aren’t an issue at all until it creates a major threat to their bottom line.
If you think it shouldn’t take many downed planes before that happens, then given the situation, the real question is why it hasn’t threatened their business enough yet.
The alternative—fining the company into the bankruptcy and letting the courts restructure the company has too many downsides for the shareholders.
"We don't need to brief anyone on the technicals of our plane, we know better and it's great for stock prices to mislead buyers into thinking it's just a New and Improved model of the same plane flyable in the exact same way!"
It's criminal. They should be criminally charged. I hope this goes through, and I hope prosecutors sweep up all of the floor workers who have already stated they would never fly in the newer planes.
Next time you hear corp talk about how regulations make x unaffordable, look for the real incentives and benefactors of gutting that regulation.
Stock buybacks take precedence over spending on safety improvements, and reduction in working capital (finished product) to appease the bean counters results in missed sales when the inevitable process upset occurs and there is no surge capacity.
Nice prose, and an astute point
I dunno. I think that's a little melodramatic. There are a lot of activities in the world with dangerous failure modes, and flying is pretty far down the list in terms of impact. You could make the same argument about chemical engineers designing pesticide plants, insulin pump manufacturers, hell even folks doing car suspensions are probably responsible for more deaths than Boeing.
People do their jobs, and if the impact is low they'll live with it. Clearly Boeing's leadership thought they were doing OK. And even in hindsight they... kinda were? The MAX is the most dangerous airliner in decades, maybe a half century. But I'd still fly on it.
/joking, but I mean.... it doesn't sound as far fetched as it should