In particular when you are doing something for the first time, uncertainty creates a space for a safety culture to operate.

Design, process and safety emphasis lead to operational success.

Over time the original designers and engineers leave, new staff join. Field experience shows that most of the safety problems that were anticipated in design never happen. The organisation starts to become complacent.

All the safety features and procedures start to be considered, psychologically, as a “safety margin” or a kind of budget that can now be spent by taking more risks. Triple or quadruple redundancy just starts looking like extra weight.

Within the org, pressures to lower costs and deliver faster start to win out...

https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/normalization-of-devian...

This lifecycle pattern can be found at other organizational scales, including countries, e.g. soldier -> law -> artist -> merchant -> warlord -> soldier ..

> I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

And the military A400M -- 4 engine turbprop -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voK2o62KpqI -- quite amazing to see when you are used to those tiny regional turboprops.

Impressive performance with the plane empty and probably only an hour or two of fuel.

https://youtu.be/Ra_khhzuFlE

The 707 was pretty similar to the 737...same main fuselage dimensions, similar pax capacity, etc.

I believe they fired him for it - though then hired him back after 24 hours and the realisation that it was a stunning piece of advertising.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-f...

What essentially was a very engineering driven culture was replaced by finance and marketing geeks that very much moved away from this approach (and moved Boeing's headquarters to Chicago in 2001 and in the process management away from engineering and construction).

Sadly (and arguably) culminating in the two crashes we read about recently.