Once again - is the strategy boeing doing rational for them? Yes. So it's not mind boggling. We can call it dishonest, showing disregard, careless, whatever... but the fact that boeing are trying desperately to save the type certifications is not somehow beyond grasp of the human mind.

Rationality, and specifically the exercise of it, rationalization, is a double edged sword. Smart people can rationalize their way into horrible things. An act being rational alone does not magically elevate it to the status of being correct, or as an . Like an argument, you can have valid reasoning, but if that reasoning is from a flawed premise, the course of action cannot be deemed to be sound.

The type certification could have been a non-issue with proper communication. That didn't happen because someone at Boeing made a terrible call, and persists in asserting they've done nothing wrong, when the fact of the matter is that the error is so obvious in it's nature, that the rest of the world is capable of piecing the failure together even without having seen the actual data, which as it comes out, proves to only be reinforcing the case against Boeing.

Maybe it isn't enough to stand up in a court of law...yet. Everything that has been publicized thus far, however, paints a picture where criminal negligence is looking more and more like a foregone conclusion.

In short, rationality be damned. Someone made the irrational decision that the upside of getting to market sooner by cutting corners was worth risking 300+ innocent lives. People who put their faith in Boeing that they did their due diligence as required by law of executive and PE alike.

I agree with you ReptileMan. It isn't somehow beyond the human mind. Only a human being would put a financial windfall ahead of ensuring the safety of eventual passengers, have the decision blow up in their faces, then dig in and insist they did nothing wrong despite evidence to the contrary.

The corporation will be fine if they can manage to maintain goodwill. I don't envy those involved with approving the MAX however.

>Honestly, I'm not sure how to get over this one. I don't believe some sort of fine and move on is really sufficient in terms of contrition. It won't bring those people back, and it seems a bit too "cost of doing business"-like to successfully act as a deterrent to future malfeasance.

>Breaking up maybe? Clearly competition in the sector seems to have devolved into a duopoly to some degree.

You can't really break up a company like Boeing; they aren't even vertically integrated anyway. Just like a carmaker, they get their components from other companies. They don't even make their own engines (those come from Pratt & Whitney, GE, Rolls Royce, etc.) the way car companies do.

How we "get over" this is simple, though I don't see it happening in Trump's America any time soon: you prosecute Boeing executives and engineers (the PEs) for criminal negligence, and throw them in prison. The company goes under, and gets bought out by one of its competitors.

As for duopoly, that's currently the case, but China's aircraft manufacturer is working hard on getting their aircraft certified, so if that happens there will now be 3 big competitors in the market, which is generally the sign of a mature but competitive market. If Boeing gets bought out, it'd probably be 2. But I'd feel much safer with Airbus using Boeing's facilities to build Airbus-designed airplanes, which have been properly certified by European regulators.

The criminal investigations would single out the employees, undeniably, but I'm not sure that would necessarily set up the right incentives, seeing as the next act of malfeasance would just be more likely to come with more CYA attached, and chilling effects on new, innovative research could be disincentivized.

In my estimation, a culture change is critical. There cannot be an attitude that sees airworthyness certification as something to be gotten around. There cannot be a tolerance for short cuts. The project isn't done until it is done. A baby takes 9 months as it were.

Perhaps review the practice of type certificate grandfathering? Seems like if anything, any new plane, even if based on an old design should still have it's own type, even if most of the data is the same as the old one.

Prove negligence as the facts allow, keep a thumb on Boeing until ample evidence of cultural improvement has taken place, and possibly tune up the regulatory framework to make sales oriented pitches like "no-retraining required" less likely? Or at least define some degree of modification that legally requires pilot/operator retraining?

Then just let the legal system resolve the remaining civil suits?

I don't think the entire company needs to be rendered no more, but a line in the sand was crossed, so I believe regulatory escalation is in this case both warranted and justified.

>I don't think the entire company needs to be rendered no more

If foreign airlines all cancel their orders for 737MAX planes, they could very well be forced into bankruptcy.