Or more likely it doesn't really matter, and in a couple years nobody will really remember this about Boeing. They'll go back to being a big airplane producer that has a stunning safety record, which they are despite this issue.

The airline industry is growing and there are only two manufacturers who can build hundreds of planes on time. Airbus is already near full capacity. It would be impossible NOT to buy Boeing if you want planes.

Which is also the correct thing to do. Despite our president and some NYTimes columnists being scared of automation (apparently they only agree when they're wrong), automation has saved so many lives that a failure like this doesn't affect the big picture.

Yes, mistakes were made, yes, we should find ways to avoid this happening in the future, no, automation isn't the enemy. Without automation in flying at the current number of airplanes in the sky we'd probably have one or two crashes a day. The fact that 2 crashes in half a year make the news is thanks to the amazing safety of modern airplanes.

Automation is definitely not the enemy.

However, automation that is designed in a criminally negligent manner is. People who create such designs should be put in prison, and we should not be using products from them ever again.

Have fun using any product. If your company gets big enough the probability that one of its products was faulty because of negligence slowly approaches 100%.

Any big company has a scandal, learns from it, the people that learned the lesson leave at some point, a new generation of employees makes a similar mistake again, wash rinse, repeat.

You probably can't fly any airplanes if you will not use any airplanes from a company that had a scandal like this.

AFAIK the automation had no good reason to be there first place, unless you consider racing Airbus for contracts a good reason. I mean, the simpler the better especially when lives are at stake, right?