Exactly this.
> or is it shameful even if it was honest opinion of these Boeing representatives at the time?
It seems fairly obvious Boeing was aware the 737-MAX had some serious faults, but instead of admitting those faults it seems fairly obvious they went out of their way to deflect blame way from their failed aircraft onto the now dead pilots.
If they admit in any way to releasing a known dangerous product they open themselves to massive damages.
When the Lockerbie bombing brought down Pan Am Flight 103, the relatives sued PA AM over those deaths.
In that case a jury found Pan Am was liable for damages because it's poor security procedures had failed to protect the passengers.
I would imagine lawyers would be salivating at the though of suing Boeing over these two disasters in what would appear to be a much easier case to win.
Latent racism may have helped some people believe it was the pilots' fault, but I wouldn't ascribe the actual racism part to Boeing in this case.
I am at least twice as likely to kill my airplane than my airplane is to kill me.
This, however, is mitigated by a regulatory, technological and cultural safety net, which usually corrects such mistakes.
For example: There's an important cultural understanding that pilots admit safety relevant issues, even if they made a mistake in the process and not getting punished for it. The effect is that all involved entities learn from that and correct it in the future.
When something really bad happens pilot error is mostly part of the puzzle, but the bad outcome is a sequence of problems, which lead to catastrophy.
A great example is the worst disaster in civil aviation history ever[1], which ultimately was triggered by the error of a very experienced pilot. But there were a lot of small puzzle pieces, which needed to fall into place for this catastrophy to happen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
edit : spello
The process you describe does happen, but IMO, clearly articulating the facts and assigning findings of probable cause (the latter is what you term pointing fingers) is an essential element of that improvement process.
The is a strong safety culture in aviation overall. It’s rare for one isolated mistake to result in a hull loss, but rather is usually a series of issues where the “holes in the Swiss cheese all line up”.
No doubt Boeing and others are going to improve technical and human factors elements from this crash. It doesn’t help anyone in this process to not assign probable cause, IMO.
Is it shameful because we suspect that it was an intentional lie on their behalf, or is it shameful even if it was honest opinion of these Boeing representatives at the time?