That doesn't really prove anything though. The risk to a specific flight is still quite low. The risk that is concerning is the risk of any 737 Max flight crashing. It would be like a lottery detractor saying "I'll prove that no one wins the lottery by buying a ticket every day, and never winning." Chances are that person won't win. But chances are quite high that someone will win.

That's a terrible show of confidence. What are the chances that the next plane to have an accident is carrying the CEO? What is the average expected punishment to the CEO for getting it wrong? It's probably less risk than BASE jumping.

I would rather there be guaranteed liability: have the execs set up a legal system to refund the entire order book and voluntarily plead guilty to federal charges in the event of another > 10 MAX deaths. But frankly, if Boeing is at fault for 340 deaths they should already be doing that.

I haven't seen any mention yet specifically, are they being held liable for the deaths and forced into some financial penalties or has this case been relegated to the right-wing "The free market will adjust and discourage consumers" sort of liability?

My impression is that the relevant laws for crash liability are those of Indonesia and Ethiopia. So nobody professional is clamoring for it. The silence of the pundit class is curious; I guess we will find out how political this in the next few days.

That said, it seems likely that in the US Boeing is liable to their customers (airlines and aircraft owners) for fraud. In theory, the entire organization could be disbanded under RICO, but Boeing is a defense contractor, so more likely they pay to settle damages. I could see them getting away with paying for the costs of repairs, retraining and the lost revenue for planes already delivered in the US.

It also seems likely that Boeing is spending incredible amounts of money on PR to control the fallout. I expected the release of this report to be near the top of Reddit, but on reddit's /r/news the BBC report on this was sitting at only 21 net upvotes after 3 hours. (As of 8 hours ago.)

While I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't held liable, it's way too early to know. The justice system moves slowly, and the reports haven't even been finished.

I thought it was company policy to make their engineers fly on the planes they built.

Yes, and tobacco company CEOs smoke. Does that give you the confidence to do the same?

Genuanly curious - which one?