346 dead from wilful incompetence, followed by utter bullshittery, half-truths, outright lies and finally, when it has to admit what it has been doing, a desperate insistance that executives could not possibly have known.
And all the while fighting against them being grounded.
Break the damn thing up already.
I dont think any US politician has the guts to take down Boeing, if it goes down there wont be any major US aircraft manufacturer.
It would be, but it needs to happen. And it wouldn't be as bad as people think.
The same thing happened when GM was on the verge of going under 10+ years ago. Why does everyone somehow think a giant manufacturer going out of business somehow means that thousands of employees will suddenly be destitute and unable to find another job? Do people really think that enormous manufacturing facilities are somehow going to go unused forevermore?
No, what happens is the company's competitors swoop and and buy up all the assets for cheap, and put them to work, because now there's suddenly not enough manufacturing capacity to meet global demand, but there's all these assets and a highly-skilled workforce suddenly available to be put to use.
For the same reason bailing out Chrysler and GM was wrong, Boeing should not be allowed to survive. The company can be broken up and all its assets sold to (hopefully foreign) competitors, who can then build better planes with them.
However, given the amount of Boeing planes out there, and the number of employees, the company dying would be harsh. What needs to happen is a fundamental shift of culture; this is why I think that leadership should be held responsible for what's happened, and that this (with leaders in jail, new ones would have to take their place) would help force the changes that need to happen for safety and engineering quality again to be the number one drivers - not just profits and bean counting.
It's an opportunity for them to fully reset the company. Fingers crossed, it will happen.