>The paradox is that the failures of the 737 Max were really the product of an incredible success: a decades-long transformation of the whole business of flying, in which airplanes became so automated and accidents so rare that a cheap air-travel boom was able to take root around the world. Along the way, though, this system never managed to fully account for the unexpected: for the moment when technology fails and humans — a growing population of more than 300,000 airline pilots of variable and largely unpredictable skills — are required to intervene. In the drama of the 737 Max, it was the decisions made by four of those pilots, more than the failure of a single obscure component, that led to 346 deaths and the worldwide grounding of the entire fleet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c...

In a way, these accidents were inevitable. When safety is so assured, some airlines will begin to take a casual approach to training their pilots. Post-accident, this leads to Boeing/Airbus making their planes even more immune to poor airmanship, and the virtuous cycle continues until another accident inevitably happens, and Boeing/Airbus get fingered instead of the airline (because we want to blame the agents we think we can change, rather than the agents we cannot change).