I agree with your last sentence... It's weird though. Why won't smooth marketing talk work this time? It has worked many times, for many companies, independent of factual reason. What's particular about this time?

I understand the HN consensus about what actually went wrong inside Boeing. Maybe the HN consensus is right, maybe it isn't. What I find weird is that this time, the PR works differently.

This will have been the biggest, or at least the most visible, collective failure of aviation regulators in a very long time, if not ever, to provide checks on a company. So they are all pissed. And now that the FAA has fucked up other regulators are not keen to just blindly follow their guidance, particularly those in jurisdiction with existing or potential Boeing competitors.

"some hacker might mess up your credit report " vs "holy shit planes falling out of the sky".

In the US, the traditional solution to a nasty plane crash is to merge another airline just to get a new name (cf AirTran nee ValueJet 593)

Well, I'm looking at air travel totally different. Where once I thought "Hey let's fly somewhere...", now I'm thinking more and more that local travel is more the way to go, since the rich turds in management can't even so much as own up to issues anymore.

They still have a near monopoly when it comes to production within the US, and that status continues to be propped up by the government. It still isnt clear that Boeing's negligence will hurt their shareholders as much as it should. It's looking unlikely that the criminals who forced through the dismantling of essential safety measures while concealing their actions from regulators and the public will face justice. Management has no incentive to do anything except stay the course.