It's not just money; there is always risk in any hardware rework. If the rework is not done correctly and a plane crashes, even if on a test flight, then your "safety fix" has made the world a worse place.

In this particular case the fact that it is aviation standards for wire separation at issue, when those are typically stupefyingly conservative, means that "doing nothing" may well be the safest course. But I am NOT an expert in this area, so don't trust me!

One way to help make the decision is to try and get money out of the equation. If the two options are "pay for the rework" or "pay a fine equal to the cost of the rework", then any company that opts for the fine might actually believe in that approach.

> there is always risk in any hardware rework

I get your point, but isn't it ultimately about money anyway? If they can wire a plane correctly when they're building it, they surely can rewire a plane later - they might have to remove more stuff, worst case scenario reverting the plane to the same state it would be for an original rewire, and I suppose the reason they don't want to do that is money.

I can't understand the decision to "ship" with a potentially catastrophic failure that would cost many lives otherwise. I don't think this should be a dilemma. IMHO the two sensible options from a regulator point of view seem to be "make the plane safe to fly, and if that's expensive, tough luck" and "don't fly the plane".

It seems to me they could disassemble every Max, re-certify every part as stringently as they would certify a brand new part, throw away any part that was out of spec, then build "new" Maxes from those re-certified parts. (Except doing this would cost huge amounts of money.)

It's not enough to disassemble every Max. This wiring is the same on every single 737, of any model, that is in service. That's a much, much, much bigger effort, plus you'd be tearing apart airplanes that have been in service for decades with no incidents.

They did wire it correctly just the definition of correctly has changed over the last half century since the wiring harness was designed. It wasn't broke so they weren't gonna fix it because fixing things that aren't broke comes with cost and risk that you will break them when trying to fix them.

I think this is over-simplifying the situation. Yes, change the wiring for new builds to meet the regulations but It could well be that retrofitting the existing 800 or so 737's as mentioned in the article could increase the risk over-all.

But I would not trust Boeing to make that calculation and even the FAA's reputation has been dented (which is why I think they are being hard-arses about it) but it could be retrofitting is not the right choice.

I would probably be happier if the FAA and the ESA decided independently whether to allow it.

If money were no object, there would be no aviation industry.

Similarly, if safety trumped all else, there would be no aviation industry.