It's hard when your customers are requiring you to do mutually exclusive things. First, reduce fuel consumption by significant amounts, which requires changes to aerodynamics or engines (this is just physics). Second, don't make any major changes, because major changes would be too expensive for customers to implement and make the whole project not feasible.

There's no "honest engineering" that will solve the problem. This is exactly what regulators are for, because there are huge incentives for the executives on both the airline side and the Boeing side to make a deal here... everyone saves money and takes home huge bonuses.

But both of these issues can be solved, at a cost to...shareholders. And that's really where the problem lies. Since the merger, Boeing has been laser-focused on quarterly results and stock prices. In the short run that boosts equity valuations, but in the long run, as we've seen, it really hurts the company when it takes focus away from the product on which they run their business.

I'd say the fact the regulations are there at all, led to this issue. If there wasn't, there would be nothing to 'work around', and Boeing (and Airbus) would be more free to design the planes they and their customers wanted.

As it is, we have a bunch of regulations, and obviously no greater safety; the planes designs have issues anyway, as they did here with the 737 Max.

There's certainly regulatory capture going on in Boeing too, no doubt, but that's also a point for removing the regulatory system, not a point for 'making it better', usually by adding more rules, seldom subtracting rules.

> There's no "honest engineering" that will solve the problem

There very much is: tell the customers that changing aerodynamics means changing the plane. Full stop.

True. And for unimaginable long term costs.