And frankly this time we're talking about the worst of the worst, the basic first step of making airplanes : being able to ensure parts of it doesn't fall off for no reason. This is not a design issue, not a cost cutting "they didn't put enough sensors" reason, this is straight up "their manufacturing is bad and their QA is not able to catch it", ... These things have barely started flying and 5 of those are already affected (well, 6 ...), this is absurd.
Sure MBA taking over tends to kill engineering companies ability to make great product, but even Hewlett Packard is still able to make printers that print (they suck, but that's by choice from them)...
I've seen a lot of confusion that its a systemic problem
United found loose fasteners in a different locations on each of the five aircraft they found loose fasteners on. This is right on the heels of another emergency AD for the MAX about loose fasteners in a completely different location. That definitely hints at a systemic problem.If you expand the scope a bit, Boeing's had nasty assembly and manufacturing problems across its whole model lineup. I highly doubt this is a one off problem.