Re: Cascade failure
"It's not as if they can lay the blame on the outgoing CEO for the MCAS palava that has cost hundreds of lives!"
The MAX deaths are the culmination of 25-30 years of regulatory capture and an increasingly brazen management dominated by accountants rather than engineers (which has been going on for a lot longer than just 25 years)
Look at the history of industrial disputes and reports of production line problems at the company, the 2010 Al Jazeera investigation into the firing of whistleblowers who shopped Boeing regarding NGs being assembled with crucial fuselage ribs being handmade (well out of tolerance), falsely certified as CNC parts (per the FAA approval for the airframe), beaten into shape to fit on the assembly line (including further damage of other parts during thie process) and the damage covered up by assembly line workers (mostly with goo and paint) plus further falsification of paperwork before sending the airframes along for final assembly - this was in the 1997-2003 period.
Then there's the whole saga of the military tankers, where Boeing used political interference to GET the contracts (TWICE!) despite the USAF not wanting them from Boeing, and then doing the job so badly that airframes have had to be returned to remove various foreign objects from inside sealed areas. It makes you wonder what the new presidential flight 747s will be like (with friends like Boeing...)
And THEN there's the cockups in the space front and the political interference where Boeing has been front and centre in obstructing selection of SpaceX for USAF contracts as well as NASA ones.
Regulatory capture isn't just written loud and clear all over Boeing's actions and activities for the last 30 years. It goes much further than that.
The only "good" thing that's come out of the MAX crashes is that regulatory bodies around the world have been able to actually SAY "the Emperor has no clothes" without being killed on the spot by the crowds and the Palace Guard. Up to now if anyone had called this shit out they'd have been the subject of an immediate trade war and heavy sanctions from the USA. Now, the world's regulatory bodies are able to work in concert to say they don't trust American regulators and anyone who changes that tune individually looks highly suspicious.
This means that the 777X program can't skip over a bunch of tests that Boeing expected to merely grandfather, the ENTIRE 787 certification process is in question and under review (remember all the fires - not all in the battery compartment?) and those 737MAXes won't fly in non-USA airspace until _other_ regulators are independently satisfied that the aircraft are safe - most likely requiring pilots carry (at least) supplemental type certification to be allowed in the pointy end. Then there are the deeper investigations into the allegations about the 737NG irregularities....
In other words: Boeing has well and truely shat in its nest. Even the USAF has been pushed past breaking point and is holding the company's feet to the fire regarding the absolutely shocking build quality of the 767 KC conversions, despite attempts at political interference aimed at forcing them to accept the aircraft as-is.
I wouldn't be surprised to see most of the board removed and some serious criminal investigations into how deep the rabbithole goes - because without that happening, the entire rotten state of the US regulatory structure is called into question. It's not just the FAA, as anyone observing the telco or automotive arenas knows and the the USA is no longer THE dominant world economy able to throw its weight around anymore, despite (like the UK) dreams of past grandeur (see US automotive manufacturers crying "foul" because rest-of-world won't accept LHD(USA) standard cars and demands they be LHD/RHD(UN) spec, whilst USA only accepts LHD(USA) spec for the local market - there are more forms of protectionism than just tariffs and they can make your local makers just as uncompetitive as tariffs do)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
