Good. Hold them accountable and make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. Although a ‘same plane’ cert was a good goal, they should have made sure it was truly accurate instead of bending the case to make it so.
This may be as close to an ‘open and shut’ case for corporate gross negligence as we will find in quite a while (at least I hope so).
I would hate to see them go under but it should be clear that this type of corner cutting is unacceptable and future manufacturers of all kinds should think twice before stretching to put a round peg in a square hole.... especially with lives on the line.
They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company. Maybe not everyone signed, but then it's about how much they can pay their lawyers.
Even if they manage to dodge civil liability (which is unlikely), a number of nations could bring criminal charges for the deaths caused by the two crashes. In addition most major nations have the option to bring criminal charges against Boeing for endangering the lives of their citizens.
Scale is irrelevant to the dynamic of "a good stops being provided when the assigned liability is out of proportion to what the provider can reasonably control". Cessna was hit with vindictive, overreaching lawsuits that somehow succeeded, which had the effect not of safer airplanes, but more expensive ones without meaningful changes to safety.
"Boeing's bigger so I don't have to care about that dynamic" is not the right way to react to that concern.
I’m not sure what Cessna’s case was but Boeing and the FAA’s negligence is absolutely horrible here.
I’d give them a begrudging pass with some fines slapped on if they’d grounded the fleet and disclosed their deception after the Lion Air crash.
But after that and knowing what they knew, people need to go to prison for this.
By forcing them to fully certify the MAX, they will take a massive hit in sales and further losses in legal suits from the airlines that have already purchased planes they can't fly.
This will also add a serious line item to the various civil lawsuits regarding the loss of life as a government level entity has now said 'this was a different plane, Boeing lied.' It will be extremely hard for Boeing defense attorneys and likely lead to triplicate damages settlements.
Really, all you need is for the CEO and perhaps the board of directors to lose their jobs. Sure, they'd get golden parachutes and it wouldn't seem sufficient, but people in positions of power don't like losing their position. If you did that, it would be sufficient to make the next CEO (and board) think twice about doing something similar.
We like imagine a big conspiracy, or pressure from the top because of corporate greed. And sure, CEOs and the board called leaders for a reason, and ultimately they're responsible, not just for culture, but the whole operation.
While I can't speak for the aviation industry, in my experience lower and middle management is just as much at fault, if not more. That's often where the real cowards sit, tyrannizing downwards and lying upwards. I'm not saying upper management is faultless, but presumably they aren't the only ones.
I don't buy it; at the end of the day everybody has some moral responsibility when human lives are involved. Not to Godwin the argument, but I would have hoped WW2 would have taught us that much. But I'm not familiar with US work culture. Again, clearly upper management aren't blameless either, but the fact remains responsibility cannot or should not be so easily passed on.
The way Europe handled Volkswagen is... nothing, but Vw directors are being arrested one by one when they transit through US jurisdictions, and jailed.
Perhaps we’ll ser the same: Europe arresting and trialling Boeing officials one by one as they ser foot in Europe. Perhaps there are already negociations on immunity for Vw against immunity for Boeing.
From 2012-2016 the EU was the biggest economy in the world. The UK leaving changes that somewhat, but in terms of soft power the EU packs a gargantuan punch.
The definition of victim implies the same as "dead passenger". The families of dead passengers would be stretching the definition, at the very least it's not the most obvious definition in this case
>a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action
"Victim's family" is how people would normally refer to them.
You’ve taken that in a different direction than I meant. I’d absolutely agree surviving family members are victims too (albeit I’d call them victims’ families for clarity), but none of this will stop say a well motivated prosecutor from arguing that these contracts were signed under duress, bad faith, or include some kind of “unfair term” (which would invalidate a contract in the UK at least)
Second, it will hurt sales. No airline wants to buy a plane they can’t fly, but they also don’t want to buy more old planes that use more fuel. My bet is that companies like Southwest will half all orders and see what happens.
Finally, it’ll drive companies that straddle the Boeing airbus decide deeper into Airbus’ arms.
It's worse than that for Boeing. The Comac C919 is now flying. This is China's answer to the 737 Max. Three prototypes are flying now. Volume production in 2021. 800 orders already.
The problem with Southwest is that their entire fleet is 737s. So the 737MAX was a big thing for them: they could stick with that same crappy old airframe, but get better fuel economy, and not have to retrain pilots. They don't want to switch to Airbus because that means they can't standardize on a single model and manufacturer, and they'd have to retrain so many pilots too.
1. These kinds of contracts don't come with provisions for compensation for every foreseeable contingency.
2. You can sue anyone for anything in America. But it's going to cost you.
3. You can also make future purchases conditional on how these contingencies were handled in the past.
So, it's likely that a lot of negotiation between Southwest and Boeing will happen. Possibly even some arbitration. If the two firms ever end up in court over this, that would indicate a colossal failure in all the processes that lead up to that moment. (As litigation is incredibly expensive.)
It's a crappy old airframe because it's designed specifically to be low down to accommodate airstairs, meaning it won't fit modern large engines. It's anachronistic design and has to make tradeoffs in order to stay relevant (even before the MAX, the NG had those weird squished engine nacelles).
The crazy workarounds are maybe bad designs, but an airframe design that's still in demand after 50 years and been built 10,000+ times isn't a crappy design.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone familiar with aviation agree that the 737 is a poorly designed airframe...
It's only in demand because of inertia. This is like claiming that Windows is great for no other reason than because so many people use it, or that the US government is a great idea just because it hasn't collapsed yet.
If you think it's so great, then why don't you explain why you can't put today's large high-bypass turbofan engines on it in the normal position without them hitting the runway? How exactly is that a "great design"? It may have been a great design in 1967, but it isn't now, just like a 1967 Mustang chassis may have been OK then, but is totally inadequate now.
No, I think you are. The 737's airframe includes landing gear designed for using ladders instead of jetways, and wings that are thus too low to the ground, which is why they placed the new nacelles the way they did, causing this problem in the first place.
If they have made agreements with victims that means they have been held accountable. Unless they've been represented poorly, these people likely are better off to the tune of well over a million dollars each. Of course they are also dead.
If they cannot be held accountable in the legal sense they might in the financial sense. Stopping 737MAX sales would hinder their operations quite a bit.
This may be as close to an ‘open and shut’ case for corporate gross negligence as we will find in quite a while (at least I hope so).
I would hate to see them go under but it should be clear that this type of corner cutting is unacceptable and future manufacturers of all kinds should think twice before stretching to put a round peg in a square hole.... especially with lives on the line.