[nateabele]

I wonder how many different federal and state bureaucracies govern the manufacture & operation of commercial aircraft.

All it would take is for one of them to require senior leadership to take a certain number of flights (per year, let's say) on each new model of aircraft they ship. This would be solved immediately.

[PeeMcGee]

> All it would take is for one of them to require senior leadership to take a certain number of flights (per year, let's say) on each new model of aircraft they ship. This would be solved immediately.

They've done this in the past after the prior -MAX issues. It's a pretty meaningless gesture and it can be tasteless at times ("my flight went fine unlike those victims!"). It is very rare for these defect(s) to cause malfunctions during any given flight. The likelihood becomes significant when many of these planes are making many flights every day.

Test pilots aren't employees (or at last not exactly) that would have an agenda, nor are they evil (at least on average I suppose), so any program manager with a vested interest in the plane would happily fly on any that leave the flightline. Any manager that would purposefully conceal or downplay a defect obviously believes the plane is "safe enough" to fly.

The issue lies in "safe enough". Any production aircraft is safe enough to fly according to someone. Program managers know the BIG money involved has already been spent ten times over, so they might draw their "safe enough" line with a tiny bit of leeway because hey, what are the odds?

[pksebben]

We can fix it conclusively in one fell swoop; remove the limitations on liability for executives and active shareholders.

If the executives in charge at boeing had to show up to court every time one of their planes crashed, this wouldn't be an issue. If they were facing criminal liability for negligence, you'd never even see them in court. The problems would straight-up just disappear.

Same goes for Pharma and oil execs. If your actions can be punished, you will do a better job of controlling yourself when you see dollar signs, rather than just do literally whatever and face the "worst-case" scenario of being fired with a golden parachute.