As with so many "root cause" investigations, there are deeper issues the more you dig. And these issues turn out to be both a gradual evolution of circumstances that changed
Boeings, Congress's, and our collective responsibility for the matter when you peel back the layers.
It turns out (in my view) that this is just the inevitable result of a slow abandonment of the role that the military, federal government, and the US people elected to play in the development of civil aviation in the last century.
Maybe many have forgotten, but our civil aviation legacy largely came from R&D and production of aircraft during WW2 and later. Boeing, McDonnell, Grumman, Northrop, these were all companies that formed from that legacy. But what they produced besides planes was a government infrastructure that was expert in procuring, regulating, and evaluating the performance of not just aircraft but also companies.
And it also produced aircraft companies that worked closely with government -- but most importantly, with their concerns in mind. They were partly the customer!
Over 50 years, the pressures of public debt, cost of employees, efficiency, etc. meant that that expertise in the regulatory bodies gradually began to be hollowed out. Experts in government found themselves too bothered by the heavier and heavier constraints of government, and lured by the higher salaries of the private sector. The leaders of a new field were replaced by mere maintainers of it. We all know what happens as that changes, I think.
Government gradually also became less of a "customer" in the design and production of planes. And the airplane companies themselves became more profit-need-driven. They are basically like the auto manufacturers with huge workforces that need their insurance and IAM wages paid.
So what do you get in a situation like this? The inevitable:
Aircraft manufacturers that start to optimize their designs and production for low cost and "simple" variations on old designs (don't want to invest in from-scratch new planes). Regulators who don't know how to evaluate properly new designs, and anyway whose responsibilities are basically staffed for and by the airline because few people want to be regulators. And a public that incentivizes this all because we have other debts to pay and don't want to cough up the $ in ticket prices or taxes.
Until a plane crashes.
Anyway, that's my take. So if they were honest, Congress would point the mirror at themselves too, in this exercise.
It turns out (in my view) that this is just the inevitable result of a slow abandonment of the role that the military, federal government, and the US people elected to play in the development of civil aviation in the last century.
Maybe many have forgotten, but our civil aviation legacy largely came from R&D and production of aircraft during WW2 and later. Boeing, McDonnell, Grumman, Northrop, these were all companies that formed from that legacy. But what they produced besides planes was a government infrastructure that was expert in procuring, regulating, and evaluating the performance of not just aircraft but also companies.
And it also produced aircraft companies that worked closely with government -- but most importantly, with their concerns in mind. They were partly the customer!
Over 50 years, the pressures of public debt, cost of employees, efficiency, etc. meant that that expertise in the regulatory bodies gradually began to be hollowed out. Experts in government found themselves too bothered by the heavier and heavier constraints of government, and lured by the higher salaries of the private sector. The leaders of a new field were replaced by mere maintainers of it. We all know what happens as that changes, I think.
Government gradually also became less of a "customer" in the design and production of planes. And the airplane companies themselves became more profit-need-driven. They are basically like the auto manufacturers with huge workforces that need their insurance and IAM wages paid.
So what do you get in a situation like this? The inevitable:
Aircraft manufacturers that start to optimize their designs and production for low cost and "simple" variations on old designs (don't want to invest in from-scratch new planes). Regulators who don't know how to evaluate properly new designs, and anyway whose responsibilities are basically staffed for and by the airline because few people want to be regulators. And a public that incentivizes this all because we have other debts to pay and don't want to cough up the $ in ticket prices or taxes.
Until a plane crashes.
Anyway, that's my take. So if they were honest, Congress would point the mirror at themselves too, in this exercise.