[thaumasiotes]

Conceptualize it as a three-point scale of trust:

1: I will fly with you.

2: I will fly with you without even wearing shoes. (Realistically, I can't imagine why shoes would make a difference.)

3: I would let my family fly with you.

If you say you wouldn't put your family in a Max, then your trust in the Max is not at level 3. Logically, this is a very weak constraint; it only shows that trust < 3. Maybe trust is 2. That's what fingerlocks is saying.

However, vernacular language generally doesn't work that way. A common mode might come from the following train of thought:

- I don't trust this plane.

- How much do I not trust it? The MAXIMUM LEVEL, LEVEL 3!

- "I would not let my family fly on this plane."

Here, from a logical perspective, the person has confused "lack of level 3 trust" with "level 3 distrust". This is bad in a math class (the scope of the negation is wrong -- [not [level 3 trust]] vs [level 3 [not trust]]), but routine in ordinary speech.

[perl4ever]

This is missing the forest for the trees. The context is a passenger aircraft whose normal job is to transport families, so "level 3" is all that matters.

[fingerlocks]

No, the context is internal communications between employees during the design and construction phase of the aircraft.

Imagine if your conversations of various bugs for a software project that you were building were released after the fact, what do you think they would sound like out of context?

[perl4ever]

I generally try not to write things at work that could look bad to the NY Times, but my point was just that it's overanalyzing to distinguish between levels of confidence here. In context, if the crashes hadn't happened, maybe it wasn't all that significant. But at least momentarily, it must have seemed important to the writer. It is true that often at work I'm concerned about something, and it's because I'm confused so when I'm reassured I realize my earlier comments are inapplicable.