[avalys]

I’m a developer and a pilot. I understand that cost is not the only factor. My frustration is, the attitude in the media today is to report negatively on every single instance they can find of Boeing trying to reduce costs as if that is a sin in itself, when it’s actually the most fundamental driver of improvement in the entire economy!

[mattrp]

I sympathize with your view that the media tends to lump things together in a gross and unfair way. However we happen to be talking about a company with a culture that apparently sees nothing wrong with openly trashing the faa’s certification process while another division spends $22B of taxpayer money on an unflyable space launch system. One kind of wonders if they care about the American public at all.

[jschwartzi]

While I would agree with you in general, I hope in this case you can see how Boeing’s judgement can be called into question based on the terrible decisions they’ve made contemporary to the 777X development. And these are decisions that have cost lives. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume they’re just cheaping out and don’t really care about passenger safety when they have a track record of cheaping out and not considering passenger safety on the 737 MAX.

[kortilla]

The 737 MAX issue wasn’t Boeing cheaping our though. It was Boeing trying to avoid recertification so it was a drop in for existing 737 customers. In other words, Boeing was trying to target the airlines that cheap out and did something stupid to get there.

This wasn’t a quality problem. This is was a failure to recognize (or willful hiding) the importance of training pilots on MCAS.

[jschwartzi]

Boeing knowingly misrepresented the handling characteristics of the 737 MAX rather than risk losing money by building a new airframe to accommodate larger engines. That’s definitionally cheaping out. Rather than starting a development program and taking the business risk, potentially costing money, they chose to instead risk the lives of passengers by fixing an aerodynamic problem in software. For money. This calls into question their integrity as a company.

[kortilla]

No, it’s not cheaping out, it’s just trying to target a very specific market. It’s targeting cheap customers. Boeing had no problem paying whatever the costs to actually make the thing compatible with the 737. You’re right that it’s still a violation of integrity, but it’s not being cheap by cutting their own costs inappropriately.

[salawat]

Boeing isn't getting trashed because they're reducing costs, they're getting trashed because of how they are reducing costs.

Winning means jack shit if you're cheating or transmuting The cost into something that doesn't reflect on the balance scorekeeping..

[texasbigdata]

It's hard emotionally. Most of us buy close to the cheapest flight right? Almost exclusively? Like it's a commodity service in a capital intensive industry which cyclical patterns of bankruptcy. I knew a guy at BCG/McKinsey/Bain who only did airline consulting and it seems like a particular tough industry even if fuel costs didnt move all over the place.

At the same time obviously no one wants to cut a corner and cause danger.

Boeing is probably scared of Airbus and vice versa.

Its probably just a challenging environment.

[apta]

If tickets weren't cheap, people would just be flying less, and it would be relegated to things like business trips and what not. Low prices should never be the end goal at the expense of things like safety. However, capitalism says otherwise.