[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.