| > What law was broken? The above comment is very, very uninformed. Aviation is a heavily regulated industry, totally unlike IT. There's several legal avenues for individual prosecution: 1) False certification documents about MCAS performance were submitted to the FAA, so it would be very easy to find out who those people were, and who their managers were. The US government has no problem prosecuting people for fraud in the aviation world. (FAA certification is almost totally dependent on paperwork, both in mfg. and operations.) 2) The manager of the test pilots who wrote the critical SMS messages was fired, so that is another easily traceable route related to the above. 3) Southwest asked for a penalty of $1 million per airplane if type-specific traning was required, so both Southwest and Boeing negotiators agreed in a reckless manner to disregard airliner safety with that perverse incentive. (Reckless is a catchall in the FARs for pilots, but could be applied to companies and mfgs.) https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.13 To give Congress credit, they are re-visiting the ODA delegation process because of MCAS, which Boeing abuses by having managers pressure ODAs: https://www.aviationpros.com/aircraft/commercial-airline/new... Boeing is the US' largest exporter, so should face intense government scrutiny as it affects not just passengers and suppliers, but all Americans. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot who has followed MCAS very closely, far more closely than anybody else on HN. |
> I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying that we should stop looking for law-breakers, but I am saying that punishment will not lead to better outcomes in the absence of other positive actions.
If laws were broken, by all means, use the justice system to pursue those lawbreaker; but do not expect that to solve everything.