Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
Because Boeing has become a fully financialized company, beholden to Wall Street, profit & greed above all. The lack of sensor testing ensured there was no additional simulator training requirement for crews. It is alleged there was a $1 million penalty for Boeing per airframe with one large customer if simulator training was required.
WSJ
How Boeing’s 737 MAX Failed [article non-paywalled]
You are exactly right, internally there would have been good people advising their managers of possibility of accidents. The managers appear to have taken the chance that this would never surface. This is why, in my view, there was not a whisper of the MCAS in the pilot manuals. They wanted this thing hidden should an accident happen, and then attempt to blame the pilots as nobody had knowledge of this new system.
This is the most repugnant, cynical and craven aspect of the whole episode. Their strategy was "we will always blame the crew" should, what they convinced themselves was a remote possibility of an accident. I also believe that the outstanding & expert investigation by PPRuNe contributors was, and continues to be a thorn in their side for this strategy. In the future, they may reconsider how their skimp on the engineering based on the realisation there is a group of anonymous uncorruptables who don't like seeing their dead colleagues carrying the can of responsibility for the profit above all strategy engineering failure.
I think management was simply so dumb that they didn't realise a bad design was bound to fail. It's something you don't learn in business school, to think like an engineer.
The FAA was there to keep Boeing honest but got captured.
This is a case which demonstrates how money will circumvent regulation in a democracy until some incident creates an outcry. You can see the same thing happening in construction standards eg. the Greenfell Tower fire in the UK.
Edmund