Originally Posted by
CurtainTwitcher
It is this loss of trust at the core of the system that is the issue. If it can happen to Boeing and the FAA, that had been assumed and implicitly trusted to "do the right thing". They failed and put profit before everything else. If it can happen to Boeing/FAA it can happen in every other aspect of their lives.
This. The trust model may not be irreparably broken forever, but this fiasco has broken it badly and for a long time.
The public may well come to the point of trusting Boeing and the FAA again, but it's a pretty good bet that developments such as SWA pilots and AA FAs raising safety questions in very public ways will reinforce real fear and hesitation, which the disasters and screwups reported over the past year have already strongly motivated.