Originally Posted by
tdracer
Boeing is on record as providing legal defense and financial protections to their "Authorized Representatives" (ARs) if they are sued for their actions as an AR (provided they acted in good faith).
I doubt there are many engineers who would be willing to act as DERs/ARs if they could be held personally liable - I certainly wouldn't have. The nightmare scenario of your system causing a fatal crash is bad enough. Knowing that such a nightmare could also result in financial ruin for you and your family - why would anyone be willing to do that? It's not like ARs get any extra pay in return for their responsibilities...
Yep no problem re supporting AR-DER-ODA types- but management may well be different depending on just how much influence they had. IF management obviously screws up - or can be shown re fraud or criminal- Boeing will not help. Since there seems to be some sort of criminal investigation on - it then becomes a guessing game as to whom takes the fall. Years ago- a manager who got crosswise with senior management for **possibly ** questionable actions got thrown to the wolves, spent some time in pokey- even the inmates knew he got hosed and made some interesting arrangements re his cellmate who was big enough to protect him.