aterpster
Another opportunity to remind ourselves that the driving force behind ETOPS is the bottom line, and requires suspension of scepticism about the notion that catastrophic equipment failures can be precisely predicted and therefore prevented, 100% of the time, by removal "just before they fail".
The fundamental premise of ETOPS is that you maintain an ETOPS aircraft to a higher standard of safety than a non-ETOPS aircraft. I have always been, and remain, astounded that otherwise sensible people look the other way to avoid seeing the fatal flaw in that.
To regard ETOPS as a 100% safe concept, you also need to suspend belief in Murphy's Law. Can the industry afford to do that? No, is the short answer. Murphy is alive and well, as we see every week somewhere in the world.
Now, going back to Boeing's problems, it's quite easy to see that they are the product of the same thought processes as those driving ETOPS.
I retired recently, and so am not up to date. But the notion of a 7-hour allowable single-engine diversion time (across the Southern Ocean, I think it was) is truly terrifying. Did it get approval? I don't know, but I found it amazing that it could be seriously proposed and considered, let alone approved.