There is a connection. McD-D was in competition with Lockheed at the time for a three engine wide body aircraft. Lockheed was engineering driven and McD-D was cost driven. It was McD-D's cost driven approach where all the controls were stuffed inside the leading edge of the wings that lead to the Chicago crash. Lockheed's approach was to not do that but use a more safety engineering approach. Additionally, American Airlines, as a cost reduction measure, decided to use forklift trucks to raise and lower engines from the pylon engine mounting points. By employing this cost reduction method rather than the proven fixture method, the engine mounts were damaged and the damage wasn't noted. So a combination of cost reduction methods by both McD-D and American Airlines, short cuts to save time and money, resulted in the Chicago accident.
The move to Chicago was strictly a personal motivated move by Condit. He wanted to be near where he planned to retire. But things may not be working out as planned:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ft-2021-10-07/