Hello everybody.
In my opinion, and looking at theses types of problems (maintenance etc) in North America you can see things from a different perspective.
I would be rather flying with Southwest (US low-cost with strong and good maintenance ops + good business plan) then with UAL, Delta, NWA or any other quite troubled "major".
Also, you just think or assume, whichever, that once you get a finished product everything is by the book. Think again where we (assuming "us" to be on the manufacturer side) maybe screwed up or didn't thing plausible (huh, triple systems failure, was it on DC 10 in Utah, right)?!
We highly rely on you guys with the feedback but somehow (I have a, let's say, 15 yrs background in the industry) I don't see it, probably because of lack of communication.
What I mean is a lousy feedback on relations manufacturer (engineering staff of course) - maintenance facilities (airline or independent) - flight crews and vice versa with all possible combinations.
Information goes all the way around only in case of catastrophic events, which is a pity.
Every single manufacturer is trying to hide all the flaws, naturally, but somehow sooner or latter this things float so everybody can see them and we all now what tends to float.
From my point of view more communication on P2P level (not directors, customer reps etc but people who do the real work) would do a great deal of help.
Sometime it is frustrating to get info from customers through layers and layers of bureaucracy on both sides. When you seed through all this you waste so much time that you just wan to get over with which is wrong and it shows.
Controls and regulations are established in order to protect from these accidents happening but somehow the system became so "parasitic" in its essence that in order to follow on with some urgent issue sometimes takes too long. Sadly for those who perished.