Prolonged perception of "cannot fly" by the public is having an effect on other than airworthiness.
Well .. not exactly the same .. but the DC-10 had some problems at it's "debut" and killed a lot of passengers (the most in the medias was the crash of Ermenonville TY DC-10 Capt Berkoz at commands)
Anyways .. passengers continued to happily boarding the DC-10