Originally Posted by
EEngr
Boeing always liked to present a unified face to regulators, the press, customers, etc. This might be one reason why we are not seeing the breadth of investigation that I'd expect on this topic. They can't have multiple teams of engineers pursuing various hypothesis. That would look like uncertainty. And that could undermine their image as the ultimate technical authority for all things flying.
No, that's just a
PR perspective of the world. Only one face (their own, approved, one of course, which makes the
PR team feel important). But in reality, if you can't get to the bottom of the situation, as here, it's actually good to see one team trying to recreate it to see if there's a basic flaw, another designing and testing a conventional battery solution, another doing the firebox, and then all coming up with the pros and cons, and the top management making the right choice between them. The customer airlines don't want marketing-autospeak, they want whatever the right engineering solution is.
Nobody here wants Boeing to go down an inappropriate path, it is so disappointing that the general feeling is that they are doing so. I really can't see any professional in the business going ya-ha-ha if they drop back to a previous generation of battery. OK, it didn't work out, right fix applied, on we go. Big boys stuff.