Is Boeing Screwed?

The other day, when I was running around trying to catch a flight, I got a call from my broker.  Don't sell your Boeing, he said.  This is nothing.  Well, I wasn't planning to sell Boeing, but if I had more time I think I would have given him an argument.

I've written elsewhere about where critics say Boeing went wrong on the 737 Max.  The charge is, that in order to save a few billion, Boeing decided to go with an old design, and when the changes made the plane unstable, they attempted to put on a software bandage.  Now that it looks like the bandage came off catastrophically twice, they are proposing a new software bandage.

The plane is still unstable, the airframe is a decades old design, and the control system is hopelessly obsolete in the age of fly by wire.

If all of the above is true (and it's stuff I've read in the mainstream press), I don't want to fly in the damn things, no matter how many software bandages they cook up.

The stories of self-dealing in the certification process are even more troubling. 

If the Max never flies again, and maybe it shouldn't, Boeing will take a giant and apparently well deserved hit, and it may take decades before they can compete with Airbus and whatever China brings forth - if they survive at all.

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