Boeing buys its way out of prison with $2.5 billion for 346 737 MAX deaths

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• kitten says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:02

  could the headline be improved by moving ‘deaths” to right after the 346 and leaving 737 Max to the end. Right now it’s a jumble of numbers that looks like a plane reference code

  • Rob says:

    10 Jan10 January 10:54

    It did cross my mind but I thought I could live with it.

    • kitten says:

      10 Jan10 January 11:50

      Might get better attention on searches in connection with you getting another Article / Editor of the Year award for this article. This could happen outside of the travel sphere too. Jus’ sayin’

      • Alex Sm says:

        10 Jan10 January 13:02

        Oh, actually this reminded me of something: did HfP get any awards in November? The nominations were announced in an article here but no word on the actual results…

        • Rob says:

          10 Jan10 January 14:41

          No, unfortunately we didn’t win any of the categories we were shortlisted in.

          It is hard for us because you are comparing our fairly short form content with multi-page features in print magazines.

        • Alex Sm says:

          10 Jan10 January 17:51

          Oh, it’s a pity… but who reads these long-reads and watch these 1-hour videos these days? Yours are snappy and close to the point. Hope you will win many more in the future!

• Alex W says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:03

  This is so wrong, negligent or reckless engineers, pilots and regulators must be personally held to account. This is Boeing almost endorsing their employees behaviour by bailing them out.

• James says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:13

  The senior management who were involved in the criminal fraud should face jail time.

• jil says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:16

  And 9bn BNP Paribas

  • Bagoly says:

    10 Jan10 January 09:28

    Yes, but like VW and HSBC, they were foreign, so they get punished properly.

    • Paul says:

      10 Jan10 January 12:33

      Exactly this

• Crafty says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:23

  Rhys – very well written.

• BJ says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:48

  Echoes of Bhopal and so much more. One rule for Americans and American interests and another rule for everybody else. BP is a particularly interesting example as an overseas company paid the price for the failings of an American company. Wonder what will happen to that 2 5B figure when the first 737MAX operated by and American airline, packed with American pax comes down some place in the USA. I doubt this story is over, there have been too many questions about recertification too.

  • Bagoly says:

    10 Jan10 January 09:52

    And Deepwater Horizon then provided an excuse for an American to be appointed CEO!
    Lesson: Never buy an American company.

  • Doug M says:

    10 Jan10 January 10:35

    Let’s also not forget that the previous US President that has been regarded as a saint, continually referred inaccurately to BP as British Petroleum for political reasons. He was smart enough to know he was lying.

    • The real John says:

      10 Jan10 January 13:56

      Agreed, but companies like BP should really just choose a random word if they want to “rebrand” with a name that isn’t really their name.

  • kitten says:

    10 Jan10 January 11:56

    I worked for BP at the time and pretty much know what actually happened. BP stepped up and paid when actually there were other parties more at fault. Wasnt going to do the industry any good to enforce contract conditions for recovery of losses according to who did (or didn’t) do what so BP stepped up and paid all.

    I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to work for BP given public rep of the oil industry but came away with nothing but admiration and appreciation for them.

    • Doug M says:

      10 Jan10 January 12:55

      US Gov saw the opportunity to make someone big enough and rich enough to pay the compo and clean-up costs. The way the compo worked was little more than a money grab. Not excusing BP, but they found themselves in a fight with the US Gov and that’s one they were not going to win. When Obama was calling it British Petroleum and demanding accountability he was playing to the masses. What proportion of shareholders were US mutual funds and consequently US citizens pensions, but that didn’t matter, the optics made the company look bad and by misnaming it the blame could be dumped on ‘foreigners’.
      As usual a scapegoat was found, and it worked for most of those involved.
      The MAX is not that different. AA decided to abandon the 737 series and place a big order with Airbus for the 320NEO. That was when Boeing finally gave up on idea of new plane and went fully in on the MAX, despite the engine size/ground clearance issue, that made AA give half the order to Boeing. The pressure from airlines to make the MAX not have substantial retraining costs, the pressure from the US Gov to buy Boeing, all contributed to this, easy to blame Boeing, and they’re not the good guys, but there’s other bad guys in this. The level of compensation, how divided and where it goes, makes it clear how the US Gov see things.

    • Lyn says:

      10 Jan10 January 20:09

      Kitten, thank you for your interesting perspective on BP.

• Matarredonda says:

  10 Jan10 January 10:06

  Capitalism at its worst.

• ChrisBCN says:

  10 Jan10 January 11:01

  You’ve got the positioning and tone on this article absolutely right 👍. Unfortunately most of the rest of the media cannot produce an article of this quality.

  • marcw says:

    10 Jan10 January 11:18

    +1

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.