And God forbid there was another crash, Boeing would be history.
A number of Boeing 787s were grounded last year due to faulty Rolls-Royce engines, and it has cost RR hundreds of millions in compensation - to cover the airlines costs of leasing replacement aircraft, for example.
However, you're quite right that if Boeing knows about an issue and aren't taking the boldest possible steps to ensure the safety of passengers, then the potential reputational risk is even greater.
“We’re asking our customers to ground the airplane as a precautionary measure. We have the utmost confidence in our engineers, processes, blah blah blah, and are confident that the 787 Max will be flying again as soon as the investigation is completed.”
Advil did this, and their brand was just fine, possibly better because they were aggressive about putting lives ahead of this quarter’s cash flow.
Management's difficult job is to know when to say to investors, "Sorry."
Having said that, this is a snippet from AVHerald's post on the crash (https://avherald.com/h?article=4c534c4a&opt=0) pointing to an AD that indicates an enhancement ("fix") and here's a link to an interpretation of that (https://forums.jetphotos.com/showthread.php?62381-Breaking-n...):
On Mar 12th 2019 Boeing issued following release with respect to MCAS, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian flight 302:
For the past several months and in the aftermath of Lion Air Flight 610, Boeing has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer. This includes updates to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight control law, pilot displays, operation manuals and crew training. The enhanced flight control law incorporates angle of attack (AOA) inputs, limits stabilizer trim commands in response to an erroneous angle of attack reading, and provides a limit to the stabilizer command in order to retain elevator authority.
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The FAA says it anticipates mandating this software enhancement with an Airworthiness Directive (AD) no later than April. We have worked with the FAA in development of this software enhancement.
It is important to note that the FAA is not mandating any further action at this time, and the required actions in AD2018-23.5 continue to be appropriate.
A pitch augmentation control law (MCAS) was implemented on the 737 MAX to improve aircraft handling characteristics and decrease pitch-up tendency at elevated angles of attack. It was put through flight testing as part of the certification process prior to the airplane entering service. MCAS does not control the airplane in normal flight; it improves the behavior of the airplane in a non-normal part of the operating envelope.
Boeing’s 737 MAX Flight Crew Operations Manual (FCOM) already outlines an existing procedure to safely handle the unlikely event of erroneous data coming from an angle of attack (AOA) sensor. The pilot will always be able to override the flight control law using electric trim or manual trim. In addition, it can be controlled through the use of the existing runaway stabilizer procedure as reinforced in the Operations Manual Bulletin (OMB) issued on Nov. 6, 2018.
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Boeing is being reckless with their whole business and showing bad leadership. Regardless if they are sure that there is no real risk with their planes; their reputation surely is at risk.
They need to ground the max so they control for how long for and what is needed to clear them.
That said, it's more realistic they're delaying it because they don't want the bad press of the 737MAX to bring down the announcement of the new plane.
They'll know in a couple of days what happened since they already have the recorders. With one crash every ~6mo (someone can crunch the numbers and get the naive probability of a crash per flight) and every pilot of a MAX8 now on the lookout for possible problems the public is not seriously put in danger by another week or so of these aircraft flying. Imagine if Boeing grounded these and it turned out the second crash was pilot error. That would be a footnote that would get 10sec in the news months from now. Do you want to be forever known as the guy who tanked Boeing's reputation over a false positive? That has costs to society too. And before you say yes remember that it's much easier to say you'll give your lottery winnings to charity before winning the jackpot.