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Sounds like a lot of steps and paperwork… steps and paperwork that might easily and regularly get fudged.

The idea is that the system as a whole should be resilient to a certain degree of this, as it will be caught in other places or at least reported at a (hopefully non-fatal) aviation incident that leads to a report and analysis, at which point you backtrack and issue recommendations that actually have clout (like, you can't fly with your plane anywhere in the world if you don't fix this).

Of course if the entire industry is corrupt it doesn't work, but to a certain degree I guess it is robust. This time it led to a potential disaster but it will become safer as a result..

Of course. And the way to go is to set up incentives so that everybody wants to report issues rather than hide them.

In a normal, healthy situation a company like Boeing should not feel threatened if some problems are exposed from time to time. That is assuming that everybody understand that uncovering these problems is part of the process and is necessary to improve safety and is exactly why and how we have good safety in the first place.

It only becomes a problem when that safety record becomes blemished too much.

I am pretty sure it actually has worked successfully for many decades up until some point, evidenced by consistently improving safety record.

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