In context, there’s no difference at all. You are assuming that there was negligence because two similar incidents occurred. I’m simply pointing that out.

Nothing I, or anyone else, can say is going to convince you, but there has been no evidence presented thus far of any negligence on the part of Boeing or the FAA. There have been an awful lot of wild accusations that change as each new bit of information comes in, but no evidence.

It’s possible that Boeing and the FAA did everything to the best of their abilities, that the MAX is a perfectly safe aircraft, that the MCAS is a well-designed system, and that two planes full of people have passed away due to two horrific accidents. You are assuming that the accidents necessarily prove that one of the other statements is incorrect. They don’t — especially given that the expected mitigation of an MCAS failure was for the pilots to recognize the situation and to disable the electric stabilizer control.

I’d much rather have a manufacturer say “we design our systems to fail safely” than “we design our systems not to fail.” The 100% success rate that you and others have pushed for is unrealistic and is, rightly, not used by any manufacturer.

... and the only way I can see you getting that impression is from a lot of false information and bad reporting. Boeing admitted their software design added confusion to the cockpit at a time when the pilot in command needed to clarify the situation. On the other hand, there is a LOT of felgercarb in the media and in this thread about “pushing the 737 too far” with the engine placement (which condition apparently caused upward pitch which is why Boeing put in MCAS to make the plane feel like a prior generation 737 when under manual control). I’m sure there’s still information we haven’t seen yet but what we HAVE seen shows the two planes were not getting sufficient pitch on take-off — the engine placement being blamed should actually have countered that.

I think it’s fair to question whether there were other problems with the software design that may have led to the accidents but the accusations of “pushing the aircraft design” are ridiculous. I am not at all happy about Boeing following the Airbus design philosophy WRT aviation automation — if they did — but that is a software problem, not a a problem with the design of the airframe or the physical/mechanical engineering behind it.

The basic idea behind MCAS — making the plane feel similar to prior models — is a pretty good one and doesn’t require some huge conspiracy at Boeing or between Boeing and the FAA. Whether the idea was executed well is a whole other question but again a software engineering issue, not an aerospace design one. As an analogy, look at Tesla’s problems. The battery fire issues are endemic to the overall car design while the Autonavigation ones are software issues that have nothing to do with the hardware engineering of the vehicle.

The problems with both flights appear to have originated with runaway stabilizer trim. Why did the aircraft enter that condition so early in flight and why did the pilots allow that problem to grow? There could have been a problem with the avionics control design that caused the runaway trim but I haven’t seen any evidence of it and so far, all the data made public seems to support a conclusion that the pilots should have noticed it well before it got out of control.

The fact of the matter is that experience matters and the oft-cited “Rule of 10,000” (if you want to be good at something, you need to do it 10,000 times or for 10,000 hours) really is relevant — as is the co-pilots lack of said experience. The captain of the ET flight was busy handling the aircraft and had the co-pilot running critical procedures (which he did incorrectly). That’s precisely the time you want 2 experienced pilots in the cockpit.

It’s meaningful; it’s just not conclusive. The number of deaths by automobile accident is orders of magnitude greater than the number of deaths from commercial airline crashes. You’re right that most people spend more time in a car than they do in a plane. However, that holds true for people who travel by air also — depending upon the total length of the trip, it’s not uncommon for an air traveler to have many more trips by car than flights.

The point isn’t to argue whether or not commercial air travel is safer than car travel (it is, on a per-mile basis, on a per-hour basis, and on a per-trip basis, but I agree that these statistics aren’t enough to show that). The point is that the average passenger is more likely, during any one trip, to due in a car crash than a plane crash, regardless of the type of plane.