Comment by barbazoo
18 hours ago
> The referenced AA Flight 191 is shockingly similar. It makes me wonder if aviation really is back sliding into a dangerous place.
I think it's cut throat capitalism at its best. Surely it was much too safe before, let's see how far back we can scale maintenance on the operations front but also how far back can you scale cost during development and production and then see where it takes us. If that changes the risk for population from 0.005 to 0.010, the shareholders won't care and it's great for profits.
I think we can see both but especially the latter with Boeing.
The entire MD-11 project was a budget-limited rush-job to try to capture some market share before the A340 and 777 came into service.
It produced an aircraft that failed to meet its performance targets, was a brute to fly and was obsolete the moment its rivals flew.
Douglas* by the early 1990s was a basket-case of warmed-over 1960s designs without the managerial courage to launch the clean-sheet project they needed to survive.
* as a division of MDC