By Aarav Beniwal
As the Boeing 787 Dreamliner lifted off, bound for London, few could have imagined the horror that would unfold within seconds. Fed by fuel cutoff switches mysteriously flipped from “RUN” to “CUTOFF,” both engines lost thrust, and the jet crashed into a medical college dormitory, not long after takeoff. Two hundred forty-one lives were lost aboard; nineteen more were claimed on the ground, making it the first fatal crash and hull loss for Boeing’s cutting-edge 787 family and one of the deadliest aviation disasters in a decade. The preliminary investigation named the sudden fuel loss as the immediate cause, but the larger question now looms, what institutional failures and protective shields allowed a world-class aircraft, and its maker, to evade accountability until tragedy struck?
Boeing’s workhorse 737 family has already become emblematic of the company’s recent safety crises. Over the last few years a string of serious mishaps, and deadlier crashes, have raised questions not just about Boeing’s engineering but about how the company wields its power to evade blame. In October 2018 and March 2019, Boeing’s revamped 737 Max 8 model suffered two nearly identical catastrophes (Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302) that together killed 346 people. Investigators traced both disasters to a flawed new flight-control system (MCAS) that repeatedly pushed the jet’s nose down based on bad sensor data. Boeing had marketed the 737 Max as virtually identical to earlier models so that airlines could avoid expensive pilot training, but engineers were forced to admit later that a software patch and simulator courses were needed after the first crash.
The Max crashes shook the industry. The planes were grounded worldwide for nearly two years, costing Boeing upwards of $18–20 billion in repairs, compensation and lost sales. The nearcertainty of a manufacturing fault was confirmed when whistleblowers leaked damning internal messages, Boeing engineers privately joked the Max was “designed by clowns” and spoke of “Jedi mind tricking” regulators to avoid training requirements. The US Congress took note, during hearings the chairman of the House Transportation Committee called these messages “a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public”. Boeing’s then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg initially defended the jet, insisting “there is no single item” behind the crashes and that the Max was safe, a stance that victims’ families found deeply unsatisfying.
Far from isolated, the Max crashes were the worst of a troubling pattern. The deadly Ahmedabad crash of an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, killing 260 people. A preliminary report showed both engines lost power almost immediately after takeoff because the cockpit fuel-cutoff switches had been moved to “CUTOFF,” starving the engines of fuel. Astonishingly, one pilot’s last recorded words were to ask the other why he had shut off the fuel, to which the co-pilot replied that he had not. Engineers noted a pilot would normally never flip those switches in flight, raising suspicions of a glitch or design issue. That accident was the first fatal 787 crash in the model’s history, and it remains under investigation. Boeing has sustained a record of struggling to explain a spate of non- fatal incidents as well, including an Alaska Airlines 737‑9’s cabin floor depressurised in January 2024 when a maintenance plug blew out at altitude, injuring a flight attendant. The NTSB later attributed the plug’s failure to Boeing’s own lapses, four bolts were missing and the plug had been re-installed without proper documentation or supervision.
Overall, Boeing’s recent record looks grim. In raw totals, analysts note that between 2013 and 2022 Boeing planes were involved in about 60 accidents globally, killing 1,250+ people, compared to roughly 50 for Airbus. On a per-flight basis the difference is small, air travel remains extraordinarily safe, but perception is everything. As one industry analyst put it, “you are as safe flying an Airbus as you are flying a Boeing. The plane itself is rarely the problem”. Still, Boeing’s crashes have occurred amid revelations of a “toxic internal culture” that prioritised cost-cutting over safety. What hurt Boeing’s reputation most was not just the mechanical defects, but the evidence that engineers had known about them and cut corners anyway. By contrast, Airbus’s very few high-profile incidents in the last decade, including the Air France Flight 447 in 2009, were traced to unrelated causes, and its biggest scandal was a corporate bribery probe.
Culture in Crisis: Inside Boeing’s Factories and Boardrooms
The accumulation of crises has prompted multiple internal reviews and management shake-ups, but Boeing’s stated responses often sound more like corporate spin than contrition. After the Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout in 2024, the FAA launched a production audit of Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems. The audit report, leaked to Reuters, found “multiple instances” where Boeing failed to follow its own quality-control procedures, from mishandled parts to missing bolts, at its 737 MAX assembly lines. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker publicly warned that “the quality assurance issues we have seen are unacceptable,” and ordered Boeing to submit a comprehensive safety culture reset plan. Boeing’s new CEO David Calhoun pledged transparency and promised to address the problems, but many industry insiders remain skeptical.
Even government watchdogs have concluded Boeing dropped the ball. In June of this year, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a scathing probable-cause report on the Alaska Airlines accident, blaming Boeing’s own “inadequate [training,] guidance and oversight” of production workers. The NTSB found that Boeing had violated its procedures when the plug was opened and closed by unqualified technicians without documentation, leaving no quality inspection of the closure. “The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA, should have been preventable,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said bluntly. In other words, simple human error such as absent bolts combined with broken processes nearly became another disaster.
Whistleblowers have only reinforced the picture of a wayward corporate culture. At a Senate hearing in 2024 one Boeing quality engineer testified he was demoted after flagging structural concerns on its widebody jets; another engineer revealed Boeing had never created or delivered the required paperwork for how the door plug should be inspected. According to Reuters, Boeing then claimed it simply believed that paperwork was “never created”, a claim the NTSB contradicted by noting it had received no such documentation from Boeing. Behind the scenes, retired executives and lawmakers who have dealt with Boeing say the company often moves fast to implement fixes rather than admit root causes. After the Lion Air crash Boeing issued a quiet bulletin telling pilots how to cut off the runaway stabiliser system, rather than acknowledge that the MCAS design was flawed. When asked at a 2019 press conference about the Max crashes, Muilenburg said they were the result of “a chain of events” and insisted the jet was fundamentally safe, a stance that infuriated victims’ families, who accused Boeing of “not tak[ing] any accountability” for the design fault.
Even without tragedies, Boeing’s attitude toward risk has been under fire. Federal auditors and transportation experts have repeatedly questioned why the FAA allowed Boeing so much leeway on safety, given evidence of lax practices. In 2024, a bipartisan congressional report summed up the MAX saga as “a culmination of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA”. Former Democratic Representative Pete DeFazio, who led the 2019 Boeing investigation, has since warned that Boeing’s management still seems far more focused on its share price than on fixing problems. “I think the culture that still prevails at the top management levels of Boeing is, ‘We’re watching the stock price.’ Safety and quality are a secondary concern,” he told The Lever news site in 2025.
Dollars and Democracy: Boeing’s Lobbying Machine
How has Boeing managed to weather scandal after scandal? The company’s outsized political muscle is part of the answer. Boeing has for decades spent vast sums on lobbying and campaign contributions. In 2024 it reported roughly $11.93 million on federal lobbying, down a bit from $14.49 million in 2023, but still among the highest in Washington. Through its corporate PAC and affiliated political action committees, Boeing and its employees have given millions more to candidates of both parties, roughly $5.8 million in 2024). The Boeing PAC even “distributed nearly $1 million to almost 300 political committees” across the political spectrum, according to one news analysis. Not coincidentally, key members of Congress overseeing aviation safety have often been major beneficiaries of Boeing-friendly dollars.
Beyond raw cash, Boeing leverages a classic “revolving door.” About 70% of the lobbyists listed by Boeing in 2024 are former government officials. Many Washington aides and even ex-regulators join Boeing’s ranks when they leave office, then circle back to lobby their old colleagues. This creates a channel that both shapes regulatory debate and helps Boeing craft legislation. Boeing was reported to have “helped craft” a 2018 bill that loosened design-approval rules for new aircraft, legislation that passed just weeks before the fatal MAX crash in Indonesia. The company also sits on FAA advisory panels and trade commissions, ensuring it has a say in how rules are written.
That influence extends to trade policy. The Trump administration explicitly treated Boeing as a bargaining chip in global deals. In speeches and press releases, President Trump touted massive Boeing orders tied to trade negotiations with allies, Japan’s government committed to buy 100 Boeing jets, Gulf Air of Bahrain announced a 12‑jet order, and during Trump’s 2019 Middle East tour Qatar Airways signed orders for 130 787 Dreamliners and 130 new 777‑9s. Even Saudi Arabia agreed to buy 20 Boeing 737 Max 8s in that period. Likewise, in the 2019–2020 US-UK and USEU trade negotiations, aerospace products were explicitly exempted from retaliatory tariffs. In other words, American trade officials carved out Boeing as an industry “make‑or‑break” for dealmaking. CEO Kelly Ortberg of Boeing later credited Trump’s “trade negotiating strategy” with significantly boosting Boeing’s order book. The trend continues to date into the President’s second term.
At home, the stakes of Boeing’s business, thousands of American jobs and vital defense contracts, give it political cover. When Boeing’s suppliers faced shutdowns during the MAX crisis, Boeing allies in Congress intervened. In January 2020, as Boeing’s largest fuselage supplier, Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, threatened layoffs, Republican Senators Jerry Moran and Ron Estes, both representing Kansas, publicly pressured Boeing’s new CEO and the FAA to “do everything necessary to get the 737 MAX safely back in the air”. Notably, Spirit was by far their biggest campaign donor. Moran had received over $200,000 from Boeing-related interests, and Spirit’s PAC is the second-largest contributor in his district. As a result, FAA managers felt direct political pressure to expedite recertification. This pattern has repeated, large aerospace companies like Boeing and its suppliers spend generously, and select lawmakers respond by prioritising Boeing’s economic interests.
Political Protection: Government on Boeing’s Side
Through the past decade, administration after administration has largely shied away from punishing Boeing harshly. After the 2019 crashes, a bipartisan Congress held hearings, and the DOT Inspector General and NTSB issued reports lamenting FAA’s delegation of safety oversight. But few punitive measures followed; instead, the focus was on getting grounded jets flying again. In late 2020 FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson finally signed an order allowing the 737 MAX to return to service, after a 20-month review during which, the agency insisted, FAA employees “worked diligently to identify and address” the safety issues that killed 346 people. Boeing’s Max is now back in the skies, though with enhanced training requirements. Similarly, the recent door-plug incident prompted only temporary grounding and an audit, not a prolonged shutdown of production. In official statements after accidents, senior regulators have promised to hold Boeing “accountable,” but then moved cautiously. In early 2024 the FAA imposed a temporary cap on Max output and increased factory inspections, yet did not demand an immediate cease in deliveries. Meanwhile, Boeing quietly lobbied for exemptions or delays, in mid-2025 the company was reported to be seeking a safety exemption on one engine-ice design issue even as the door‑plug crisis unfolded.
The Trump administration’s approach was emblematic. Despite two deadly crashes, President Trump publicly encouraged airlines to buy Boeing and initially resisted grounding the Max. Once it became politically inevitable in March 2019, the White House quickly shifted to praising Boeing’s work on fixes. His 2020 budget pushed broadly for reduced regulation at agencies like the FAA. Even after the Max grounding, Trump’s trade policies heavily favoured Boeing, his touted PhaseOne deal with China specifically called for future Boeing orders and delays on Chinese Max approvals. In essence, Boeing continues to be treated as a strategic industrial champion, not a beleaguered safety problem.
With the change of administration in 2021, one might have expected a crackdown. President Biden appointed an FAA chief who pledged reforms and speeded up some safety audits. FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker in 2024 publicly demanded “real and profound improvements” from Boeing to address “systemic quality-control issues”. Congress has more recently advanced legislation to reform aircraft certification and strengthen whistleblower protections. Boeing’s leadership has watched this uneasily, in 2024 it abruptly removed its 737 Max program chief, Ed Clark, and promised internal reorganisation. CEO Calhoun has repeatedly told investors the company is “100 percent committed” to safety culture fixes. But as one veteran congressional investigator said, Boeing’s formal rhetoric of openness often outpaces actual change.
Boeing vs. Airbus
It is important to remember that Boeing does not fly alone. The global airline industry is dominated by two manufacturers, the U.S.-based Boeing and Europe’s Airbus. Both have strong government backing, Boeing through Pentagon contracts and U.S. diplomacy, Airbus through multilateral European support. Safety statistics compiled by industry analysts show that each has an excellent record overall. Between 2013 and 2022, Boeing jets were involved in 60 accidents to Airbus’s 50. Adjusted for Boeing’s larger fleet and more flights, fatality rates are nearly identical, statistically, flying on either manufacturer’s planes is comparably safe. The difference today is mainly in public perception arising from company cultures and accountability. Boeing’s mishaps have come amid evidence of cover-up and culture issues, while Airbus’s incidents, such as a 2009 mid-air break-up and a recent bribery scandal, have largely been attributed to pilot error or external factors.
In most of these duopoly clashes, Airbus has managed to avoid a safety scandal. In 2009 an Air France A330 crashed in the Atlantic after a pitot-tube failure led to a stall, but that was ultimately blamed on a rare sequence of events and pilot error. By contrast, both of Boeing’s MAX crashes were traced back to the same flawed system. As one industry commentator observed, “Airbus sins in boardrooms, Boeing sins in cockpits”. That may be a caricature, but the underlying truth is Boeing’s design and oversight failures have led to more immediate danger. And because airlines around the world rely heavily on Boeing narrowbody jets, concerns over Boeing ripple widely. After the 737 MAX grounding, dozens of carriers had to shuffle fleets and extend leases of older planes, adding costs and delays globally. Even airlines with new Boeing widebodies such as 787s and 777s now scrutinise their maintenance and delivery schedules.
Airbus has used the Boeing scandals to pitch itself as the safer choice, even as it faces its own pressures. In 2023 Airbus had about the same number of orders as Boeing and has not announced any new safety issues. But industry-wide, regulators have noted that aviation is over all remarkably secure, 2023 was declared “the safest year” in history, with no fatal jet accidents in 37.7 million flights. Ironically, two major accidents in January 2024, the Alaska Airlines plug incident and an unrelated single‑engine commuter crash in China, reminded experts that complacency is dangerous. And now, 2025, has emerged has one of the worse years in aviation over the previous decades. The lessons from Boeing’s plight are now front of mind for Airbus, others and regulators, any lapse in safety procedures can be catastrophic, even if statistically rare.
Why the World Should Be Concerned
Boeing’s troubles matter far beyond Seattle. The company supplies roughly a third of all commercial jets worldwide. Any erosion of confidence in Boeing’s products or in American safety oversight threatens to ripple through the global economy. For airlines, a surprise failure of a Boeing plane can ground flights and damage reputations overnight. For regulators, Boeing’s clout raises fundamental questions about how to ensure unbiased certification, especially when national pride and jobs are on the line. And for flying consumers, corporate secrecy and political shields are a poor comfort in the face of tragedies.
Flying has never been safer in aggregate, but Boeing’s series of near‑catastrophes is a red flag. If a world leader in aerospace repeatedly escapes consequences despite evidence of negligence, the “safety culture” of the entire industry is at risk of being undermined. Competitors and suppliers take note, slapping elbows with regulators and sweetening politicians may protect a company short-term, but it corrodes trust. The aftermath has already seen concrete changes, the FAA has slowed Boeing’s production and demanded internal reforms, and lawmakers are writing tougher rules. Whether those measures will stick remains to be seen. But one thing is clear, Boeing’s experience has become a test case for the aviation world. It shows how big money and political connections can help a giant evade penalties, and why airlines, pilots and passengers everywhere should keep a wary eye on who’s really in charge of their safety.