5. Your Recommendation (Ethical Analysis)

Boeing makes products that are susceptible to one failure, causing the death of hundreds in mere seconds. This should immediately settle whether safety should be one variable up for discussion during negotiations. It isn't. The mere application of ethical reasoning to consider safety as one side to be balanced with either production or numbers wouldn't be ethical to start with.

First, the facts. The results are clear in the investigations about the door plug blowout on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282: there are missing bolts, poor documentation, and poor training and monitoring at Boeing and key suppliers. The NTSB insists that this is no isolated problem but rather “multiple system failures.” The FAA halted production increases in 737 MAX airplanes, greatly increased direct monitoring, imposed financial penalties on Boeing, and only recently began to loosen production limits after further review. This is no way to treat a company that trusts.

Concrete recommendations:

1. Hard-wire safety into power and pay.

The CEO and Board chair should be separate entities, with independent authority over the Board Safety Committee and direct access to internal data and whistleblowers. Tie the compensation of CEOs and plant managers to objectively measurable safety and quality performance, rather than just shipments and cash flow. If safety targets are not met, bonuses are forfeited irrespective of financial results. This supports duties and responsibilities to stakeholders as well as duties to improve safety.

2. Independent safety oversight within the company.

Establish an internal Safety and Quality Office that reports to the Board, rather than to owners of program P&Ls. Promote and protect internal reporting. Retaliation should be illegal and punishable by firing. As intended, this closes the gap that exists between what engineers perceive and what management wants to hear.

3. Radical transparency with regulators and customers.

Produce publicly accessible summaries of audit results and timelines for taking corrective action related to major programs that can be understood by the airlines and the public. Pledge that whenever there is systemic nonconformance (lack of documents on critical fasteners), an automatic disclosure must be made to regulators and customers. This implies that there is both a deontological duty to be honest and a utilitarian ideal to rebuild trust.

4. Production as an outcome of constraint rather than an objective driver.

The FAA production limit revealed weaknesses on Boeing’s side, as it allowed the pressure to its production rate to damage quality. The solution to these ethical dilemmas must therefore flip this sequence: quality must be measured first; only then can production rate be set. The latest partial relaxation in this production limit is only justified if Boeing can show that such measures are stable. 

5. Independent external check for a defined period. 

Support the establishment of a formal oversight process (FAA and technical experts to review Boeing safety processes), similar to a monitored compliance agreement. Instead, consider it a punishment that validates that internal change is possible. This is consistent with utilitarianism and stakeholder theory since it decreases the likelihood of disastrous failure in an effective manner.

SOURCES

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AIR2504.pdf

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-halts-boeing-max-production-expansion-improve-quality-control-also-lays-out-extensive