Perhaps the first thing to note about your latest response is that it makes no mention of the increase of weight of the MAXes over their predecessors, and yet i

Perhaps the first thing to note about your latest response is that it makes no mention of the increase of weight of the MAXes over their predecessors, and yet it was specifically over the relevance of the weight change where we disagreed [1]. I have followed this story quite closely, and I haven't seen anyone citing the weight gain as being a factor in this tragedy, let alone claiming that the weight gain itself amounted to something criminal (or that Boeing was somehow hiding it, for that matter), and your summary here, by its omission of the weight issue, tacitly acknowledges its lack of relevance. The second omission from this summary is any mention of Boeing's interaction with the FAA staff having the responsibility for certifying the MAXes as airworthy (together with the adequacy of the flight manuals and training materials), and yet, in all other accounts I have seen, Boeing misrepresented (to put it mildly) the extent to which MCAS was modifying the handling characteristics of the airplane and therefore the consequences of its failure and the need for pilots to know about it. No-one else, as far as I am aware, disputes the fact that the DOJ's investigation is centered on this dissembling (together with similar dissembling relating to the plug door incident, which is being included on account of the MAX issue being in a deferred prosecution status.) Once your account here is augmented with this missing information, it becomes clear that this pattern of dissembling is what the DOJ is investigating as a possible crime, as I have been saying all along. Now you want to extend this disagreement by disputing my characterization of Boeing's difficulties in developing the MAXes as being, well, development difficulties! It is not clear to me what point you are trying to make by doing so, but to be clear, I am most certainly not dismissing the tragedy as merely a matter of development difficulties. On the contrary, I am saying that this became a criminal matter precisely when Boeing went beyond treating the matter as an above-the-board technical problem, and started misleading the FAA. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40366126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40366126