The true driving force of the aeronautical industry (and probably other sectors where you work on projects too big to risk personal accountability) is greenligh

The true driving force of the aeronautical industry (and probably other sectors where you work on projects too big to risk personal accountability) is greenlighting. The real motto is "do not ever bring bad news to your management". Even if 50% to 80% of people up a chain of command are honest, you only need two or three managers putting their career before a responsible behavior to have a top-level management with a completely distorted image of reality (and, more often than not, perfectly fine with this). Every day, I am reminded of Feynman conclusion in his report about the Challenger crash: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." The only thing that prevents commercial airliners from being a complete mess is that EASA has no incentive to go too easy on Boeing and FAA has no incentive to go too easy on Airbus.