People aren't rational. Particularly in very large groups.
If a half-dozen (or whatever the magic number ends up being to set the zeigeist on fire) of Boeing aircraft suffer fatal or near-fatal accidents in the near future, everyone will suddenly know who makes which planes, and there will be systems to make sure you don't fly Boeing.
And while I think such a scenario is unlikely, it's hardly impossible. The real driver would be a combination of years of Boeing's own neglect coming together with margin-cutting airlines (you'd think they be extra safety conscious now, but any large organization is its own worst enemy), and any other of dozens of factors that could add up to push aircraft travel in an unsafe direction.
Or to put it another way, my intuition is that air travel (particularly in the US) has been very safe for a very long time, because it has operated with a very large safety margin. There are any number of perverse incentives to cut that safety margin, and it is largely possible to get away with cutting corners because of how deep the margin is. But if you keep cutting, eventually you run out of margin - and the sorts of people who do that sort of cutting can easily have have no idea how much margin there really is, or how much is actually needed to keep operating safely. So eventually things get to the point where you're not operating safely anymore, and then you can get multiple bad outcomes in a short period of time.
> And while I think such a scenario is unlikely, it's hardly impossible.
Witch is why I said 'practically'.
> So eventually things get to the point where you're not operating safely anymore, and then you can get multiple bad outcomes in a short period of time.
If a half-dozen (or whatever the magic number ends up being to set the zeigeist on fire) of Boeing aircraft suffer fatal or near-fatal accidents in the near future, everyone will suddenly know who makes which planes, and there will be systems to make sure you don't fly Boeing.
And while I think such a scenario is unlikely, it's hardly impossible. The real driver would be a combination of years of Boeing's own neglect coming together with margin-cutting airlines (you'd think they be extra safety conscious now, but any large organization is its own worst enemy), and any other of dozens of factors that could add up to push aircraft travel in an unsafe direction.
Or to put it another way, my intuition is that air travel (particularly in the US) has been very safe for a very long time, because it has operated with a very large safety margin. There are any number of perverse incentives to cut that safety margin, and it is largely possible to get away with cutting corners because of how deep the margin is. But if you keep cutting, eventually you run out of margin - and the sorts of people who do that sort of cutting can easily have have no idea how much margin there really is, or how much is actually needed to keep operating safely. So eventually things get to the point where you're not operating safely anymore, and then you can get multiple bad outcomes in a short period of time.