This is very illustrative of where Boeing's attitude comes from, and furthermore should make very clear that regulatory capture of the FAA is indeed a clear and present threat.<p>I can now say with great satisfaction, that my small collection of individuals whom I steal from in the pursuit of healthy quality/certification practices just got a little bit longer. I take my hat off to this gentleman for all his hard work, and his tenacity in the face of pressure from industry.<p>He is an example of how adversarial certification and testing is meant to work. You have to be willing to be the brake that holds up everything until the job is done. If not you, some poor sod down the line who hasn't anywhere near the expertise you do gets to pay the price.<p>I also found it interesting that Boeing has a history of "overselling" planes. Forgot which one it was, but that one really stuck out at me.<p>I understand that companies change with the people composing them, but I still see indications that a sense of cavalierism with regards to regulatory compliance, a willingness to pressure regulators to get what they want, and a dangerous tendency to overstate the capabilities and understate the poor behaviors of their aircraft aemre still alive and well today at Boeing as part of their corporate culture. This is not the hallmark of a company you entrust self-certification privileges to.<p>The last thing that stuck out is the unwillingness of Boeing to admit there is a problem with a design, which Davies attributed to Product Liability law. This practice clearly needs to be addressed. I'm not sure how exactly, but as a society, we cannot afford for our institutions to be incentivized to stuff their fingers in their ears and do everything in their power to keep from acknowledging a problem they created. We as a people, and our Government, simply do not have the bandwidth to counter the evasive behavior incentivized by Product Liability. The law doesn't need to be repealed. However, we need to reevaluate whether the law is doing what we need it to since this perverse incentive to act as a 2 year-old and ignore all the facts of the matter until someone else has dug them up independently needs to be addressed.