Aviation Marketing – Are the planes we fly safe?

The recent events of the grounding of Boeing’s newest commercial airliner has brought out some interesting ethical implications. The reason for the grounding was the lithium ion batteries onboard the airplane, which passed the initial inspection by the FAA – the regulatory authorities who ensure that all planes are safe to fly. In a sense, you could assume that the FAA was marketing Boeing’s 787 as a plane which is safe to fly, and one of the ways they tested the airplane creates some ethical issues.

The FAA accepted the test results from Boeing directly, which probably meant that there was no external investigation about the safety of the aircraft. When the FAA marketed this as being a safe plane, it raised questions on the credibility of the test results, because the plane obviously wasn’t as safe as they had previously thought. This does raise the intriguing question of whether this should have at all been permitted that an airliners safety is done by the manufacturer as well, as they have an incentive to cheat, and why did the FAA accept these test results? I’m sure this is more of a precautionary move, but how many other planes are there flying where both the tests and results were done by the manufacturer, and what sort of conflict of interest is arising in these transactions?