Over 240 lives were lost in seconds when Air India Flight 171, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, burst into flames just after takeoff from Ahmedabad. Mothers, children, professionals entire families were instantly wiped out. It was the first fatal crash involving a 787 since the model entered service. For the world, it was a horrifying tragedy. For Boeing, it was just another line in its long and growing ledger of preventable disasters.
The pattern is disturbingly familiar. Whistleblowers raise the alarm, evidence piles up, planes fall from the sky and still, nothing changes. John Barnett, a Boeing quality manager with over 30 years of experience, tried to speak out about defective oxygen systems and shortcuts in Dreamliner production. For his efforts, he was smeared, isolated, and left behind. In March 2024, while giving legal depositions against the company, Barnett was found dead from a gunshot wound in his truck. The authorities called it a suicide. Next to his body was a note: “I pray Boeing pays.” But Boeing never pays where it matters. The company survives, while the truth is buried along with its victims.
Boeing has turned corporate crisis into a polished art form. It answers death with press releases. There is no jail time. No CEO is ever held to account. There are no convictions. There is only more spin, more PR, and more promises. Behind the glass walls of its boardrooms, Boeing doesn’t build airplanes it builds liability and wraps it in carbon fiber. And the world boards it, day after day, unaware or unwilling to see the risks.
The crash of Flight 171 is no anomaly. It’s the latest in a chilling series of failures. From the Jeju Air 737-800 crash in December 2024 that killed 179 people, to the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 incident in January 2024 where a door panel blew off mid-flight, Boeing’s planes have repeatedly come within inches of disaster or plummeted into it. Each time, the explanation is thin, the reform is shallow, and the profits keep flowing. These jets are no longer just transportation they are flying coffins, maintained by a company that treats human lives as figures on a cost spreadsheet.
We’ve seen this before. The Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes weren’t random tragedies. They were engineered. Boeing installed its now-infamous MCAS software without telling pilots or regulators. The system malfunctioned, forcing the planes downward again and again until 346 people were dead. Boeing’s executives knew the risks and chose to roll the dice in a race against Airbus. They lost. The world lost.
But Boeing itself did not. In 2021, the company sidestepped accountability through a $2.5 billion deferred prosecution deal with the U.S. Department of Justice. Just $243 million of that was actually paid as a fine. The rest went to shareholders and half-hearted measures. Then, in June 2025, after violating the terms of that deal, Boeing was again let off the hook. Another deferred agreement. No criminal trials. No public questioning. No arrests. Just another $1.1 billion payment, quietly settled behind closed doors while hundreds of lives lie in shallow graves, bought off with legal jargon and empty promises about “safety reforms.”
This is not just corporate failure. It’s a sanctioned system of lethal negligence. Boeing is not simply unsafe it is unaccountable. It is a monopoly that has been allowed to become too big to jail. Until justice is no longer something that can be negotiated, until human lives are valued more than quarterly stock gains, we are all stepping onto bombs disguised as aircraft, operated by a company that no longer deserves our trust, our money, or our forgiveness.
Boeing did it again. And unless the world stops treating these crashes as accidents, they will do it again.
SOURCE :- SRI LANKA GUARDIAN
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This is not an objective report. It is indeed true that Boeing’s 737 and variants thereof have been beset with problems and a dangerously poor safety record.
However, the 787 Dreamliner first operated by to a commercial airline in 2011 (Air Nippon) and with more than 1000 planes in service, has up to now never had a fatal accident.
Thus, conflating the 737’s clear deficiencies with this different model of airplane is inappropriate.
The investigation of this crash will of course reveal what happened. Don’t discount human error at this stage.