We should just go ahead and admit that Boeing is a government company, and that's what it takes to be one of the big-3 global commercial aircraft manufacturers these days (Boeing, Airbus, Comac).
Fire all Boeing senior leadership, go through the remainder of the company with a fine toothed comb and fire anyone mid-level who did anything dumb, then conduct a search to replace everyone.
Make the government an explicit stakeholde (25%?) with board representation.
Dilute shareholders ($0.50 per dollar?) for investing in a bad company, but make any employee shareholders who are still employed whole ($1 per $1).
Yup. There's no market pressure of note on Boeing, otherwise they'd be even the slightest bit concerned that their planes are falling out of the sky. They exist to turn government contracts into stock buybacks.
It's not true that there's no market pressure on Boeing. It's true that Airbus' production capacity limitations have blunted the impact of the QA issues on Boeing's financial performance, but Boeing is in fact suffering. They've been suffering for at least a year (their net profit margin has been 0 or lower for the last 4 quarters). Their stock price is down ~20% from a year ago, and is down ~35% from their high from just before the Air Alaska incidence.
The problem isn't that management assumed that there would be no market pressure, the problem is that management assumed that engineering and production excellence "just happens". They're not dumb enough to believe that shoddy products won't effect their financial position - they just don't know how to make non-shoddy products while also posting decent financials.
Fire all Boeing senior leadership, go through the remainder of the company with a fine toothed comb and fire anyone mid-level who did anything dumb, then conduct a search to replace everyone.
Make the government an explicit stakeholde (25%?) with board representation.
Dilute shareholders ($0.50 per dollar?) for investing in a bad company, but make any employee shareholders who are still employed whole ($1 per $1).