Well, I am also a retired Boeing engineer and do not think twice about flying commercial. It is astonishingly safe.
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“It is astonishingly safe.”
I would reword that.
It has been astonishingly safe.
I have not spoken to him about his concerns, so I can only voice my own knowledge:
On the basis of research I’ve performed since beginning what was supposed to be a short article almost 10 years ago - and after reading hundreds of NTSB incident reports, not exclusive to fatal crashes - I concluded that failure to at least avoid certain airlines and aircraft types is astonishingly ignorant, notwithstanding the fact that what’s happening with Boeing/FAA right now would be a glaring red flag for a normally intelligent person...