“But other than that, how was your flight?”

The reputational triangle of United, Boeing and the FAA

In the aviation industry, trouble is rarely portioned out to companies over time; it tends to be delivered in large, lump sum payments.

Such seems to be the case with United Airlines of late, as they weather increased FAA scrutiny following a string of recent safety incidents with United-operated Boeing jets. These include an engine fire, a runway excursion, a wheel falling off, a hydraulic failure and a damaged leading-edge slat, all documented on social media in near real-time.

You might think a former Airbus executive would jump at the chance to lay blame at the feet of my competitor of 14 years. And yet I just booked a trip on United that involves flying on several Boeing aircraft, as I told Fortune’s Sasha Rogelberg when she interviewed me for her excellent story about United’s situation.

There is a natural tendency – evolved in our species as a survival mechanism – to look at a series of incidents correlated in time and assume common causality. In the case of something like commercial air travel, it’s also reassuring to believe that one entity or issue is to blame for a run of problems, because the alternative is to believe that such incidents are mostly random and outside of our control to avoid.

Combine that with the fact that we love to have a scapegoat, and you have the perfect recipe for a storyline that either lays more trouble on Boeing’s already crowded doorstep, or one that holds up United as an example of another aviation corporation whose hubris has caught up with it.

And yet, like most convenient narratives, this one breaks down when one examines the facts in each of the separate United incidents.

The engine fire was due to ingestion of FOD – bubble wrap, in this case. The wheel falling off appears to have been a material failure, but one that doesn’t suggest a systemic issue with the aircraft (in this case, the venerable 777, which has been in service for decades). The runway excursion is still under investigation, but human factors appear to have played a significant role.

So, if Boeing isn’t to be the reputational pi?ata this time, how about United? Is there an underlying cultural issue that might contribute to poorer maintenance, under-trained pilots, undue operational pressures or the like? It’s a reasonable question, and the FAA is right to ask it.

In fact, the FAA involvement isn’t necessarily bad news for United in the long term. One of the quickest ways that it could restore the trust of investors and passengers would be to get a clean bill of health from the FAA.

Unfortunately for United, the FAA will be feeling its own pressure to find some sort of proverbial fire underneath all the recent smoke.

The reason for this brings us back full-circle (or triangle, I suppose) to Boeing. The 737 MAX tragedies in 2018 and 2019 gave rise to almost as big of a reputational crisis for the FAA as they were for Boeing.

After all, there is generally a public assumption that corporations will act in their callous self-interest, but virtuous regulators will be there to keep them in check. If the regulators themselves seem to be negligent, there is almost a greater sense of disappointment.

For that matter, corporations often rely on regulators to counter-balance their own internal pressures to cut corners. When the system is healthy, everything is in equilibrium. After the 737 MAX tragedies, it was clear that the system was badly out of kilter.

Since that time, the industry has been experiencing a course correction, and some have said an over-correction, from the FAA.

Administrator Michael Whitaker has clearly prioritized restoring trust in his institution, and he has sought public opportunities to demonstrate that the FAA has a steady hand on the control yoke once again. Boeing provided one such opportunity with the 737 MAX door plug debacle earlier this year, and United has seemingly provided another.

Reputational crises like what the FAA experienced in recent years can also be a strategic opportunity, helping them secure the resources that they need to do their jobs properly.

That fact will not have been lost on Whitaker, as he awaits Congressional approval of an FAA Reauthorization Bill that would increase the agency’s annual budget by more than USD $1.2B to fund various modernization and staffing initiatives.

So, to answer the question that Fortune Magazine asked me, who is to blame?

While I am far from a Boeing apologist – and the 737 MAX door plug incident indicates an almost unimaginable breakdown in their fundamental management of quality and safety – I don’t think it’s fair to scapegoat them for United’s recent troubles.

United Airlines then? It’s too early to say. But short of finding Scott Kirby’s fingerprints on that piece of bubble wrap, the answer is likely to be complex... and unsatisfying for those looking to tie a bow around every recent safety incident.

It makes me grateful for all the excellent aviation journalists I’ve worked with over the years who, like Sasha Rogelberg , are willing to embrace the complexity.