There was another reason for the reluctance to push back against Boeing’s stated assumptions—one that involved race, not cost. The empathy that Boeing’s aviators might have had for a pilot who looked like them wasn’t being extended to Suneja and Harvino. Conversations at Boeing kept focusing on how Harvino, once he took over the controls, hadn’t been able to trim the plane with the thumb switch. Boeing’s pilots, predominantly older white men, had long had private jokes about the incompetent crews they ran into overseas. “Too dumb to spell 737,” went a frequent refrain of one pilot. Another
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