Boeing employed more than a hundred thousand people, and hundreds of thousands more at suppliers around the world owed their livelihoods to a company that literally connects the world. Its influence reached high in government, with Boeing veterans rising to powerful posts in the FAA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and multiple branches of the military. To the extent that ordinary people thought about Boeing, it was often with the same reverence accorded to elevators or light switches: the planes always seemed to work.
