Not to upset the near-record number of Americans flying this Memorial Day weekend, but the airplane tossed about by “extreme turbulence” last week was made by Boeing.

“You know things are bad when the general public is getting this knowledgeable about specific plane models,” comedian John Oliver said of Boeing. “It’s pretty clear, something has to change at Boeing.

In the last two months, two outspoken critics of Boeing’s lack of attention to safety have died – one by suicide and the other from a sudden infection.

Their suspicious deaths came after a door had fallen off a Boeing-built plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Boeing paid Alaska Airlines $160 million in compensation last month for the incident.

That life-threatening drama at 30,000 feet took place as Congress was flying past the graveyard of recent crashes to work on reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration.

The five-year, $105 billion measure passed this month.

The bill passed this month, days after the Justice Department wrote to a U.S. District Judge that Boeing broke a 2021 deal it made to avoid criminal liability for the fatal crashes for two 737 Max airplanes in 2018 and 2019.

In that deal the company paid $2.5 billion in fines and pledged to improve safety.

Families of people who died in the crashes are scheduled to meet with the Justice Department........

© The Hill