No. It is not moral for anyone to prioritize profit over Human lives or the well-being of others.

But, that being said, it is much easier to make money than save lives.

The CEO has responsibilities. Corporate decision makers have many pressures and motivations that effect the decisions they make. I am in no way trying to defend CEOs or Corpos that value profit over people. To me, at least, that is inexcusable. But, I'm naturally very inquisitive and often play the Devil's advocate to get a glimpse into the minds of people I disagree with or even hate. People function on many different levels, and it's important to understand that. The CEO does have a responsibility to his shareholders to produce as much profit as possible. But, he is still Human and it is dependent upon him, where the line is drawn. Is he willing to sacrifice profit to save lives, or is he willing to sacrifice lives for profit? What matters more to that individual, his wealth, or his conscience (assuming he's ever had one to begin with)? The answers to these questions vary from each individual, as do the reasons they have for giving them. For me, it is simple. No matter how you flip the pancake, a Human Life is ultimately more valuable than any dollar amount.

The following are excerpts from a September 16, 2020, Bloomberg story (by Alan Levin) headlined “Boeing Deception Alleged in Scathing Report on Max Crashes”:

… the report by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said. “They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management and grossly insufficient oversight by the” Federal Aviation Administration.

… The [report’s] conclusions were drawn by the majority staff under committee Chairman Peter DeFazio. [It] cites five main reasons for the crashes:
 Pressures to update the 737’s design swiftly and inexpensively
 Faulty assumptions about the design and performance of pilots
 What the report called a “culture of concealment” by Boeing
 Inherent conflicts of interest in the system that deputizes Boeing employees to act on behalf of the government
 The company’s sway over top FAA managers

… DeFazio said he found it “mind boggling” that Boeing and FAA officials concluded, according to the report, that the plane’s design had complied with regulations in spite of the crashes.

… While DeFazio and other lawmakers haven’t called for a permanent grounding of the jet, the father of a woman who died in the Ethiopia crash said the report raised questions about the plane’s return to service.
“The FAA should immediately halt the recertification process for the 737 Max in light of this report,” said Michael Stumo, father of Samya Stumo. He accused Boeing and the FAA of withholding information from the families of victims in an emailed statement.

... [A] Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, was … triggered erroneously by a single sensor that failed in both crashes and it continued to push the nose down repeatedly.

... Those concerns “were not properly addressed” and the company “did not inform the FAA,” the report said.

... FAA officials have said they debated whether to include MCAS in the directive, but opted not to because it wasn’t mentioned in pilot flight manuals. …

A key finding involves a long-standing practice ... to deputize Boeing employees to act in behalf of FAA while reviewing aircraft designs. According to a 2016 survey obtained by the committee, 39% of Boeing’s Authorized Representatives, senior engineers who conducted reviews for FAA, at times perceived “undue pressure” on them from management.

One such senior engineer knew that Boeing was delivering Maxes to customers without a required alert in 2017 and 2018, yet didn’t notify FAA, the report said. The lack of such an alert was cited by Indonesian investigators as a factor in the Lion Air crash.
Both House and Senate legislation is expected to seek reforms of the so-called delegation system, which the report said is riddled with “inherent conflicts of interest.”

… The manufacturer rejected adding a sophisticated safety system that might have helped in the accidents at least in part because it would have required additional training. The company also deemphasized MCAS to the FAA as a result. In a 2013 company document, Boeing said it would describe MCAS to the FAA as an add-on to an existing system. “If we emphasize MCAS is a new function there may be a greater certification and training impact,” the memo said.
The broad failure to fully explain MCAS was a critical issue because the system was made more powerful midway through its development, but many within the FAA didn’t know and the agency delegated the final safety approvals to the company, the report found. …

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-16/boeing-deception-alleged-in-scathing-house-report-on-max-crashes

The CEO does have a responsibility to his shareholders to produce as much profit as possible. — Brian Gomes

The perverse thing here is that via the logic that fulfilling your contractual obligations is moral, the CEO can put morality on it's head by simply replacing any moral imperative with the profit goal and concluding that the moral thing to do is to sacrifice the human lifes, since after all they're not shareholders.



That's the danger of a corporation. Responsibility is delegated to functionaries whose main goal is then defined as making more profit.

Several things have made corporate culture so bad, even if there always have been bad apples.

First, now days the CEO doesn't have strong ties to the company, seldom has he (or she) made his career only in the company. For instance Dave Calhoun, the now stepped down CEO of Boeing hadn't worked at all in Boeing before coming to lead the corporation. An he wasn't an engineer, but gotten his education in accounting. Seldom is the CEO as "self made man" that has started up from scratch the company. Seldom does a large company be owned by a single family with family members being active in company. With family companies it's quite rare that the leadership opts for the strategy "trash the company for bigger profits now".

These all factors make create the bad corporate environment that Boeing has fallen into. Let's just think about William E. Boeing himself, who got interested in flying and took flight lessons in Glenn L. Martin's flight school in the early 1910's, who himself was the founder of Lockheed-Martin (and now Lockheed). Hence that time it was aviation industries as the tech industry of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs where in the 1970's. So that time has passed long ago.

The Boeing company a hundred years ago:


Then these huge corporations have seen a lot of mergers (and Boeing is like 10% DJIA), so you don't have the earlier culture anymore. The Boeing 737 Max is one case, but then the way how the F-35 was built tells a story where it's not the company that takes the risks anymore (as the company is paid even with an unfinished aircraft).

What is left?

It's the idea taken as a religious decree that the work "is done for the shareholder". And this is taken as the disguise for profiteering, as the only issue is that the share price has to go up next quarter, and naturally the income of the successful CEO can draw huge incomes as, well, because he can.

They made a mistake. International business works that way. If you don't try to make a reliable product for as little as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible, somebody else will, and they will run you out of business and possibly into a soup kitchen. If not taking over the world stage/market entirely by means of modern day conquest aka conquest-by-industry. From that point, things could easily snowball into a shifting of global power where 'consumer health' would not only have been impacted in a far greater way, but would simply become back burner to mere survival.

The morality of your premise, using your only slightly relevant example (nobody knew that was going to happen) has already been answered. If we're going to talk about the incident it remains to be answered if the CEO/decision makers/chain of command is criminally liable or not. Boeing is a government contractor producing all kinds of tech and aircraft for not only the military but basically the entire civilian air transport industry. Even the smallest Silicon Valley start up would/should have elements of what can be called a "culture of concealment", at least an NDA.

When the first cars hit the road they were basically 2-ton rolling death traps and fatalities were through the roof. Then through time, improvements were made. It's just how innovation works. Even today. Just for comparison, 37,000 Americans were killed in automobile crashes in 2017 alone. That's a lot of people.

Sure, if I was impacted by what I'm told was a major corporation's negligence, I'd be upset. First at whatever government regulating agency allowed that product to reach me, and the remaining blame would fall where it may.

To summarize, absent of extenuating factors, not only is it not moral, 9 times out of 10 it's simply illegal (not to mention bad for business and public image). That said, a mistake, even several alongside poor internal communication does not automatically constitute 'purposefully placing profit over consumer health'. It could be however. And that's what an investigation seeks to uncover.