Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. Prior to new models released in the last ~10yrs-ish, Boeing made the safest planes in the sky (as measured by passenger miles). Many of those planes are still flying and still doing great. For me the interesting question is what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes which is apparently resulting in worse safety performance…
After the unfortunate incident in Japan this week, the Boeing 787, a plane designed in the 2000s and flying since 2013, is now the only passenger airliner without a hull loss. So they are clearly capable of producing modern safe airliners post merger.
I don’t feel like hull loss without context is a meaningful metric of anything. At the end of the day they are airplanes flown by pilots. You could have a less safe design flown by highly competent pilots and never lose a plane, or an incredibly sophisticated, technically advanced aircraft where the pilot makes a decision resulting the destruction of the aircraft.