but if you make a youtube stunt that hurts nobody you can get 20 years in prison and the FAA acts like you besmirched the stellar reputation of the aviation industry.
In an organisation which is connected to the government in many ways through partnerships and contracts, putting a face to a crime is much harder to do. There's no single accountable person who can be thrown under the bus.
It was more a collection of bad actions by actors that had their own motives but nothing that was ever explicitly mean to hurt people.
(Assuming you're referring to 737 MAX)
There is: the CEO. This is the person put in charge to run the business against their principles [0]. This is the charter, set by the business, in how it should be run.
When the company fails to execute and people die because of these failures this is a systemic problem that is rooted within the control of a CEO. Nothing major happens in aviation without a lot of checks and balances. Boeing settled because the CEO lied. He should have gone to jail. Instead he was allowed to pay no social penalty and is making money and avoiding taxes [1].
Dennis Muilenburg killed people. He had the position to stop it. Yet he chose profits over the value of others lives. Dennis Muilenburg should be spending the remainder of his life behind bars or subject to fly in a 737 Max with the flawed MCAS that he said was safe for the rest of his life for any and all air travel.
[0] https://www.boeing.com/principles/values.page [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/forme...