Yet another

Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg would like you to know he’s sorry about the two crashes of his company’s 737 Max jet that killed 346 people.

He said so repeatedly on Capitol Hill this week, at a Tuesday Senate hearing and one the following day in the House of Representatives. He was, his testimony said, ‘‘deeply sorry’’ about it all. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ he told one woman whose daughter was killed in the second crash.

You could put together a lengthy compilation of chief executives assuring Congress in recent years how ‘‘deeply sorry’’ they are for the troubles or deaths their company’s actions – or inactions – caused.

There’s GM’s Mary Barra, who was ‘‘deeply sorry’’ for refusing to recall millions of cars with an ignition glitch, which ultimately caused 13 deaths.

Not one but two now-former Wells Fargo chief executives said they were ‘‘deeply sorry’’ for the company profiting by such means as setting up fake bank accounts for their unknowing customers.

Equifax was ‘‘deeply sorry’’ for permitting lax conditions that resulted in the largest credit hack in American history, while BP head Tony Hayward told a House hearing he was ‘‘deeply sorry’’ for the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

A few years ago, I called these executives’ congressional apology tours a ‘‘great charade’’ in American life, designed to ensure that business continues as usual. Boeing and Muilenburg is the latest example of that.

The Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people last October and the Ethiopian Airlines crash responsible for the deaths of another 157 passengers and crew were caused, at least in part, by flaws in the Boeing 737 Max’s automated operating system, a technology known as MCAS.

It has subsequently emerged that as the company rushed the jet to the finish line, it ignored multiple warnings from pilots and engineers about flaws in the MCAS system and the Boeing work culture behind it.

Yet in the immediate aftermath of the two horrific crashes, Boeing