Two weeks ago we ran a piece about a Boeing headline with a person missing from it. Seats on 453 Max jets, the FAA said, "were incorrectly installed" — installed, in the passive voice, by absolutely no one. We said at the time that the trick was load-tested and would be back. It took thirteen days. * Thursday's version, one sentence: the FAA ordered inspections of an estimated 471 US-registered 737 Max 8s, Max 9s and Max 8-200s after cracks turned up in a structural reinforcement near the forward service door, with repairs required before an affected plane flies again and the directive taking effect September 10. * Now the grammar. CNN: "FAA orders inspection of hundreds of 737 Max jets for cracks." One actor, and it's the regulator. Bloomberg: "Boeing 737 Max Operators Told to Check for Cracks That May Affect Structure." Told by whom? Unsaid. The airlines get handed the verb — they're the ones who must check — and the word Boeing is doing what it always does in these headlines: sitting there as an adjective, modifying "operators," describing whose logo is on the tail. Never conjugating anything. * The cracks themselves get the best deal of all. "Cracks were found on some planes." Found by whom, and produced by what? Metal fatigue in a structural reinforcement is not weather. It doesn't roll in off the Atlantic. It is the downstream result of a design and a build, and 471 aircraft is not a coincidence — it's a production run. * Here's the tell, and it's in CNN's own copy. Boeing does appear as an active subject in that article. Three times. Boeing "has conducted an engineering analysis to determine the cause." Boeing "is working on engineering changes to prevent it in the future." Boeing says it supports the directives. The company is granted its verbs the moment the verbs are flattering. When the sentence is about metal splitting on hundreds of jets, the company gets swapped out for the passive voice. Same paragraph block, two completely different grammars, sorted by whether the news is good. * Credit where it's earned: the body of CNN's story is genuinely useful. It reaches back to the 2019 fuselage-to-wing cracking on older 737s, and it reminds you about the Alaska Airlines door plug that departed mid-flight in January 2024, and about the four bolts the NTSB found missing when that plane left the factory. That is real context, and plenty of outlets wouldn't bother. The problem is that it lives below a headline that most readers will never scroll past. * So here is the same newsroom, on the same aircraft family, twice in one month. In July: seats were incorrectly installed. In August: cracks were found. Two directives, more than 900 aircraft inspections between them, and across both headlines the manufacturer of the aircraft has yet to perform a single action. Once is a style choice. Twice in thirteen days is a house rule. * We'll say what we said in July, because it still applies: a regulator ordering 471 planes checked is not the story of a regulator being busy. Somebody built those planes. Cracks have a factory, factories have owners, and there is a perfectly good sentence available — the one where Boeing is the subject.