SEATTLE — Just south of Seattle’s Boeing Field and the Museum of Flight sits another shrine to aviation, Randy’s Restaurant. Model airplanes are suspended from the 24-hour diner’s ceiling, with flight manuals and various dog-eared aerospace tomes strewn about its candy-colored booths.

Given its proximity to a major outpost of the Boeing Company, Randy’s has served more than its fair share of chicken-fried steak and brick-shaped hash browns to Boeing employees and their families, among them Ron Russell.

Mr. Russell’s son works at Boeing’s aircraft assembly plant in the city of Everett, where he used to install doors on 747s. His mother also worked for Boeing. He doesn’t have to think back too far to remember 1971, when a global economic slowdown and skyrocketing oil prices prompted the company to lay off more than half its work force, sending Seattle into a tailspin.

Now, as the company grapples with a pair of fatal crashes involving its most popular airplane, the 737 Max, Mr. Russell points to Boeing’s record of resilience as proof that it will be able to overcome the latest troubles. Will its engineers be able to design a solution to the technical conundrum that threatens the company’s best-selling jet ever, which now has been grounded worldwide? “Sure,” Mr. Russell said, without missing a beat.