Good article about the continuing Boeing culture of failure

[Bob Showalter]

This is a decent read. Boeing's current problems aren't isolated with just their commercial airline division. The US Air Force actually at one time halted accepting deliveries of the new Boeing KC-46 Tankers due to defects in manufacture.

https://www.vox.com/money/24052245/boei ... -door-plug

[DHenriques_]

This is a decent read. Boeing's current problems aren't isolated with just their commercial airline division. The US Air Force actually at one time halted accepting deliveries of the new Boeing KC-46 Tankers due to defects in manufacture.

https://www.vox.com/money/24052245/boei ... -door-plug

Talking to friends from Boeing I know in the industry the general opinion seems to be that the business model as well as the way the Boeing employees "feel" about the company changed for the worse after the merger.
Dudley Henriques

[AKar]

Well, while the article is topical in sense of issues under ongoing scrutiny, the KC-46 project on its own doesn't strike me as a kind born under particularly favorable stars.

-Esa

[eracer1111]

Reading the article now.
Back in 2020, after the 35% COVID market correction, I bought shares in some blue chip stocks. Boeing was on the list (their stock lost 72% in a month,) but I'd heard too many horror stories about the toxic corporate culture.
I've been tempted to buy it a few times since then, but it still seems like a risky play.

Too big to fail?

[Stearmandriver]

To big to fail, certainly. I've been saying since the Max crashes that this really highlights a failure with the idea of having critical national infrastructure privatized and tied to the free market:

Boeing cannot compete with a state sponsored competitor on cost. But they've been obligated to try. The inevitable safety culture decline results. Boeing will eventually go bankrupt, and be bailed out by the government, as their products are still the backbone of the US air transportation network - critical infrastructure.

Boeing will eventually be state-sponsored as well... They just had to kill 300 people to get their money. Airbus was given the money proactively, as an investment in infrastructure and safety. Which way seems better?

All that being said, I still have no concerns about stepping into a Max cockpit. I fly them at work frequently. Even though it was one of our -9s that had the issue out of PDX, the reality is that the Max design is, at this point, the most thoroughly vetted airliner design in history. And now, the manufacturing process will be as well, with all the additional layers of oversight being applied by the FAA and airlines. My criticism isn't aimed at the airplane in its current form, but at Boeing themselves, with their entrenched human factors and cultural issues. I sincerely hope this retired admiral they've brought on board can get things turned around... But I just don't see how, until financial pressure is relieved.

[DHenriques_]

To big to fail, certainly. I've been saying since the Max crashes that this really highlights a failure with the idea of having critical national infrastructure privatized and tied to the free market:

Boeing cannot compete with a state sponsored competitor on cost. But they've been obligated to try. The inevitable safety culture decline results. Boeing will eventually go bankrupt, and be bailed out by the government, as their products are still the backbone of the US air transportation network - critical infrastructure.

Boeing will eventually be state-sponsored as well... They just had to kill 300 people to get their money. Airbus was given the money proactively, as an investment in infrastructure and safety. Which way seems better?

All that being said, I still have no concerns about stepping into a Max cockpit. I fly them at work frequently. Even though it was one of our -9s that had the issue out of PDX, the reality is that the Max design is, at this point, the most thoroughly vetted airliner design in history. And now, the manufacturing process will be as well, with all the additional layers of oversight being applied by the FAA and airlines. My criticism isn't aimed at the airplane in its current form, but at Boeing themselves, with their entrenched human factors and cultural issues. I sincerely hope this retired admiral they've brought on board can get things turned around... But I just don't see how, until financial pressure is relieved.

There is much truth in what you have said here.
The "insiders: I know at Boeing range from people on the line up to and including front office top brass.
To a person all seem to feel that the merger changed everything top to bottom at the company. Where before there was a feeling of protection of the company by one and all and covering each other's back to insure top quality there was now replaced a much more structured atmosphere where the cooperation between departments was replaced with a general feeling of "every man for himself'.
The "family" feeling that prevailed at Boeing for many years all but disappeared with the merger.
Can't say how all this fitted in with the Max but it couldn't have been a good thing at any rate.
I think we all can agree that what happened with the Max should never have happened. Pilots flying a plane containing equipment they were not completely trained on was unforgivable.
The errors that allowed this to happen just might have been caught and corrected had Boeing been operating under the "old ways" is the feedback I have received.
The Max has been a nightmare for the company. They may very well never fully recover from the ramifications.
Dudley Henriques

[Stearmandriver]

Agreed. The joke I always heard was that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money. Despite the fact that the purchase was ostensibly of MD by Boeing, they ended up with the MD execs running the outfit, ousting the Boeing culture of engineering first and replacing it with the MD bean counter mentality. Combined with the cost pressures, it's been downhill ever since. I am rooting for them to turn it around though; for the first time in a while, it seems like they have the right people to make that happen - hopefully they'll be given the latitude to do their job as they see fit.

[AKar]

The thing with Airbus having, arguably, some competitive edge at the moment is that of having mostly a fairly mature product line that has had some good room for engineering growth in it (partly by design, perhaps mostly by luck in making right choices back in the day). Today, A320 is perhaps somewhat like the RR Merlin was during the WWII: a design nobody capable of perceiving light would consider being at the cutting edge anymore, yet, as a mature and proven design with the production side of things more or less under control as well, the further design efforts have been able to be targeted on providing incremental improvements and relatively low risk product tweaks, instead of having to battle with all hands to make the basic design work. I don't see it having much anything to do with being state sponsored (something that both of the big two claim on each other every so often, probably more or less rightfully so, but I've not seen any compelling analysis of one being particularly slimier than the other in the respect, speaking of nowadays).

Airbus has had its share of problems with military products: the NH90 programme they inherited is, as far as I am aware of, quite a disaster and the A400M has had its share of troubles as well, a one even destroyed for reasons that would have bordered hilarious if lives were not lost. It is a difficult situation when you can't concentrate on getting the details right because of basic design requiring moving around. On the civilian side, the A350 was an assorted collection of issues when new, but in that case, the basic design apparently turned out to be sound enough that after some fairly big moves during fairly early production, the plane is more or less fine today.

I don't know of the management side, but from engineering perspective, the issues we have witnessed ought to make up for good case studies for the future.

-Esa

[DHenriques_]

Agreed. The joke I always heard was that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money. Despite the fact that the purchase was ostensibly of MD by Boeing, they ended up with the MD execs running the outfit, ousting the Boeing culture of engineering first and replacing it with the MD bean counter mentality. Combined with the cost pressures, it's been downhill ever since. I am rooting for them to turn it around though; for the first time in a while, it seems like they have the right people to make that happen - hopefully they'll be given the latitude to do their job as they see fit.

Exactly !

[Michael-C172pilot]

"Boeing cannot compete with a state sponsored competitor on cost. But they've been obligated to try. "

Not intending to highjack this thread, but since Boeing is mainly sponsered by US government contracts for military stuff that Airbus cannot win, and even if it has the better product, doesnt win, this is a bit of a distorted statement, apart from the fact that Airbus has been offered a much more modern product range in most areas in the last 30 years. It is therefore fair to say that aviation manufacturing, both civil and military, is a v e r y political branch. It is for Airbus, it is for Boeing, it is for Comac, and it is for Embraer and Bombardier.

Competition is very well possible. But, lets face it, neither Airbus nor Boeing are really offering lots of innovation in the

However, the quality issues for the Max are alarming, especially since we really talk about a pretty long established product with many grandfathered components. To me it seems the Max was one evolution too far.

[Chevelle]

Agreed. The joke I always heard was that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money. Despite the fact that the purchase was ostensibly of MD by Boeing, they ended up with the MD execs running the outfit, ousting the Boeing culture of engineering first and replacing it with the MD bean counter mentality. Combined with the cost pressures, it's been downhill ever since.

While I agree with this, I think it's a little more nuanced than that as it paints all of Boeing as blameless prior to the merger. There were certainly bean counters at Boeing pre-merger, it's just that the influx of MD execs allowed that mentality to hit a critical mass (not helped by the wave of it going through American business culture at the time either I'm sure) that has led to where we're at today. I know I'm overexplaining a joke at this point but just feel it needs to be said.

[ClipperLuna]

The saga continues. According to ABC news, " Kayak has seen an uptick in users who are filtering out the [737 Max] when searching for flights."

Article link if you're interested: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Travel/b ... =106705583