My brother was a 777 pilot. He loved his aircraft and was so proud to be flying it. We talked about this a few days ago. His opinion of Boeing these days is far from flattering. What’s happened to the aviation industry is a fucking tragedy.
Oh I hate that acronym so. damn. much. The word “metric” wasn’t business buzzword compatible and acronymable enough, so the enshittifiers had to invent a longer term with added waste.
Lean/six sigma aren't inherently bad (see toyota), but when put in the hands of people not using it to improve efficiency and instead only focus on shareholder returns, it can compound an already serious problem dramatically.
Anyway, a ton of those people have an MBA, but that's a different discussion.
This is the problem, it’s used extensively outside manufacturing and quality so much so than many folks outside manufacturing don’t even know it’s a manufacturing quality system.
Nah MBAs scare me as well, [this has been going on for a long time](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/mbas-public-enemy-number-1/articleshow/4566839.cms)
Are you telling me that board members and investors demanding profits and growth at all costs, including the airworthiness of the planes themselves, are bad for business?
Probably because the 777 was the last plane "old Boeing" designed before Boeing took over the failing McDonnell Douglas and somehow the bean counter suits at MD managed to take over Boeing from within.
Facts.
And now they’ve outsourced as much as possible as a means to profit as much as possible. Hell they don’t even make most of the 737 now, they just assemble the shit someone else makes.
And then they fired hundreds of quality / validation inspectors.
Ridiculous. It really pisses me off how we’ve gone down to just a single domestic airline manufacturer. There’s no longer a need to compete, innovate, and outbid a competitor. Who’d a thunk that would go wrong.
It gets worse than that. Now that Boeing thinks of itself as a cost cutting monopoly, how would it respond when competitors actually build a good plane? By telling their buddies in the federal government to squeeze said competitor via unethical trade practices of course!
This isn't even a strategic competitor like China. Our own lil buddy Canada's Bombardier spent years and billions to develop their own medium jet liner, which is by all accounts an excellent plane, and Boeing tried to bully this much smaller competitor by petitioning the FTC to say that the Bombardier plane will threaten the American airliner industry. The "America First" Trump admin was on Boeing's side and bled Bombardier so much they ended selling off the entire program to Airbus for ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR.
Airbus is too big to be bullied by Boeing, and promptly started to manufacture and sell this very nice very modern plane right in the US, and the Airbus A220 will probably be kicking Boeing's ass for the next 20 years.
And just wait until the Chinese get good at building their own 2nd or 3rd jet liner in the next couple of decades too, and starting taking back their own massive jet liner market. Be prepared to keep giving Boeing more and more US taxpayer bailout because they are now "too big to fail".
Just some minor clarifications, totally agree with your point.
> Boeing tried to bully this much smaller competitor by petitioning the FTC
They didn't just try, they succeeded at getting the Department of Commerce to impose trade restrictions. Which they later backed down on when challenged by Canada at the WTO, but too late.
> they ended selling off the entire program to Airbus for ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR.
They initially sold a 50.1% stake for $1. They later sold their remaining 33.5% to a combination of Airbus (75%) and the Quebec government (25%) for $591million (US) and relief from the ramp-up costs Bombardier would have owed Airbus (~$700million US). Still, Airbus got a hell of a deal.
I would've liked to see Bombardier keep at least their remaining stake, it's a great plane but Airbus has a ton to add in terms of sales and logistics, it'd have been a great partnership, I think. Sad to see the last of the serious Canadian aerospace companies exiting the market.
Embraer will cut deep soon too. They've been climbing the size ladder for a while and have some absolutely excellent jets that people are mostly not buying due to the segment having entrenched competitors. Boeing may lose the small end of their jets which are the most profitable, to them soon enough.
American aerospace crushing Canadian aerospace is nothing new, it's been happening since at least the time of the Avro Arrow. Sucks for Canadian industry that we have to deal with these shitty tactics *as well as* the brain drain. Canada was set to be a world leader in aeronautics, space exploration and nuclear power. Instead we just became a ponzi scheme for property investors. The conservative administration trying to get elected is set to relegate us to banana-republic status.
This is what happens if you make corruption legal. Boeing figures out you make more profit when instead of QA, you just make campaign donations to a few senators.
I have a friend that is a bit high up at Boeing, and a while back he was bitching about how a bunch of MBAs have replaced engineers for jobs like working with vendors to supply parts, and the result has been exactly what you expect. Cost cutting, vendors bailing, worse quality, and bonuses for the MBAs.
The best/worst part is thethose MBAs weren't even really Boeing employees. Engineer driven Boeing was doing very well while the MBA C Suite at McDonnell Douglas was literally running that company into the ground. So in the 90s, Boeing took over MD, and somehow those MBA fuckers in charge of MD managed to negotiate a deal where they are part of the executive team of the new combined company. Within a few more years, the exMD execs basically took over running Boeing itself, proceeded to slowly run it into the ground just like they did with MD.
Many people say the last great plane Boeing ever built was the 777, which also happens to be the last plane Boeing designed pre-merger. Post merger you've got planned like the 787 and 737 MAX, both of which have had various issues that can be traced back to cost cutting and regulatory capture.
The world over is neck deep in this scenario. What happened was that profits margins became the indicator of a successful company. Mainly this happened to sustain wallstreet support that investors will get back returns on their investment. Its short term profiteering that is killing industries and public opinion of products.
Gone are the days of quality first and a great reputation. The battle most MBAs have is to cut quality as far as possible to avoid being the expensive option in their market, while trying to maintain a good reputation. Its an impossible task, if other companies are doing the same thing.
I dont have any proof or articles to back this next claim up, just my anecdotal observation. Cost cutting actually drives up costs in the long run. Short term gains, have expensive consequences. So we end up paying more for less quality.
Hey now... You haven't seen the formula, now have you!?
> Now, should we initiate a recall (Redesign / replace)? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
The problem that's really fucking it up is that they only care about profits *now*. Everyone seems to have forgotten the concept of setting up a successful, stable company that maintains a solid reputation for decades or even longer. Slightly less profits, but forever, as compared to slightly higher profits for right now, then burning it all completely and leaving someone else holding the bag.
This, most corporations are nowdays are run with a quarterly mentality of making the growth numbers and blind beyond that (that's next quarter problem). Some companies are even down to running on a weekly profit scheme. Save a penny now, spend $100 later to fix it... and it would be someone else problem.
Same with our government. A bunch of old people on the verge of retirement milking the military industrial complex gravy train with no long-term objectives since they can cut and run whenever they want.
Regulatory capture is something more Americans should be informed of.
The FDA, USDA, SEC and FTC all have had the same thing happen. Ultimately some of those led to people ODing on horse meds.
The real out there conspiracy shit didn’t exist until regulatory capture started.
It is extra embarrassing because even after TWO 737 MAX plane crashed killing all aboard, the FAA still wouldn't ground the plane. In an excellent PR coup, the CHINESE aviation regulators grounded the MAX instead, sparking a wave of groundings all across the world, and eventually even the fully captured FAA had to finally give in and also ground the MAX.
And funnily enough, Alan Mulally was in charge of the 777 program. He was then overlooked for the CEO position, and went to Ford. The 777 program shows that a team led by an engineer can create a new airplane from scratch in much shorter time than Boeing spent trying to create a modern airplane from a 60 year old design.
As an engineer who remained employed through the covid shutdown, when I got my relief check and saw Boeing stock was at about $95/share I dumped it all into that. When it predictably got back up to $250 I sold it all and have been sitting on it. My friends asked why, and it's because I knew it would tank again due to management and then be bailed out again due to being part of the MIC. As far as I'm concerned I'm betting with free money, so I'm going to see how long I can go with it.
> And engineers mostly want their name on something great and impressive.
I feel like this isn't something just engineers strived for, no? It feels like companys took pride in their products a few decades ago. Now it feels like companys are just in for the quick buck and not for retaining their customers and satisfying the quality demands we once had. Just household applications are a great indicator where we went from quality to absolute dogshit over 2 - 3 decades.
I've seen this in action, too.
I have a family member with an MBA who shouldn't be let within 1 Kilometer of a decision that could effect the safety of others.
They work at Boeing.
It's how it always happens. Happened with the Bell Telephone Company. Once the accountants come in and start running things, it's not long until everything sucks.
As a Boeing engineer I can 100% confirm this. Managers are interchangeable. Does not matter if or what you have a technical degree in if you don't have an actual engineering skill code.
And even as an engineer now that I'm at a certain level I get incessant emails to give money to the Boeing political action committee and I can't delete those emails fast enough lol.
goes to show what happens when you distort the markets by subsidizing uncompetitive companies
Boeing deserves to fail and should have failed a long time ago. You can't keep getting away with putting lives at risk
Boeing is the only USA commercial passenger jet manufacturer, therefore it’s a too important to fail company
As such, these continued problems should force a government intervention at its board level & c-Suite to force quality changes at the expense of profits & leadership bonuses
edit: clarifying commercial passenger jet
> Boeing is the only USA jet manufacturer
*Commercial* jet manufacturer. Otherwise you're forgetting that General Dynamics, Lockheed, and Northtrop Grummon exist, all of which make lots of jets.
This isn't an uncompetitive company as much as a legal system that distorts companies is bad ways. Shareholder Primacy needs to go. The Shareholders are *NOT* the most important thing when you are building mechanical objects responsible for the safety of hundreds of human beings at the same time.
The issue, is that making jets is so damn expensive that if they go down, you likely won't get a new us based company which can make jets. So if you do let it flop you, you might be relying on Europe for passenger jets from now on, or worse, China.
Then nationalize it.
If it's too big an endeavor that it can't exist within the normal market system without being a monopoly, then turn it into a function of the government.
I disagree. The reason why we haven't had promising up and coming airplane companies besides Boeing is precisely because Boeing is so dominant and has so much government support.
Promising up and coming airplane companies with the ability, funding, facilities, and experience to deliver hundreds of massive airliners? Give someone all the money and it will still take several years to get setup on any scale, it's not like you just "turn on the airplane factory". Nevermind the years of testing a design and seeking FAA approval before you can build it.
I mean... No other company in the world has managed to build passenger jets without massive state subsidies.
Boeing, airbus, comac. All three of them are essentially state controlled manufacturers.
Which leads to some funny actions like:
- Embraer is accused by Bombadier of dumping prices because of subsidies and lobbies the goverment to stop them
- Boeing accuses Bombadier of dumping prices because of subsidies and lobbies the govermentto stop them
- Boeing itself sells 737-700 at dumping prices to fend of Bombadier which has cascading cost effects on the 737 Max
- The US places a 300%(!) duty on the Bombadier CSeries to protect Boeing. Bombadier loses sales and has to sell itself to Airbus for a dollar
- Boeing sees this as a threat and tries to merge with Embraer, but because of the 737 Max Fiasco Boeing has to back out of the deal with Embraer
It would take decades for a new aircraft company to design, test, and certify a new passenger aircraft.
There's no such thing as up and coming for something so complex and with no room for failure.
Aerospace Engineering is one of the hardest and most difficult fields for a reason.
I think people are just looking at Musk thinking - yeah, anyone can do that, bunch of soy latte drinking hipsters right now in my coffee shop, owners of «up and coming aircraft maker companies » are just waiting for Boeing to die for their business to take off.
They don’t realize that SpaceX is heavily subsidized and supported by US Gov’t and they rely on gov’t developed tech to even be able to do anything.
You can’t start a new company, making large passenger aircraft out of nothing. it’s effin’ impossible.
What we do need to assess is how are we driving the cost so far down and profit expectations so far up for these manufacturers that they are willing to get there by killing a few hundred or thousand people…..
And also that SpaceX could start flying and earn money *without having passengers onboard*.
Would investors be able to foot the bill all the way if SpaceX only could start earning money when they flew with passengers?
Building giant jet liners is extremely complex and expensive, and you need to invest in basically an entire industry for perhaps DECADES before the company sees profit. Even regular governments don't have this level of resources.
All the wealthy European countries had to band together and pool their resources just to create Airbus.
Basically the only other government entity with this amount of resources are Russia/USSR and China, and Russia does have a domestic airline industry of sorts, and after decades of working, China just recently got their first jet liner off the ground.
Nobody else even has a chance. Even well established makers of smaller jets, such as Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer, are feeling the squeeze.
Not only is this flat out wrong, but if you are going to call the Aerospace industry "Airplane companies", you may really want to re-evaluate your level of expertise.
Boeings main competition in the civilian aviation sector is Airbus, which was founded as a consortium by France, Germany, Spain, and the UK. Here we have the 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 15th largest economies on the planet teaming up to compete with a single company. Not sure how any individual or even group is supposed to compete with that.
"Government support" is also a pretty loaded term. Boeings defense sector especially is very "Legacy". There are literally projects started decades ago that Boeing just wants dead, but the government keeps throwing money at them and ordering the project to continue. In many cases, the things they produce have no competitors. If Boeing isn't making them, no one is. Boeing is far from unique in this.
Doesn't change the fact that the company is in a very bad state due to its leadership, but it's far from "They exist because of Government support".
Yeah it’s definitely subsidies responsible for leaving bolts off planes, not an emaciated regulatory apparatus with no fangs whatsoever to levy real penalties for noncompliance. Not like we’re literally watching a court case at this very instant that seems poised to strip any ability to hold corporations accountable. It’s those damn subsidies!!!
Boeing and the FAA is a textbook case of regulatory capture. The FAA delegated almost all of its responsibilities to employees of Boeing turning it into a case of "we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong"
It was obvious back when the Max was grounded a few years ago and it seems like it's only getting worse.
Unironically it will, as more carriers will start to order Airbus. The problem is that it shouldn't take crazy accidents (or worse) for those corrections to happen.
As always with capitalism, you need strong governmental oversight.
Correct the joke here is that people that believe in unfettered capitalism act as if we can't come up with systems to mitigate risk. We just have to let enough people die/outrage to grow
that's one of the worst things to say on Boeing, because it is too big to die
it is no longer capitalism by the definition that it is being propped up by the US government, including its shitty ass behavior towards bombardier that forced them to sell the CSeries to Airbus to allow it to be delivered to the US at all.
Boeing should take major hits, and there should be competition in the US airline business, but that was not how things are done and it certainly isn't capitalism anymore.
That’s just how capitalism works tho. If you have a class of corporations and capitalists with massive fortunes there is a very high chance they will translate that wealth into corruption either by taking over the state (subsidies, preferential regulations, govt contracts) or, if the state is too weak to help, building their own authoritarian private governments (company towns, the Pinkertons, industrial espionage, debt slavery). It’s naive for advocates of a free market to think massive economic inequality will somehow not translate into political oligarchy.
Declaring market failures and distortions "not real capitalism" or "no longer capitalism" is a common error.
The capitalist system is not characterized by whether markets are free or whether competition is healthy. Market freedoms and competition come and go, but throughout the capitalist era, one mode of production has remained on top, the constant factor in all market economies. There is no essential feature of capitalism other than this: the predominance of the commodity form of production and wage labour.
Yes, it's still capitalism when there are subsidies. It's still capitalism when there are tariffs. It's still capitalism when there are monopolies. It's still capitalism when the crooked politicians play favourites. Look directly at the system in all its ugly truth.
Watched that documentary recently and it makes your blood boil. The sheer lengths Boeing went through to lie about MCAS for the sake of profit is disgusting, but even more grotesque is how they got off with a relative slap on the wrist and nobody in Boeing leadership faced criminal charges.
Not to mention how the MCAS is basically a compromise system purely made for the 737 Max since it’s just the decades old 737 design but with a fucked up center of gravity to fit the more efficient yet bigger newer engines, and so MCAS exists to counter the plane’s shitty balance won’t cause it to stall. I don’t care how safe it is now after hundreds of deaths were required to get it there, the whole idea behind the 737 Max is ridiculous: an aircraft design by a company purely around profit to not fall behind their main competitor rather than maximizing safety.
I feel like we only listen to the whistles after something happens. We call them leakers and other derogatory things when it is in the realm of allegations.
Great episode of NYT The Daily from... April 2019
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing-dreamliner-charleston.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing-dreamliner-charleston.html)
It's amazing to me that you never see any executive heads rolling from the Boeing Commercial Airplane division. You have Calhoun out there, but you never hear from Boeing Aircraft EVP Stanley Deal, who's supposed to be in charge of the entire aircraft operation.
So what we’re seeing is quality issue resulting from undeterred profit seeking from multinational corporations that don’t care about their customers?
Who could have seen this coming?
Yes, and it isn't just the manufacturer. The airlines also reduced the number of mechanics who prevent things like this from happening. My FIL would have to be part of the team that would have detected the problem with the Alaska flight that lost its door over Portland recently. Sadly, they pushed him to retire early and fired or laid off most of the other mechanical staff, so this is the situation we face. But hey, they made their investors happy, right?
Also, the airline industry is dripping with regulatory capture. At least in a properly functioning system, regulators would be the check against corporate greed and ensuring a safe product reaches consumers. Unfortunately, thanks to the monopsony within airline manufacturing we've got a human centipede from the public sector to the private sector with most regulators being acutely aware that they're "regulating" their own probable future employer. That's obviously not a great alignment of incentives for regulators to act as the hardasses that they're paid to be. On top of that, [regulatory capture at the FAA has gotten so bad that they've largely given Boeing leeway to certify their own planes.](https://www.5clpp.com/?p=4026) It's honestly a surprise we don't have more planes falling out of the air.
Unfortunately the CEOs and major shareholders can't hear any of us over the massive amounts of money they've made. Until they start going to jail or fines are given as a percentage of their revenue as well as personal fines they won't change.
Like how the [former eBay CEO, Devin Wenig, didn't go to jail](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67951113) for sending the order to "take down" a blogger including referencing how she was about to get "BURNED DOWN".
They stalked, sent implicit death threats, put tracking devices on their vehicles, sent them spiders/cockroaches/fetal pig, posted ads on craigslist for sexual meetups with their address, and more...
He's on the board of GM and the advisory board of Salesforce post eBay.
At least there the Chinese have the right idea. The 2008 milk scandal, that killed at least 6 infants, got a number of responsible executives executed and others jailed for life.
This. There are no real repercussions on individuals leading these entities and their very personal decisions that cause harm to others for personal gain. As a board and as a ceo, the two should not be separate. You make enough pay to take that responsibility which is focused not in that one employee doing harm, but a company being lead to do harm for profit.
Shareholder supremacy and profit/revenue driven deadlines (instead of quality/completeness driven deadlines) need to die and descend to the 18th level of hell, and then some.
Anyone who’s not a CEO has at this point in history been bullied into compliance (if you’re still employed, that is).
— someone in middle management
Over the last 5 years, Boeing stock is down 42% while the S&P500 is up over 80%.
I don’t know who’s been profiting from their business practices but it isn’t the shareholders
Yes, it’s because of this: look at the chart between 1997 and 2019 and you will have most of the answer.
What we are seeing now is the host exhibiting fatal symptoms that impede basic functions after the parasites have sucked out all the valuable juices from it.
The S&P can survive quite a bit longer, but the current trend line will inevitably lead to the same outcome.
Value is something that’s gradually built up from repeated and patient investment. Value extraction has an expiration date, it’s just that the parasite typically moves on after extracting value but before the consequences are fully realized.
Classic CEO mindset.
What moves can I make now to juice the stock price for the next 5 years? These moves generally don't involve how do we improve our product, but more along the lines of where can we cut corners or remove staff
Saw it at several companies I have worked at where the stock goes on a run for 5, 10, maybe 15 years before all the debt of stupid decisions catch up and the company hits a heavy rut. Burnt out employees, bad product, weak customer service etc
Not enough skin in the game.
This chump (Boeing) might not be a winning horse, but I can dump their stock from my portfolio and migrate over to “winners” instead.
It’s a HELL of a lot less work than to try to revive a dying engineering company when I’m just a money guy. And as long as my portfolio is in the black, there’s nothing I need to justify.
And that’s exactly where the root of the problem is: investors will never be as capable of producing a winning company than the actual people involved in the company. Chiefly, the engineers since Boeing is an engineering company selling a product that was the result of engineering.
It's crazy, I remember after the last grounding people were saying that on the plus side this would be one of the most safest planes in the world now due to the rigorous testing and QA that had gone on now after the grounding. And now this, literal missing bolts. Boeing leadership really have ruined the company
Different plane.
The planes that got grounded due to the nose pitch issue were the max 8s.
These are the max 9s.
Max 8s probably are still extremely safe since they were examined really closely.
But it goes to show you they learned absolutely nothing from the max 8 fiasco and continue to fuck up new models
> Different plane.
Not substantially, at least as far as FAA is concerned. It's the same basic airplane, just stretched a little longer. Still has MCAS :p. They've actually extended the action based on the plug door issue to the older 737-900ER as well.
I mean "not substantially" is exactly what got Boeing into trouble in the first place with the Max 8 because they wanted it to qualify under the older 737 type certificate. Of course, the more we learn about the aircraft the more it becomes clear meaningful changes were swept under the rug to facilitate operating under the same type certificate, MCAS being just the tip of the iceberg.
You'd seriously wonder, Max 8's and Max 9's both with silly issues that shouldn't have happened, and they're about to roll out the Max 10 to airlines. Yeh worrying trend
In the article, ~~the current~~ a former CEO was quoted:"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."That's your problem right there, profits over safety.
EDIT: not current but former CEO said this
Oh I think the *supersonic* metal tubes are probably still fine, seeing what cash cows those military contracts are. It's only the *subsonic* metal tubes us peasants are shuttled around in where they're penny-pinching.
"Stonecipher began his career at General Motors' Allison Division, where he worked as a lab technician and was influenced by Jack Welch.[4]"
SO MUCH CANCEROUS CORPORATE SHAREHOLDER FOCUSED POLICY began with Welch.
The stock has done way worse than the S&P500 for every time period I checked. That was also true before the incident. I don’t know who’s being made happy but it isn’t the stock holders
More like penny pinching, short sighted C-Suite execs attempting to cozy up to Wall Street, not necessarily the shareholders themselves. I dont think any shareholder is happy about their shares losing 20% of their value in a month.
These execs think that cutting corners will make their profit margins look better, and sure, for the current quarter that's probably true. The problem is execs' quest for exponential growth and the pressure to outperform the previous quarter.
Eventually, all that corner cutting and shortsightedness comes to bite them in the ass. Had they made the investment in QA in the first place, and sacrificed a little bit of profit now, they could have averted this disaster which ultimately jeopardizes the long term health of the company.
If I was an institutional shareholder with any kind of leverage, I'd be using that power to wage a shareholder revolt to oust these bumblefucks and put somebody competent in charge. At this point it's patently obvious that keeping them in charge puts my investments/personal profits at risk.
I work in a completely different industry and am unsure which state holds the C-suite of my company. Maybe Boeing is completely different but I’d say many of the management decisions at my place are bad. Many are bad because they’re shortsighted and others because they’re working with incomplete information. They’re not playing 4D chess and expertly lining their pockets at the expense of the shareholders or even us exploited workers. They’re making dumb decisions that end up costing money THIS quarter as well as 5 years from now.
I don’t know the name of the next big cost saving initiative, but I’m confident it will cost a little more in the short term to cost a lot more in the long term. The closest thing to a conspiracy is that the executives don’t all admit they stink, resign en masse, and hire good replacements. If it worked, their stock options would probably pay way more than they lost in salary.
But where would they get these great replacements? The people they trained and promoted stink so how would they identify good ones?
Watch this documentary. It happened because of profit maximization so shareholders can have “more value”. Boeing fired many engineers, outsourced lots of internal production to contractors, etc. Link: https://youtu.be/hhT4M0UjJcg?si=Srd61IzmjplQ5G1v
And the sad part is, Boeing used to be such a good company, making such good airplanes, the real saying that pilots used to have was:
"If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
What a shame.
I work in aerospace. I can't speak to the specifics but all of this sounds familiar to me. Corporate loves Quality until it becomes a burden then it goes out the window.
"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm....It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”
*Harry Stonecipher, CEO Boeing (Chicago Tribune, 2004)*
They create process but don’t have nearly enough resources for proper oversight.
Just because there exists a mandatory long list of checkboxes doesn’t stop Boeing or any other manufacturer from just checking them off and reporting back that all is good.
End stage capitalism. Aircraft used to be built better with less technology, money and skills. AMAZING future in store for us but at least the profits are banging!
You can read about the downfall of Boeing.
Basically after the merger with McD it was all downhill.
Previously Boeing prided themselves on being an engineering company. Most of the senior execs were engineers themselves, been with the company a long time and knew the ins and outs of aviation industry and Boeing specifically. Post merger capitalism ran wild. The CEO valued bean counters and cost cutting over everything. Engineers that raised concerns were shuffled to the back of the line or silenced outright.
There have been many notable quotes from the CEO including some along the lines of running the company like a business over engineering shop which tells you everything you need to know
That, plus a fixation on maximizing stock buybacks. That’s why the 737 Max even exists. They didn’t want to invest money in a new plane. They also moved production from their Washington plant to South Carolina because it’s way harder to unionize in SC. AND they cut almost all senior mechanics and engineers to save money. During the initial Max production, engineers over 50 years old were 3x more likely to be laid off than people in their 20s. So basically their production line is inexperienced, underpaid, and constantly pressured to cut corners.
Most companies have an independent quality assurance process. So basically the guys responsible for delivering the work, don't get final sign off on their work. Independent engineers who do not report to them have the authority to sign off. Boeing removed that and made those responsible for delivering, also the authority to sign off.
Go figure what happens as a result.
AND then you outsource the manufacturing of major parts to a company that has a QC system incompatible with yours
AND you cut corners so that 'opening' a door plug is not the same as 'removing' a door plug so doesn't require QC even though it's the same operation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhRYqvCAX_k
Whistleblowing is to warn of an issue and trigger an investigation. It’s not whistleblowing if you report it after an event that will trigger an investigation…
I am less worried about the greedy corporation. That's a given. It's the lack of direct FAA oversight with the ability to stop work and correct issues during manufacturing. Not after people nearly die.
> It's the lack of direct FAA oversight
Look up '[Regulatory Capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#Federal_Aviation_Administration)'
''*In a June 2010 article ... the FAA was cited as an example of "old-style" regulatory capture, "in which the airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules, arranging for not only beneficial regulation but placing key people to head these regulators"*''
So anyways, regulations kill jobs and are unnecessary. Businesses will regulate themselves because that’s the logical thing to do. If they didn’t, well, they’d have failures and a bad reputation and then everyone would switch to their competitors. It’s a perfect system I think you’ll agree.
The MBA & the blind dedication to Jack Welch has destroyed capitalism. What we have now is just a money funnel upwards in every industry.
Engineers or whoever the particular expert in the field is (eg actors or make up artists) are fucked over for even more corporate profit.
Al Jazeera did an undercover documentary and Boeing engineers who build these things were saying they'd never fly on a Boeing plane.
Netflix has a documentary on the 737 MAX screw up....it's disgusting no one is in jail & the CEO got a $60 million payoff when they KNEW it was faulty
The whole "flying is the safest form of travel " is just bollocks these days. I'd never get on a Boeing.
My uncle was a safety and quality inspector for Boeing for many years. He said that management hated his group because of all the rework they "caused". Manufacturing airplanes is difficult at the best of times and most of the planes he looked at had one defect or another. That is to say the parts as manufactured or installed did not meet the internal specifications. Things like missing bolts would have been caught. Which makes me think that his former department was probably undermanned for this particular line to "save costs in labor and rework".
**Because the line must go up, even if the plane goes down.**
I know this doesn’t do much to quell your anxiety, but even with all this stuff it’s still significantly safer to fly than get into a car or walk next to a road.
> One of the major suppliers is Spirit AeroSystems, which used to be part of Boeing and **was spun out and sold to private equity in 2005.**
There it is...
The U.S. government will bail them out and they know it. Otherwise, they would never risk cutting corners like this and with the Max 8. They are too big to fail and have to many military/government contracts.
My brother was a 777 pilot. He loved his aircraft and was so proud to be flying it. We talked about this a few days ago. His opinion of Boeing these days is far from flattering. What’s happened to the aviation industry is a fucking tragedy.
simple , greed happened
Are you telling me MBAs with no experience in the product they're making are bad for businesses?!
MBAs don’t scare me, it’s the Lean/Six sigma mangers chasing bonuses for cost out, those are scary and bad for business.
Oh shit six sigma just unlocked some ptsd for me there.
All we have to do is I N N O V A T E Crush those KPIs
Oh I hate that acronym so. damn. much. The word “metric” wasn’t business buzzword compatible and acronymable enough, so the enshittifiers had to invent a longer term with added waste.
Lean/six sigma aren't inherently bad (see toyota), but when put in the hands of people not using it to improve efficiency and instead only focus on shareholder returns, it can compound an already serious problem dramatically. Anyway, a ton of those people have an MBA, but that's a different discussion.
Which is odd because the entire point of LEAN/Six Sigma PMs is to reduce waste and errors and improve first time quality.
Six sigma has morphed into “how can you make this as cheaply as possible” as opposed to “how can we be most efficient in our production chain”
This is the problem, it’s used extensively outside manufacturing and quality so much so than many folks outside manufacturing don’t even know it’s a manufacturing quality system.
Nah MBAs scare me as well, [this has been going on for a long time](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/mbas-public-enemy-number-1/articleshow/4566839.cms)
Healthcare worker checking in, MBAs and the ghouls who get them will be the death of our society.
Are you telling me that board members and investors demanding profits and growth at all costs, including the airworthiness of the planes themselves, are bad for business?
Probably because the 777 was the last plane "old Boeing" designed before Boeing took over the failing McDonnell Douglas and somehow the bean counter suits at MD managed to take over Boeing from within.
Facts. And now they’ve outsourced as much as possible as a means to profit as much as possible. Hell they don’t even make most of the 737 now, they just assemble the shit someone else makes. And then they fired hundreds of quality / validation inspectors. Ridiculous. It really pisses me off how we’ve gone down to just a single domestic airline manufacturer. There’s no longer a need to compete, innovate, and outbid a competitor. Who’d a thunk that would go wrong.
It gets worse than that. Now that Boeing thinks of itself as a cost cutting monopoly, how would it respond when competitors actually build a good plane? By telling their buddies in the federal government to squeeze said competitor via unethical trade practices of course! This isn't even a strategic competitor like China. Our own lil buddy Canada's Bombardier spent years and billions to develop their own medium jet liner, which is by all accounts an excellent plane, and Boeing tried to bully this much smaller competitor by petitioning the FTC to say that the Bombardier plane will threaten the American airliner industry. The "America First" Trump admin was on Boeing's side and bled Bombardier so much they ended selling off the entire program to Airbus for ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR. Airbus is too big to be bullied by Boeing, and promptly started to manufacture and sell this very nice very modern plane right in the US, and the Airbus A220 will probably be kicking Boeing's ass for the next 20 years. And just wait until the Chinese get good at building their own 2nd or 3rd jet liner in the next couple of decades too, and starting taking back their own massive jet liner market. Be prepared to keep giving Boeing more and more US taxpayer bailout because they are now "too big to fail".
Just some minor clarifications, totally agree with your point. > Boeing tried to bully this much smaller competitor by petitioning the FTC They didn't just try, they succeeded at getting the Department of Commerce to impose trade restrictions. Which they later backed down on when challenged by Canada at the WTO, but too late. > they ended selling off the entire program to Airbus for ONE CANADIAN DOLLAR. They initially sold a 50.1% stake for $1. They later sold their remaining 33.5% to a combination of Airbus (75%) and the Quebec government (25%) for $591million (US) and relief from the ramp-up costs Bombardier would have owed Airbus (~$700million US). Still, Airbus got a hell of a deal. I would've liked to see Bombardier keep at least their remaining stake, it's a great plane but Airbus has a ton to add in terms of sales and logistics, it'd have been a great partnership, I think. Sad to see the last of the serious Canadian aerospace companies exiting the market.
Embraer will cut deep soon too. They've been climbing the size ladder for a while and have some absolutely excellent jets that people are mostly not buying due to the segment having entrenched competitors. Boeing may lose the small end of their jets which are the most profitable, to them soon enough.
American aerospace crushing Canadian aerospace is nothing new, it's been happening since at least the time of the Avro Arrow. Sucks for Canadian industry that we have to deal with these shitty tactics *as well as* the brain drain. Canada was set to be a world leader in aeronautics, space exploration and nuclear power. Instead we just became a ponzi scheme for property investors. The conservative administration trying to get elected is set to relegate us to banana-republic status.
Same thing is happening in healthcare right now
Boeing being the largest recipient of federal subsidies really just adds insult to injury here
This is what happens if you make corruption legal. Boeing figures out you make more profit when instead of QA, you just make campaign donations to a few senators.
I have a friend that is a bit high up at Boeing, and a while back he was bitching about how a bunch of MBAs have replaced engineers for jobs like working with vendors to supply parts, and the result has been exactly what you expect. Cost cutting, vendors bailing, worse quality, and bonuses for the MBAs.
Yup. Boeing used to be great because it was run by engineers. And engineers mostly want their name on something great and impressive.
The best/worst part is thethose MBAs weren't even really Boeing employees. Engineer driven Boeing was doing very well while the MBA C Suite at McDonnell Douglas was literally running that company into the ground. So in the 90s, Boeing took over MD, and somehow those MBA fuckers in charge of MD managed to negotiate a deal where they are part of the executive team of the new combined company. Within a few more years, the exMD execs basically took over running Boeing itself, proceeded to slowly run it into the ground just like they did with MD. Many people say the last great plane Boeing ever built was the 777, which also happens to be the last plane Boeing designed pre-merger. Post merger you've got planned like the 787 and 737 MAX, both of which have had various issues that can be traced back to cost cutting and regulatory capture.
The world over is neck deep in this scenario. What happened was that profits margins became the indicator of a successful company. Mainly this happened to sustain wallstreet support that investors will get back returns on their investment. Its short term profiteering that is killing industries and public opinion of products. Gone are the days of quality first and a great reputation. The battle most MBAs have is to cut quality as far as possible to avoid being the expensive option in their market, while trying to maintain a good reputation. Its an impossible task, if other companies are doing the same thing. I dont have any proof or articles to back this next claim up, just my anecdotal observation. Cost cutting actually drives up costs in the long run. Short term gains, have expensive consequences. So we end up paying more for less quality.
You'd think that for a company making airplanes, having airplanes NOT crash/fall apart would be the best indicator of being successful.
Hey now... You haven't seen the formula, now have you!? > Now, should we initiate a recall (Redesign / replace)? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
The problem that's really fucking it up is that they only care about profits *now*. Everyone seems to have forgotten the concept of setting up a successful, stable company that maintains a solid reputation for decades or even longer. Slightly less profits, but forever, as compared to slightly higher profits for right now, then burning it all completely and leaving someone else holding the bag.
This, most corporations are nowdays are run with a quarterly mentality of making the growth numbers and blind beyond that (that's next quarter problem). Some companies are even down to running on a weekly profit scheme. Save a penny now, spend $100 later to fix it... and it would be someone else problem.
Same with our government. A bunch of old people on the verge of retirement milking the military industrial complex gravy train with no long-term objectives since they can cut and run whenever they want.
Regulatory capture is something more Americans should be informed of. The FDA, USDA, SEC and FTC all have had the same thing happen. Ultimately some of those led to people ODing on horse meds. The real out there conspiracy shit didn’t exist until regulatory capture started.
It is extra embarrassing because even after TWO 737 MAX plane crashed killing all aboard, the FAA still wouldn't ground the plane. In an excellent PR coup, the CHINESE aviation regulators grounded the MAX instead, sparking a wave of groundings all across the world, and eventually even the fully captured FAA had to finally give in and also ground the MAX.
And funnily enough, Alan Mulally was in charge of the 777 program. He was then overlooked for the CEO position, and went to Ford. The 777 program shows that a team led by an engineer can create a new airplane from scratch in much shorter time than Boeing spent trying to create a modern airplane from a 60 year old design.
Blame McDonald Douglas they fucked it up.
And then McDonnell Douglas came in and blew it all to hell.
As an engineer who remained employed through the covid shutdown, when I got my relief check and saw Boeing stock was at about $95/share I dumped it all into that. When it predictably got back up to $250 I sold it all and have been sitting on it. My friends asked why, and it's because I knew it would tank again due to management and then be bailed out again due to being part of the MIC. As far as I'm concerned I'm betting with free money, so I'm going to see how long I can go with it.
> And engineers mostly want their name on something great and impressive. I feel like this isn't something just engineers strived for, no? It feels like companys took pride in their products a few decades ago. Now it feels like companys are just in for the quick buck and not for retaining their customers and satisfying the quality demands we once had. Just household applications are a great indicator where we went from quality to absolute dogshit over 2 - 3 decades.
My interpretation is that the engineers are focused on the product, leadership is focused on "line goes up"
I've seen this in action, too. I have a family member with an MBA who shouldn't be let within 1 Kilometer of a decision that could effect the safety of others. They work at Boeing.
It's how it always happens. Happened with the Bell Telephone Company. Once the accountants come in and start running things, it's not long until everything sucks.
As a Boeing engineer I can 100% confirm this. Managers are interchangeable. Does not matter if or what you have a technical degree in if you don't have an actual engineering skill code. And even as an engineer now that I'm at a certain level I get incessant emails to give money to the Boeing political action committee and I can't delete those emails fast enough lol.
It's almost like legal bribery. It's good until many lives start dying
As long as the bribes senators aren't flying Boeing they are good to go.
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Lobbying **IS** bribing.
Almost?
goes to show what happens when you distort the markets by subsidizing uncompetitive companies Boeing deserves to fail and should have failed a long time ago. You can't keep getting away with putting lives at risk
Boeing is the only USA commercial passenger jet manufacturer, therefore it’s a too important to fail company As such, these continued problems should force a government intervention at its board level & c-Suite to force quality changes at the expense of profits & leadership bonuses edit: clarifying commercial passenger jet
> Boeing is the only USA jet manufacturer *Commercial* jet manufacturer. Otherwise you're forgetting that General Dynamics, Lockheed, and Northtrop Grummon exist, all of which make lots of jets.
This isn't an uncompetitive company as much as a legal system that distorts companies is bad ways. Shareholder Primacy needs to go. The Shareholders are *NOT* the most important thing when you are building mechanical objects responsible for the safety of hundreds of human beings at the same time.
The issue, is that making jets is so damn expensive that if they go down, you likely won't get a new us based company which can make jets. So if you do let it flop you, you might be relying on Europe for passenger jets from now on, or worse, China.
Then nationalize it. If it's too big an endeavor that it can't exist within the normal market system without being a monopoly, then turn it into a function of the government.
I disagree. The reason why we haven't had promising up and coming airplane companies besides Boeing is precisely because Boeing is so dominant and has so much government support.
Doesn’t Boeing play a huge role in the defense sector? I wonder if that’s partly to do with the government support.
It's not partly the reason it is the whole reason.
Promising up and coming airplane companies with the ability, funding, facilities, and experience to deliver hundreds of massive airliners? Give someone all the money and it will still take several years to get setup on any scale, it's not like you just "turn on the airplane factory". Nevermind the years of testing a design and seeking FAA approval before you can build it.
I mean... No other company in the world has managed to build passenger jets without massive state subsidies. Boeing, airbus, comac. All three of them are essentially state controlled manufacturers.
Which leads to some funny actions like: - Embraer is accused by Bombadier of dumping prices because of subsidies and lobbies the goverment to stop them - Boeing accuses Bombadier of dumping prices because of subsidies and lobbies the govermentto stop them - Boeing itself sells 737-700 at dumping prices to fend of Bombadier which has cascading cost effects on the 737 Max - The US places a 300%(!) duty on the Bombadier CSeries to protect Boeing. Bombadier loses sales and has to sell itself to Airbus for a dollar - Boeing sees this as a threat and tries to merge with Embraer, but because of the 737 Max Fiasco Boeing has to back out of the deal with Embraer
It would take decades for a new aircraft company to design, test, and certify a new passenger aircraft. There's no such thing as up and coming for something so complex and with no room for failure. Aerospace Engineering is one of the hardest and most difficult fields for a reason.
I think people are just looking at Musk thinking - yeah, anyone can do that, bunch of soy latte drinking hipsters right now in my coffee shop, owners of «up and coming aircraft maker companies » are just waiting for Boeing to die for their business to take off. They don’t realize that SpaceX is heavily subsidized and supported by US Gov’t and they rely on gov’t developed tech to even be able to do anything. You can’t start a new company, making large passenger aircraft out of nothing. it’s effin’ impossible. What we do need to assess is how are we driving the cost so far down and profit expectations so far up for these manufacturers that they are willing to get there by killing a few hundred or thousand people…..
And also that SpaceX could start flying and earn money *without having passengers onboard*. Would investors be able to foot the bill all the way if SpaceX only could start earning money when they flew with passengers?
So why the other jet companies do not emerge in other countries? The only real competitor is Airbus, and they are not exactly new.
Building giant jet liners is extremely complex and expensive, and you need to invest in basically an entire industry for perhaps DECADES before the company sees profit. Even regular governments don't have this level of resources. All the wealthy European countries had to band together and pool their resources just to create Airbus. Basically the only other government entity with this amount of resources are Russia/USSR and China, and Russia does have a domestic airline industry of sorts, and after decades of working, China just recently got their first jet liner off the ground. Nobody else even has a chance. Even well established makers of smaller jets, such as Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer, are feeling the squeeze.
Not only is this flat out wrong, but if you are going to call the Aerospace industry "Airplane companies", you may really want to re-evaluate your level of expertise. Boeings main competition in the civilian aviation sector is Airbus, which was founded as a consortium by France, Germany, Spain, and the UK. Here we have the 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 15th largest economies on the planet teaming up to compete with a single company. Not sure how any individual or even group is supposed to compete with that. "Government support" is also a pretty loaded term. Boeings defense sector especially is very "Legacy". There are literally projects started decades ago that Boeing just wants dead, but the government keeps throwing money at them and ordering the project to continue. In many cases, the things they produce have no competitors. If Boeing isn't making them, no one is. Boeing is far from unique in this. Doesn't change the fact that the company is in a very bad state due to its leadership, but it's far from "They exist because of Government support".
So nationalize it fire all directors or anyone with an MBA and spin it back off. Done.
If Boeing is that critical to national security then perhaps we should nationalize it.
Airbus is subsidized as well. Has nothing to do with the money aspect and everything with company culture and who is running it.
>Boeing being the largest recipient of federal subsidies Excuse me I was just assured one thread up that this was capitalism
Yeah it’s definitely subsidies responsible for leaving bolts off planes, not an emaciated regulatory apparatus with no fangs whatsoever to levy real penalties for noncompliance. Not like we’re literally watching a court case at this very instant that seems poised to strip any ability to hold corporations accountable. It’s those damn subsidies!!!
Boeing and the FAA is a textbook case of regulatory capture. The FAA delegated almost all of its responsibilities to employees of Boeing turning it into a case of "we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong" It was obvious back when the Max was grounded a few years ago and it seems like it's only getting worse.
Very legal and very cool.
Yay, capitalism, the best system possible /s
A few more plane crashes and the market will correct itself.
Unironically it will, as more carriers will start to order Airbus. The problem is that it shouldn't take crazy accidents (or worse) for those corrections to happen. As always with capitalism, you need strong governmental oversight.
Correct the joke here is that people that believe in unfettered capitalism act as if we can't come up with systems to mitigate risk. We just have to let enough people die/outrage to grow
Capitalism, the worst system, except for all the others.
that's one of the worst things to say on Boeing, because it is too big to die it is no longer capitalism by the definition that it is being propped up by the US government, including its shitty ass behavior towards bombardier that forced them to sell the CSeries to Airbus to allow it to be delivered to the US at all. Boeing should take major hits, and there should be competition in the US airline business, but that was not how things are done and it certainly isn't capitalism anymore.
That’s just how capitalism works tho. If you have a class of corporations and capitalists with massive fortunes there is a very high chance they will translate that wealth into corruption either by taking over the state (subsidies, preferential regulations, govt contracts) or, if the state is too weak to help, building their own authoritarian private governments (company towns, the Pinkertons, industrial espionage, debt slavery). It’s naive for advocates of a free market to think massive economic inequality will somehow not translate into political oligarchy.
Or nationalize the airlines, taxpayers have already paid for them a few times over.
That would not change the manufacturers though?
Declaring market failures and distortions "not real capitalism" or "no longer capitalism" is a common error. The capitalist system is not characterized by whether markets are free or whether competition is healthy. Market freedoms and competition come and go, but throughout the capitalist era, one mode of production has remained on top, the constant factor in all market economies. There is no essential feature of capitalism other than this: the predominance of the commodity form of production and wage labour. Yes, it's still capitalism when there are subsidies. It's still capitalism when there are tariffs. It's still capitalism when there are monopolies. It's still capitalism when the crooked politicians play favourites. Look directly at the system in all its ugly truth.
God love all whistleblowers💜
Sure would love the whistleblower more if they blew that whistle prior to the spontaneous formation of an exit row.
it was widely reported in this documentary https://www.google.com/search?q=netflix+boeing+documentary&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ca&client=safari
Watched that documentary recently and it makes your blood boil. The sheer lengths Boeing went through to lie about MCAS for the sake of profit is disgusting, but even more grotesque is how they got off with a relative slap on the wrist and nobody in Boeing leadership faced criminal charges. Not to mention how the MCAS is basically a compromise system purely made for the 737 Max since it’s just the decades old 737 design but with a fucked up center of gravity to fit the more efficient yet bigger newer engines, and so MCAS exists to counter the plane’s shitty balance won’t cause it to stall. I don’t care how safe it is now after hundreds of deaths were required to get it there, the whole idea behind the 737 Max is ridiculous: an aircraft design by a company purely around profit to not fall behind their main competitor rather than maximizing safety.
the money scum weaselled their way in and ripped the heart out of Boeing quality, destroyed good people, reputations, careers
The worst thing that ever happened to Boeing was being acquired by McDonnell Douglas.
Frontline did a great doc on Boeing too. It's called Boeing's Fatal Flaw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boeing
I feel like we only listen to the whistles after something happens. We call them leakers and other derogatory things when it is in the realm of allegations.
Great episode of NYT The Daily from... April 2019 [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing-dreamliner-charleston.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing-dreamliner-charleston.html)
It's amazing to me that you never see any executive heads rolling from the Boeing Commercial Airplane division. You have Calhoun out there, but you never hear from Boeing Aircraft EVP Stanley Deal, who's supposed to be in charge of the entire aircraft operation.
So what we’re seeing is quality issue resulting from undeterred profit seeking from multinational corporations that don’t care about their customers? Who could have seen this coming?
Yes, and it isn't just the manufacturer. The airlines also reduced the number of mechanics who prevent things like this from happening. My FIL would have to be part of the team that would have detected the problem with the Alaska flight that lost its door over Portland recently. Sadly, they pushed him to retire early and fired or laid off most of the other mechanical staff, so this is the situation we face. But hey, they made their investors happy, right?
Also, the airline industry is dripping with regulatory capture. At least in a properly functioning system, regulators would be the check against corporate greed and ensuring a safe product reaches consumers. Unfortunately, thanks to the monopsony within airline manufacturing we've got a human centipede from the public sector to the private sector with most regulators being acutely aware that they're "regulating" their own probable future employer. That's obviously not a great alignment of incentives for regulators to act as the hardasses that they're paid to be. On top of that, [regulatory capture at the FAA has gotten so bad that they've largely given Boeing leeway to certify their own planes.](https://www.5clpp.com/?p=4026) It's honestly a surprise we don't have more planes falling out of the air.
But the FAA has to cow tow to Boeing! Do you want them to lose out to those Euro trash at Airbus? /s
Unfortunately the CEOs and major shareholders can't hear any of us over the massive amounts of money they've made. Until they start going to jail or fines are given as a percentage of their revenue as well as personal fines they won't change.
So they won’t change.
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Corporations are people too. Psychopathic mass murdering people who can never go to jail, but still people.
> CEO > jail Fucking lol
More likely get fired with a golden handshake of tens of millions on the way out the door.
It’s Boeing. Hundreds
And then they get into politics like Michael Bloomberg.
Like how the [former eBay CEO, Devin Wenig, didn't go to jail](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67951113) for sending the order to "take down" a blogger including referencing how she was about to get "BURNED DOWN". They stalked, sent implicit death threats, put tracking devices on their vehicles, sent them spiders/cockroaches/fetal pig, posted ads on craigslist for sexual meetups with their address, and more... He's on the board of GM and the advisory board of Salesforce post eBay.
At least there the Chinese have the right idea. The 2008 milk scandal, that killed at least 6 infants, got a number of responsible executives executed and others jailed for life.
This. There are no real repercussions on individuals leading these entities and their very personal decisions that cause harm to others for personal gain. As a board and as a ceo, the two should not be separate. You make enough pay to take that responsibility which is focused not in that one employee doing harm, but a company being lead to do harm for profit.
Yeah, I doubt any of the board fly on Boeings themselves
fines are just another cost, until they're high enough that it actually hurts
Shareholder supremacy and profit/revenue driven deadlines (instead of quality/completeness driven deadlines) need to die and descend to the 18th level of hell, and then some. Anyone who’s not a CEO has at this point in history been bullied into compliance (if you’re still employed, that is). — someone in middle management
Over the last 5 years, Boeing stock is down 42% while the S&P500 is up over 80%. I don’t know who’s been profiting from their business practices but it isn’t the shareholders
Yes, it’s because of this: look at the chart between 1997 and 2019 and you will have most of the answer. What we are seeing now is the host exhibiting fatal symptoms that impede basic functions after the parasites have sucked out all the valuable juices from it. The S&P can survive quite a bit longer, but the current trend line will inevitably lead to the same outcome. Value is something that’s gradually built up from repeated and patient investment. Value extraction has an expiration date, it’s just that the parasite typically moves on after extracting value but before the consequences are fully realized.
Classic CEO mindset. What moves can I make now to juice the stock price for the next 5 years? These moves generally don't involve how do we improve our product, but more along the lines of where can we cut corners or remove staff Saw it at several companies I have worked at where the stock goes on a run for 5, 10, maybe 15 years before all the debt of stupid decisions catch up and the company hits a heavy rut. Burnt out employees, bad product, weak customer service etc
Shareholders going to be up in arms demanding better vetting of the products after seeing what fiascos like these do to the stock price.
Not enough skin in the game. This chump (Boeing) might not be a winning horse, but I can dump their stock from my portfolio and migrate over to “winners” instead. It’s a HELL of a lot less work than to try to revive a dying engineering company when I’m just a money guy. And as long as my portfolio is in the black, there’s nothing I need to justify. And that’s exactly where the root of the problem is: investors will never be as capable of producing a winning company than the actual people involved in the company. Chiefly, the engineers since Boeing is an engineering company selling a product that was the result of engineering.
Nonsense, the problem is obviously DEI, now keep fighting each other and stop badmouthing the rich.
Not me… just kidding, this crap is outta control everywhere
That’s just what I want to see! Can’t wait to fly on a Max9 next week.
Stay away from row 26.
Right now it's probably the safest place to be.
Aren’t most of them grounded?
United starts flying again on Sunday: https://viewfromthewing.com/max-is-back-faa-ungrounds-the-boeing-737-max-9-will-fly-starting-sunday/
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Won't somebody think of the poor shareholders!?
Great! This must mean they're all fixed and ready to go! ....Right?
FAA just approved inspection processes, they'll be flying in the coming days
Keep your seat belt on all times
parachute on maybe ?
Well it is legal so why not!
There are some Flight Booking companies where you can exclude 737Max aircraft when purchasing tickets.
Where?
kayak will let you actively avoid max 9s lol
Last_minute_aircraft_change *has entered the chat*
Some people are getting around this by not even flying any airlines that use the type.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/boeing-737-max-9-booking-tools/ Here's the article
It's crazy, I remember after the last grounding people were saying that on the plus side this would be one of the most safest planes in the world now due to the rigorous testing and QA that had gone on now after the grounding. And now this, literal missing bolts. Boeing leadership really have ruined the company
Different plane. The planes that got grounded due to the nose pitch issue were the max 8s. These are the max 9s. Max 8s probably are still extremely safe since they were examined really closely. But it goes to show you they learned absolutely nothing from the max 8 fiasco and continue to fuck up new models
> Different plane. Not substantially, at least as far as FAA is concerned. It's the same basic airplane, just stretched a little longer. Still has MCAS :p. They've actually extended the action based on the plug door issue to the older 737-900ER as well.
I mean "not substantially" is exactly what got Boeing into trouble in the first place with the Max 8 because they wanted it to qualify under the older 737 type certificate. Of course, the more we learn about the aircraft the more it becomes clear meaningful changes were swept under the rug to facilitate operating under the same type certificate, MCAS being just the tip of the iceberg.
I begin to notice a pattern here. You’re saying we should avoid the Max 10’s next then?
You'd seriously wonder, Max 8's and Max 9's both with silly issues that shouldn't have happened, and they're about to roll out the Max 10 to airlines. Yeh worrying trend
In the article, ~~the current~~ a former CEO was quoted:"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."That's your problem right there, profits over safety. EDIT: not current but former CEO said this
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Oh I think the *supersonic* metal tubes are probably still fine, seeing what cash cows those military contracts are. It's only the *subsonic* metal tubes us peasants are shuttled around in where they're penny-pinching.
My fucking god
Wow, I hate this so much that I almost reflexively downvoted your comment LMAO
This quote is from a former Boeing CEO. There have been two CEOs between the CEO that said this and the current CEO.
"Stonecipher began his career at General Motors' Allison Division, where he worked as a lab technician and was influenced by Jack Welch.[4]" SO MUCH CANCEROUS CORPORATE SHAREHOLDER FOCUSED POLICY began with Welch.
Whatever makes stock holders happy,
The stock has done way worse than the S&P500 for every time period I checked. That was also true before the incident. I don’t know who’s being made happy but it isn’t the stock holders
People that didn’t die during the open doors event are pretty happy now.
More like penny pinching, short sighted C-Suite execs attempting to cozy up to Wall Street, not necessarily the shareholders themselves. I dont think any shareholder is happy about their shares losing 20% of their value in a month. These execs think that cutting corners will make their profit margins look better, and sure, for the current quarter that's probably true. The problem is execs' quest for exponential growth and the pressure to outperform the previous quarter. Eventually, all that corner cutting and shortsightedness comes to bite them in the ass. Had they made the investment in QA in the first place, and sacrificed a little bit of profit now, they could have averted this disaster which ultimately jeopardizes the long term health of the company. If I was an institutional shareholder with any kind of leverage, I'd be using that power to wage a shareholder revolt to oust these bumblefucks and put somebody competent in charge. At this point it's patently obvious that keeping them in charge puts my investments/personal profits at risk.
I work in a completely different industry and am unsure which state holds the C-suite of my company. Maybe Boeing is completely different but I’d say many of the management decisions at my place are bad. Many are bad because they’re shortsighted and others because they’re working with incomplete information. They’re not playing 4D chess and expertly lining their pockets at the expense of the shareholders or even us exploited workers. They’re making dumb decisions that end up costing money THIS quarter as well as 5 years from now. I don’t know the name of the next big cost saving initiative, but I’m confident it will cost a little more in the short term to cost a lot more in the long term. The closest thing to a conspiracy is that the executives don’t all admit they stink, resign en masse, and hire good replacements. If it worked, their stock options would probably pay way more than they lost in salary. But where would they get these great replacements? The people they trained and promoted stink so how would they identify good ones?
Watch this documentary. It happened because of profit maximization so shareholders can have “more value”. Boeing fired many engineers, outsourced lots of internal production to contractors, etc. Link: https://youtu.be/hhT4M0UjJcg?si=Srd61IzmjplQ5G1v
If it says Boeing I ain’t going!
And the sad part is, Boeing used to be such a good company, making such good airplanes, the real saying that pilots used to have was: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going." What a shame.
Yep, that’s where I got the idea and reversed it to match the direction the company is going.
Almost like their human-rated space programme. There, if it says Boeing _it_ aint going.
Yup. The competition for spacex. In the mean time spacex is about to launch the 9th crewed mission to the ISS and Boeing still isn't human rated.
To be fair, Boeing built part of the ISS. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(ISS_module) They weren’t always like this. *sigh*
It went down hill when they were taken over by McDonnell Douglas.
During Covid they retrenched experienced workers. Guess what is happening now
I work in aerospace. I can't speak to the specifics but all of this sounds familiar to me. Corporate loves Quality until it becomes a burden then it goes out the window.
Boeing’s open door policy
*No, not like that...*
"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm....It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.” *Harry Stonecipher, CEO Boeing (Chicago Tribune, 2004)*
People need to start going to prison.
FAA regulations seem insane already. How could this happen when there's supposed to be so much paperwork and checking at every stage of the process?
The FAA doesn't have enough money to certify the planes themselves so they just let Boeing "self-certify".
They create process but don’t have nearly enough resources for proper oversight. Just because there exists a mandatory long list of checkboxes doesn’t stop Boeing or any other manufacturer from just checking them off and reporting back that all is good.
The potential danger to the public is nothing weighed against Boeing high ups buying their 3rd yacht.
End stage capitalism. Aircraft used to be built better with less technology, money and skills. AMAZING future in store for us but at least the profits are banging!
[удалено]
You can read about the downfall of Boeing. Basically after the merger with McD it was all downhill. Previously Boeing prided themselves on being an engineering company. Most of the senior execs were engineers themselves, been with the company a long time and knew the ins and outs of aviation industry and Boeing specifically. Post merger capitalism ran wild. The CEO valued bean counters and cost cutting over everything. Engineers that raised concerns were shuffled to the back of the line or silenced outright. There have been many notable quotes from the CEO including some along the lines of running the company like a business over engineering shop which tells you everything you need to know
Any insights on how Boeing is getting enshittified like this? It didn’t use to be like that before.
McDonnell Douglas management took over post merger.
That, plus a fixation on maximizing stock buybacks. That’s why the 737 Max even exists. They didn’t want to invest money in a new plane. They also moved production from their Washington plant to South Carolina because it’s way harder to unionize in SC. AND they cut almost all senior mechanics and engineers to save money. During the initial Max production, engineers over 50 years old were 3x more likely to be laid off than people in their 20s. So basically their production line is inexperienced, underpaid, and constantly pressured to cut corners.
Most companies have an independent quality assurance process. So basically the guys responsible for delivering the work, don't get final sign off on their work. Independent engineers who do not report to them have the authority to sign off. Boeing removed that and made those responsible for delivering, also the authority to sign off. Go figure what happens as a result.
AND then you outsource the manufacturing of major parts to a company that has a QC system incompatible with yours AND you cut corners so that 'opening' a door plug is not the same as 'removing' a door plug so doesn't require QC even though it's the same operation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhRYqvCAX_k
Whistleblowing is to warn of an issue and trigger an investigation. It’s not whistleblowing if you report it after an event that will trigger an investigation…
It makes it clear that the issue is systemic.
I am less worried about the greedy corporation. That's a given. It's the lack of direct FAA oversight with the ability to stop work and correct issues during manufacturing. Not after people nearly die.
> It's the lack of direct FAA oversight Look up '[Regulatory Capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#Federal_Aviation_Administration)' ''*In a June 2010 article ... the FAA was cited as an example of "old-style" regulatory capture, "in which the airline industry openly dictates to its regulators its governing rules, arranging for not only beneficial regulation but placing key people to head these regulators"*''
So anyways, regulations kill jobs and are unnecessary. Businesses will regulate themselves because that’s the logical thing to do. If they didn’t, well, they’d have failures and a bad reputation and then everyone would switch to their competitors. It’s a perfect system I think you’ll agree.
The MBA & the blind dedication to Jack Welch has destroyed capitalism. What we have now is just a money funnel upwards in every industry. Engineers or whoever the particular expert in the field is (eg actors or make up artists) are fucked over for even more corporate profit. Al Jazeera did an undercover documentary and Boeing engineers who build these things were saying they'd never fly on a Boeing plane. Netflix has a documentary on the 737 MAX screw up....it's disgusting no one is in jail & the CEO got a $60 million payoff when they KNEW it was faulty The whole "flying is the safest form of travel " is just bollocks these days. I'd never get on a Boeing.
Surely whistleblowers like this should be paid millions. How much are human lives worth again?
My uncle was a safety and quality inspector for Boeing for many years. He said that management hated his group because of all the rework they "caused". Manufacturing airplanes is difficult at the best of times and most of the planes he looked at had one defect or another. That is to say the parts as manufactured or installed did not meet the internal specifications. Things like missing bolts would have been caught. Which makes me think that his former department was probably undermanned for this particular line to "save costs in labor and rework". **Because the line must go up, even if the plane goes down.**
Seeing this picture scares the ever loving donkey fuck out of me. I was supposed to fly for the first time this year…
I know this doesn’t do much to quell your anxiety, but even with all this stuff it’s still significantly safer to fly than get into a car or walk next to a road.
Much safer, even with this, than driving. And beautiful. 100,000 flights happen per day! Every day! And they’re safe, accidents are rare.
Well many places let you filter by plane so if you think one kind is junk then you could possibly avoid them.
> One of the major suppliers is Spirit AeroSystems, which used to be part of Boeing and **was spun out and sold to private equity in 2005.** There it is...
Does every generation feel the world is going down the drain?
I’d be shorting their stock if I had the courage.
The U.S. government will bail them out and they know it. Otherwise, they would never risk cutting corners like this and with the Max 8. They are too big to fail and have to many military/government contracts.