Loose screws? A wheel coming off of a plane on the runway?
People come out of the woodwork to criticize Boeing. The most recent on the front page today from United's CEO.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39106480
United, however, has been dealing with another story recently as well...
https://apnews.com/article/ntsb-investigation-united-airlines-flight-hawaii-7744614cd1202c938b550ea2cea4bafb
And it seems like the CEO jumping in is probably more of an attention shift than anything else.
Am I the only person seeing all of this Boeing news and thinking that it's unrealistic for a company this big, with this many highly trained people who's been making planes for this long...to suddenly turn into a stumbling buffoon of a company?
It just doesn't seem plausible.
That they're getting so much bad press now is not surprising given the spectacular failure with the door plug flying off on a 3-month in service aircraft.
it doesn't happen "suddenly". we're now seeing the culmination of years (decades?) of issues. if anything, you should be surprised how long they got away with it, and even if the whole company turns around today, the problems will continue to happen for a while. there's massive inertia here.
People now see ghosts everywhere. Some event happening somewhere in the world and extrapolate exponential doom.
At least with COVID it was hard to separate between exponential growth of the virus (which was always gonna happen) and exponential doom (which was a cognitive bias from those who saw the fatality rate in Wuhan and extrapoated it to the whole world)
- Wheel coming off: Routine. Happens all the time. Makes news all the time.
- United CEO (and other airlines) "considering alternatives" is a typical pattern with airlines when they're negotiating the next round of aircraft contracts. Boeing needs good press, United's CEO knows it, and want an incredible deal so floats this to get it. Soon United will announce an [x] planes over [y] year contract, and they'll likely be Boeing.
- The loose bolt issue is real. This kind of thing has happened before (even for Boeing), but back then changes were made to this should never happen again, and yet it has. Boeing has been doing a lot of belt-tightening both directly and via pressure on their suppliers. The FAA has also been asleep at the wheel for years, with a lot of regulatory checks being "trust me bro" at Boeing, which was alright until Boeing reduced dedicated QA in exchange for cheaper peer checks.
Ultimately the bolt issue is legitimate, we'll wait for the NTSB's report for who did what wrong and when. But a lot of Boeing critiques are leftover from MCAS and specifically around the way Boeing assures quality and the FAA confirms it. Plus "loose bolt" is deceptively a lot more relatable to the general public than MCAS was (even if both are the result of complex procedural failures).
Do I think sabotage? No. But the media do like clicks, and last week's page three story is today's page one because Boeing as a topic is trending. It will continue until the NTSB releases a report.
Why do you think that? This sort of transformation can come about a number of ways. It’s not an everyday occurrence but it’s certainly not implausible.
They made a decision to not invest in improving the narrowbody domestic airliners that people fly in the most and that are responsible for most of the environmental and social impact of aviation. Instead Airbus and Boeing kept introducing more and more widebody airliners that only Middle Eastern airliners owned by Sheiks could afford.
The 747 was retired but the 1967 737 is still "competing" with the 1987 A320. When you fly on a 737 you feel like crap because the circular fuselage is not a fit for your body, because of the noise of the engines are deafening, and the plane can't support sufficient air pressure for you to feel like a human being. A modern aircraft like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220
I've heard quite a few organizations around Ithaca, NY talk about the problems they face and whether it is an academic department or an auto-parts factory, the airport always makes the list. The trouble is they are stuck with these 50-person jets that the manufacturers quit making 20 years ago. If they could upgrade to modern jets like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_E2_family
they would get something like the "Southwest effect" where better efficiency lowers costs which means more people fly and they'd have no difficult filling the seats. It's a major thing that keeps third-tier cities down and keeps people voting for Trump.
In the past (MCAS debacle) Boeing leadership was able to push liability downward rather than take responsibility. There were no meaningful consequences for leadership who have the most impact on, and responsibility for, these things happening, so leadership was emboldened to be even worse.
Boeing is in a special position. It is militarily unacceptable for Boeing to go out of business or otherwise. It is economically unacceptable to punish Boeing, because those punishments would just be passed down to laborers and not result in any change, because labor has no ability to apply pressure upwards because unionization is so weak. This gives Boeing leadership incredible political leverage which lets them do things like avoid FAA oversight and "monitor" themselves.
Boeing is too big to fail. The corporate veil protects those who are responsible from experiencing consequences.
If you want to read more about the Boeing debacle, you can find a rather prescient take on American industry from Admiral Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy. Here is some of his testimony to congress in 1982:
> Corporate Power A preoccupation with the so-called bottom line of profit and loss statements, coupled with a lust for expansion, is creating an environment in which fewer businessmen honor traditional values; where responsibility is increasingly disassociated from the the exercise of power; where skill in financial manipulation is valued more than actual knowledge and experience in the business; where attention and effort is directed mostly to short-term considerations, regardless of longer-range consequences.
> Political and economic power is increasingly being concentrated among a few large corporations and their officers - power they can apply against society, government and individuals. Through their control of vast resources, these large corporations have become, in effect, another branch of government. They often exercise the power of government, but without the checks and balances inherent in our democratic system.
> With their ability to dispense money, officials of large corporations may often exercise greater power to influence society than elected or appointed government officials - but without assuming any of the responsibilities and without being subject to public scrutiny. Woodrow Wilson warned that economic concentration could ''give to a few men a control over the economic life of the country which they might abuse to the undoing of millions of men.'' His stated purposes was: ''to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried in our hearts.'' His comments are apropos today.
What you are seeing is a lack of consequences because a company is too big and too politically powerful. Even if you believe it is sabotage, Boeing leadership has a responsibility to prevent sabotage. They are no less off the hook whether the problem is sabotage or incompetence.
Let me regale you with a rumored story heard third hand about someone who worked at Boeing. They went to their manager and said "I found this problem." The manger said "Do not tell me about problems, do not put it in writing, if you tell me or write it down that makes us liable."
That is a clear culture problem and clear leadership problem. Leadership forces blame and liability downwards creating a culture where speaking up puts you in danger. It puts you in danger for liability reasons or in danger for short term business considerations (now we have to expend resources that we wouldn't have if you had stayed quiet).
Either way, you have to ask who is taking responsibility for Boeing outcomes? It is clearly not Boeing leadership.