Lion Air 737-Max missing, presumed down in the sea near CGK (Jakarta)

[Schwartz]

Actually, I've said this before. I do not have it in for Boeing. I want Boeing to purge its management cancer and realize the potential of its engineers. I'm looking forward the the NMA and the 737 replacement. I don't want to see Boeing lose its position as an innovation leader. I don't want anyone outside of management to suffer from this.

And I want to fly in better, safer, less destructive airplanes. The 737 had its day and served us well. I never thought it would be dragged into the 21st century though.

But it really angers me how a group of cynical business execs have taken over the company and oriented it toward short-term wealth building at the expense of innovation. And, of course, it angers me that people had to die (and die again) because of this. I'm angered that they have besmirched Boeing's reputation for safety and reliability. That is my sole bone of contention here.

Do you not feel that way?

Evan,

You are conflating two issues together: The lack of engineering and safety culture at Boeing, and the choice to re-use the old airframe. They are not dependent on each other. The planes crashed because of a lack of safety and engineering culture. Period. There are documented delivery issues with 787's and 777's as well also related to this issue. The financial calculation of 737 airframe vs brand new is completely independent and you don't have anywhere near the numbers or models to call that one a good or bad decision.

As for clearing house, the guy at the top getting fired was long overdue.

[Schwartz]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-hubris-drove-boeing-to-its-annus-horribilis/

It didn’t come as a big surprise when Boeing jettisoned its CEO last week. It has been an annus horribilis for the U.S. aircraft and defence giant.

Boeing has long been known for big profits, lucrative export sales and iconic planes. But the deadly crash in March of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max – under circumstances eerily similar to those of a Lion Air crash in Indonesia less than five months earlier – exposed something darker.

Ousted chief executive Dennis Muilenburg was the face of a company apparently willing to do just about anything to get its way. He cozied up to U.S. President Donald Trump and key members of Congress, bullied regulators, minimized internal red flags about the safety of the 737 Max and took shortcuts to get the redesigned version of Boeing’s best-selling aircraft to market.

And when the world’s major air safety regulators grounded the plane earlier this year, Boeing kept building more, wrongly assuming that the Trump administration would clear it to fly. Through it all, the company repeatedly assured anxious airlines that certification was imminent.

Hubris is finally catching up to Boeing. The crisis has already cost the company US$8-billion in lost revenue. Production of the 737 Max has been suspended to prevent a further cash drain. It’s still unclear when the plane will fly again.

Boeing’s behaviour – before and after the crash – suggests a company more focused on changing the rules of the game than improving its own game. Its corporate instinct is to throw its weight around instead of simply doing the right thing. Quality control and investment in R&D took a back seat to political donations and lobbying.

As recently as mid-December, Mr. Muilenburg was still putting pressure on U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials to approve deliveries of the grounded 737 Max – even though Boeing has not completed fixes to the model’s flight-control software, The New York Times reported last week.

Boeing’s bad year is a cautionary tale for companies that stake their futures on the vagaries of politics. Excessive dependence on governments – for contracts, financial help or political favours – is a high-stakes game. It causes companies to look for the easy way out rather than fessing up to mistakes and focusing on business fundamentals.

SNC-Lavalin Group – are you listening?

Boeing wanted a lot from Mr. Trump, including tax cuts, lucrative defence contracts, trade sanctions against rival Airbus and a more business-friendly certification process for new commercial aircraft.

And, for a while, life was good. The Trump tax cuts handed Boeing a US$1.1-billion windfall in 2017. A year later, Congress passed legislation that limited the role of the FAA in approving the design of new airplanes. In 2017 alone, Boeing won more than US$20-billion in U.S. government contracts, including a US$4-billion order for two new Air Force One presidential jets. And Mr. Trump appointed Patrick Shanahan, a long-time Boeing executive, as his deputy defence secretary. For part of this year, Mr. Shanahan was elevated to acting defence secretary, overseeing the massive Pentagon budget.

In 2018, Boeing’s sales broke the US$100-billion mark for the first time, on the strength of record aircraft deliveries.

It was a symbiotic relationship. Mr. Trump repeatedly used Boeing plants as a backdrop to brag about how well his tax and trade policies were working.

“God bless you, may God bless the United States of America, and God bless Boeing,” Mr. Trump said in 2017 at one of the company’s plants near Charleston, S.C.

But the relationship has soured. Boeing's struggles reflect badly on Mr. Trump, who has championed deregulation and trade protections for U.S. manufacturers.

As it bid farewell to Mr. Muilenburg, Boeing pledged to “chart a new direction.” But it offered few specifics.

Like Mr. Trump, the company has repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. As the 737 Max crisis worsened, Boeing alienated the very people it needed, including politicians, regulators, investors and major customers such as Air Canada and WestJet Airlines.

Most troubling, Boeing has lost the confidence of the travelling public. Company polls show that 40 per cent of frequent fliers around the world say they would not fly on a 737 Max.

Clearly, Boeing still has a lot of work to do if it wants to put 2019 behind it.

[Evan]

Evan,

You are conflating two issues together: The lack of engineering and safety culture at Boeing, and the choice to re-use the old airframe. They are not dependent on each other. The planes crashed because of a lack of safety and engineering culture. Period. There are documented delivery issues with 787's and 777's as well also related to this issue. The financial calculation of 737 airframe vs brand new is completely independent and you don't have anywhere near the numbers or models to call that one a good or bad decision.

As for clearing house, the guy at the top getting fired was long overdue.

Well, I do have the numbers to call that one. Modding the 737 to accept the new engines was far cheaper than a clean-sheet airframe (even when leveraging the 787 R&D and components). That goes without saying. However, my beef is that they made that decision out of desperation when the A320NEO 'suddenly' appeared. The decision to postpone the Y1 aspect of Yellowstone years before was pure, short-term shareholder-value-oriented management strategy that ultimately put them into this desperate (yet entirely foreseeable) situation. Once in this desperate situation, they had to make it work, and doing that entailed all the bad things that were needed to make it work, including the corners cut on MCAS, the decision to not include it in type transistion training, the rushed certification schedule and the compromising of certification integrity.

All this is the result of a past senior management that was focused on building immediate wealth rather than future aircraft. They did not get fired. They got severance and parachutes. They got wealthy and they got out.

[Schwartz]

Well, I do have the numbers to call that one. Modding the 737 to accept the new engines was far cheaper than a clean-sheet airframe (even when leveraging the 787 R&D and components). That goes without saying. However, my beef is that they made that decision out of desperation when the A320NEO 'suddenly' appeared. The decision to postpone the Y1 aspect of Yellowstone years before was pure, short-term shareholder-value-oriented management strategy that ultimately put them into this desperate (yet entirely foreseeable) situation. Once in this desperate situation, they had to make it work, and doing that entailed all the bad things that were needed to make it work, including the corners cut on MCAS, the decision to not include it in type transistion training, the rushed certification schedule and the compromising of certification integrity.

All this is the result of a past senior management that was focused on building immediate wealth rather than future aircraft. They did not get fired. They got severance and parachutes. They got wealthy and they got out.

Agreed. Jack Welch style management (literally, they were from GE) and look where both companies are now.

[Evan]

Agreed. Jack Welch style management (literally, they were from GE) and look where both companies are now.

And look where the responsible parties are right now. Retired and rolling in limitless private wealth. I hope the looting of American industry from within will have its day of reckoning. It's such a sad and unnecessary outcome. But our culture, our laws and our values encourage it.

[Evan]

You can't make a $60 million omelet without breaking a few eggs. Ok, 346 eggs. But you still get your omelet:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-dennis-muilenburg-severance.html

Everything that is wrong with society right there folks. Let's not even bring up the the very large omelets of Harry Stonecipher and James McNerney, who made theirs with rotten eggs.

[TeeVee]

You can't make a $60 million omelet without breaking a few eggs. Ok, 346 eggs. But you still get your omelet:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-dennis-muilenburg-severance.html

Everything that is wrong with society right there folks. Let's not even bring up the the very large omelets of Harry Stonecipher and James McNerney, who made theirs with rotten eggs.

how come you didn't post the employee quote about boeing being run by clowns? i found it quite pleasant

[Gabriel]

how come you didn't post the employee quote about boeing being run by clowns supervised by monkeys? i found it quite pleasant

Fixed. Be accurate.

[Gabriel]

Evan was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_zn_x2JK5Q

[Evan]

Evan was right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_zn_x2JK5Q

Why the blue font Gabriel?

He gives a cursory historical overview of the management cancer at Boeing but he fails to indict those responsible. I suppose he has to be cautious of lawsuits, but there needs to be a reckoning that goes back as well. The men responsible for trashing Boeing are very rich and receiving immense compensation for the harm they have done. Other execs take notice of this. They are reward-based creatures. As long as crime pays, we will have crime. Not just at Boeing but at every large company. The Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes are the ultimate result of the decline of great societies into a culture of competitive greed, self-interest, elitism and moral indifference. Only stiff regulation and fitting punishment will reverse that.

[Gabriel]

Why the blue font Gabriel?

Just because I used it in lieu of "how Boeing screwed up its culture, philosophy, values, and business model"

He gives a cursory historical overview of the management cancer at Boeing but he fails to indict those responsible.

Well, he did name the current brand-new CEO as part of the problem rather than the solution, both for his history (being part of the board and the management that created this situation) as for his latest statements (already as a CEO) that suggest that there is nothing wrong with the culture at Boeing.

[elaw]

In that video I particularly liked the line about Douglas management having bought Boeing with Boeing's money. I did a little poking around on the intarwebs and it looks like that thought might have come from here: https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdon...37-max-crisis/