Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashes killing 157

[Brisketexan 104537]

On 3/25/2024 at 7:10 PM, Deej said:

That this was the first fucking reply to the "plane almost hit the tower" post gives me faith in humanity.

1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

In the Soviet Union, the party put unqualified “workers” in charge of industries based on political purity and stocked government agencies on the same principle. In the United States, we put unqualified business majors in charge of industry and their regulators with similar results.

I am only half-kidding that business schools are a menace and should be shut down. An organization chases its values.  Once you shift from “make money by building good airplanes” to “make money,” things go to shit. 

The problem goes hand-in-hand with short term gain (QUARTERLY NUMBERS!!!) as a fucking killer.

Companies like Boeing SHOULD make money.....by making good aircraft, that buyers want to buy.  That's old-fashioned namby-pamby stuff, though, scorned by all the finance bros, who have found ways to extract lots more dollars quickly while simultaneously reducing product value (see the "enshittening" thread).  Want to (to use a loaded fucking phrase, but let's use it) "make America great again?"  Then let's fix the structural fuckups we have built into our markets that incentivizes companies to pull a Boeing.

[RPM 26208]

This was capitalism ungoverned. There were no regards for anything but profit and stock price. They did massive stock buy backs instead of putting that money into engineering. They need to move everything out of Chicago and put them back in Seattle. That air gap between engineers and beancounters has to stop. New leadership better recognize the only way Boeing gets it's reputation back is a massive turn around in how they construct aircraft.

Edited March 29 by RPM

[Brisketexan 104537]

26 minutes ago, RPM said:

This was capitalism ungoverned. There were no regards for anything but profit and stock price. They did massive stock buy backs instead of putting that money into engineering. They need to move everything out of Chicago and put them back in Seattle. That air gap between engineers and beancounters has to stop. New leadership better recognize the only way Boeing gets it's reputation back is a massive turn around in how they construct aircraft.

Naah, see, we'll bring in some management efficiency consultants and really, they'll find that the problem was that the engineers and production crews didn't have their eyes on cost reporting.   The key to making Boeing successful is to cut costs.  The failures were in the manufacturing QC part of the business, so to solve that problem and save money, we've just eliminated that division.  Problem.  SOLVED.

[Dbeasy 14961]

The Boeing situation and this thread are fascinating to me. The comments about not putting the MBA’s in charge of engineering or of airplane businesses are not that crazy. I have first hand experience.

I have an engineering degree and worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry for several years. But then i got an MBA and ran companies for several years. So I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. 

The issue is that the pure engineer who thinks solely like an engineer makes a terrible business leader. They think too linearly in black or white.

But similarly a pure business leader with no product development expertise is often an absolute idiot, making dumb decisions about product quality, safety, timelines, costs, etc.  

You have to be able to meld those two mindsets together to make optimal decisions. But often leaders with experience in both areas still screw up because they can’t effectively optimize their thinking. It took me a long time to really get better at ensuring businesses optimally mixed safety, quality, profitability, etc. But even then, if you report to people that don’t understand it, they will force you down the path of bad decisions.  A bad Board of Directors can be just as responsible for the failures.

In my opinion there have been enough serious problems at Boeing that they need to redo the Board as well.

 

 

[ConferenceRoom 6123]

16 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

The Boeing situation and this thread are fascinating to me. The comments about not putting the MBA’s in charge of engineering or of airplane businesses are not that crazy. I have first hand experience.

I have an engineering degree and worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry for several years. But then i got an MBA and ran companies for several years. So I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. 

The issue is that the pure engineer who thinks solely like an engineer makes a terrible business leader. They think too linearly in black or white.

But similarly a pure business leader with no product development expertise is often an absolute idiot, making dumb decisions about product quality, safety, timelines, costs, etc.  

You have to be able to meld those two mindsets together to make optimal decisions. But often leaders with experience in both areas still screw up because they can’t effectively optimize their thinking. It took me a long time to really get better at ensuring businesses optimally mixed safety, quality, profitability, etc. But even then, if you report to people that don’t understand it, they will force you down the path of bad decisions.  A bad Board of Directors can be just as responsible for the failures.

In my opinion there have been enough serious problems at Boeing that they need to redo the Board as well.

 

 

 

[Deej 76524]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

That this was the first fucking reply to the "plane almost hit the tower" post gives me faith in humanity.

Wow. I'm the last person who should be giving anyone faith in humanity. 

[Brisketexan 104537]

35 minutes ago, Deej said:

Wow. I'm the last person who should be giving anyone faith in humanity. 

To be fair, I started the exercise at a very, very, very low bar.  Ledge, and all that.

[956 Worldwide 34410]

2 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

The Boeing situation and this thread are fascinating to me. The comments about not putting the MBA’s in charge of engineering or of airplane businesses are not that crazy. I have first hand experience.

I have an engineering degree and worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry for several years. But then i got an MBA and ran companies for several years. So I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. 

The issue is that the pure engineer who thinks solely like an engineer makes a terrible business leader. They think too linearly in black or white.

But similarly a pure business leader with no product development expertise is often an absolute idiot, making dumb decisions about product quality, safety, timelines, costs, etc.  

You have to be able to meld those two mindsets together to make optimal decisions. But often leaders with experience in both areas still screw up because they can’t effectively optimize their thinking. It took me a long time to really get better at ensuring businesses optimally mixed safety, quality, profitability, etc. But even then, if you report to people that don’t understand it, they will force you down the path of bad decisions.  A bad Board of Directors can be just as responsible for the failures.

In my opinion there have been enough serious problems at Boeing that they need to redo the Board as well.

 

 

I think melding is optimal, but you need to have some bias built in to favor a failure one way or another. 
 

If you’re selling underwear or smart TVs or refrigerators— sure, I am fine with the MBA guys winning. If you cheap out too much and build crap, then the market can punish you. 
 

If you’re building airliners, or chemical factories, or nuclear reactors then I’m sorry.  The engineers need to win over the MBAs.  There has to be some balance and optimizing but if it comes to a fundamental disagreement, the engineers need to win.  It’s more important for the product to succeed than the company. 

[FartingMonk 3606]

1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I think melding is optimal, but you need to have some bias built in to favor a failure one way or another. 
 

If you’re selling underwear or smart TVs or refrigerators— sure, I am fine with the MBA guys winning. If you cheap out too much and build crap, then the market can punish you. 
 

If you’re building airliners, or chemical factories, or nuclear reactors then I’m sorry.  The engineers need to win over the MBAs.  There has to be some balance and optimizing but if it comes to a fundamental disagreement, the engineers need to win.  It’s more important for the product to succeed than the company. 

That was the scariest part about working in oil and gas.  You would get a phone call from the "business unit" and you're thinking to yourself.  What the fuck?  These guys can't be serious.  Then you find out they are.  You ask the engineers and they say yeah we've tried.  The business unit knows how to operate a refinery better than we do.   And then the plant trips and the business unit calls and says hey how fast can we get this bitch back up again 

[Okie State 3788]

Seems like a job for McKinsey. They'll fix 'em right up.

[956 Worldwide 34410]

4 minutes ago, Okie State said:

Seems like a job for McKinsey. They'll fix 'em right up.

More PowerPoint slides bro.  

[Boss Hogg 808]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:49 PM, Dbeasy said:

The Boeing situation and this thread are fascinating to me. The comments about not putting the MBA’s in charge of engineering or of airplane businesses are not that crazy. I have first hand experience.

I have an engineering degree and worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry for several years. But then i got an MBA and ran companies for several years. So I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. 

The issue is that the pure engineer who thinks solely like an engineer makes a terrible business leader. They think too linearly in black or white.

But similarly a pure business leader with no product development expertise is often an absolute idiot, making dumb decisions about product quality, safety, timelines, costs, etc.  

You have to be able to meld those two mindsets together to make optimal decisions. But often leaders with experience in both areas still screw up because they can’t effectively optimize their thinking. It took me a long time to really get better at ensuring businesses optimally mixed safety, quality, profitability, etc. But even then, if you report to people that don’t understand it, they will force you down the path of bad decisions.  A bad Board of Directors can be just as responsible for the failures.

In my opinion there have been enough serious problems at Boeing that they need to redo the Board as well.

 

 

Goes back to a former CEO from 2005-2015

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/
 

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” bookhe co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. 
 

 

 

[ClubWhatever 12086]

1 hour ago, Boss Hogg said:

Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. 

Wut

[royiv 9145]

1 hour ago, Boss Hogg said:

Goes back to a former CEO from 2005-2015

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/
 

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” bookhe co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. 
 

 

 

Phenomenally talented assholes are probably the exact people you want designing airplanes.

[huge 3788]

21 minutes ago, royiv said:

Phenomenally talented assholes are probably the exact people you want designing airplanes.

Sounds like some people that post often on a certain website.

[SquishMitten 10397]

I can’t think of a better compliment I would like to receive. 

[HenryJames 65884]

Bunch of phenomenally untalented assholes around here.

[gmr548 16481]

On 3/29/2024 at 10:18 AM, Brisketexan said:

That this was the first fucking reply to the "plane almost hit the tower" post gives me faith in humanity.

The problem goes hand-in-hand with short term gain (QUARTERLY NUMBERS!!!) as a fucking killer.

Companies like Boeing SHOULD make money.....by making good aircraft, that buyers want to buy.  That's old-fashioned namby-pamby stuff, though, scorned by all the finance bros, who have found ways to extract lots more dollars quickly while simultaneously reducing product value (see the "enshittening" thread).  Want to (to use a loaded fucking phrase, but let's use it) "make America great again?"  Then let's fix the structural fuckups we have built into our markets that incentivizes companies to pull a Boeing.

 

On 3/29/2024 at 12:20 PM, RPM said:

This was capitalism ungoverned. There were no regards for anything but profit and stock price. They did massive stock buy backs instead of putting that money into engineering. They need to move everything out of Chicago and put them back in Seattle. That air gap between engineers and beancounters has to stop. New leadership better recognize the only way Boeing gets it's reputation back is a massive turn around in how they construct aircraft.

 

On 3/29/2024 at 12:49 PM, Dbeasy said:

The Boeing situation and this thread are fascinating to me. The comments about not putting the MBA’s in charge of engineering or of airplane businesses are not that crazy. I have first hand experience.

I have an engineering degree and worked as an engineer in the aerospace industry for several years. But then i got an MBA and ran companies for several years. So I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. 

The issue is that the pure engineer who thinks solely like an engineer makes a terrible business leader. They think too linearly in black or white.

But similarly a pure business leader with no product development expertise is often an absolute idiot, making dumb decisions about product quality, safety, timelines, costs, etc.  

You have to be able to meld those two mindsets together to make optimal decisions. But often leaders with experience in both areas still screw up because they can’t effectively optimize their thinking. It took me a long time to really get better at ensuring businesses optimally mixed safety, quality, profitability, etc. But even then, if you report to people that don’t understand it, they will force you down the path of bad decisions.  A bad Board of Directors can be just as responsible for the failures.

In my opinion there have been enough serious problems at Boeing that they need to redo the Board as well.

 

 

On 3/29/2024 at 3:36 PM, 956 Worldwide said:

I think melding is optimal, but you need to have some bias built in to favor a failure one way or another. 
 

If you’re selling underwear or smart TVs or refrigerators— sure, I am fine with the MBA guys winning. If you cheap out too much and build crap, then the market can punish you. 
 

If you’re building airliners, or chemical factories, or nuclear reactors then I’m sorry.  The engineers need to win over the MBAs.  There has to be some balance and optimizing but if it comes to a fundamental disagreement, the engineers need to win.  It’s more important for the product to succeed than the company. 

The entire Boeing saga over recent years is just a metaphor for contemporary American society/economics at large, nothing being more illustrative of that than the fact that the bolded is a controversial statement. The race to the bottom continues.

 

 

[Captainant 27403]

On 3/29/2024 at 3:36 PM, 956 Worldwide said:

It’s more important for the product to succeed than the company. 

The core friction is that uttering this statement would get you kicked off a board or fired from your executive role, particularly so if your company has public shareholders. 

[Daddy Fat Sax 53]

27 minutes ago, Captainant said:

The core friction is that uttering this statement would get you kicked off a board or fired from your executive role, particularly so if your company has public shareholders. 

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

[Brisketexan 104537]

8 minutes ago, Daddy Fat Sax said:

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

Regulated capitalism that doesn't prioritize short-term results at the expense of literally everything else.  We've created a structure that incentivizes management to squeeze every drop out in the immediate term (a great deal of which goes into their immediate compensation), and if that puts the company in a long-term bind, it don't make a shit because they got theirs.

"Capitalism" is a broad fucking concept.  It's not anti-capitalist to note that the past 40+ years of changes to laws and regulations have created perverse incentives that work against long-term strategy and health, and prioritize quarterly numbers at the expense of functionally everything else.

The Boeing board and management over the years has been handsomely rewarded for creating short-term great numbers.  Their strategy to do so was at the expense of the long-term health of the enterprise.  Now, the music has stopped.  But who gives a shit?  They did what they were supposed to do - squeeze out every dollar, TODAY.  Let someone else clean up the mess that results.

[Captainant 27403]

46 minutes ago, Daddy Fat Sax said:

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

Mfw wanting business entities to favor long term outcomes over short term gain is """anti-Capitalist""". Boeings problems are entirely of their own making, and are an artifact of the predominant business culture run rampant and unchecked.

You can be a capitalist and still believe in making a good product instead ripping off your customers for the fattest margins. 

[mchookem 16184]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:47 PM, Okie State said:

Seems like a job for McKinsey. They'll fix 'em right up.

 

[Daddy Fat Sax 53]

19 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Mfw wanting business entities to favor long term outcomes over short term gain is """anti-Capitalist""". Boeings problems are entirely of their own making, and are an artifact of the predominant business culture run rampant and unchecked.

You can be a capitalist and still believe in making a good product instead ripping off your customers for the fattest margins. 

It’s not just this post. It’s every single post in 6thSJ

[gmr548 16481]

6 hours ago, Daddy Fat Sax said:

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

 

5 hours ago, Daddy Fat Sax said:

It’s not just this post. It’s every single post in 6thSJ

You joined a college sports board in the middle of the NCAA tournament, baseball/softball season, and spring football. Yet you have proceeded to make zero posts in any of the sports forums, instead opting to talk about crypto and attempting to...*checks notes*... cry wolf about communism over the idea that Boeing is an example of a company for whom safety has to come before juicing profits. 

Fuck off weirdo. You'd fit in better on TexAgs.

Edited April 2 by gmr548

[Goredho 17341]

7 hours ago, Daddy Fat Sax said:

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

Your post is off topic and bereft of entertainment value or insight.

The only remarkable thing about it is that you have managed to craft something that is a more catastrophic failure than the Boeing 737 max.

 

[956 Worldwide 34410]

On 4/2/2024 at 1:11 PM, Daddy Fat Sax said:

What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

Free market killing it, rewarding high performers. Capitalism winning, this is for sure how markets are supposed to work. 

 

 

[Bevo 13516]

6 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Free market killing it, rewarding high performers. Capitalism winning, this is for sure how markets are supposed to work. 

 

 

I might cancel my subscription for that title. It is killing me.

[HenryJames 65884]

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/

How Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

Spoiler

How Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

Dominic Gates

April 7, 2024 at 6:00 am Updated April 7, 2024 at 6:00 am 

By 

Seattle Times aerospace reporter

The intense backlash against Boeing after the near catastrophe aboard an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX in January wasn’t a reaction to an isolated manufacturing error but to a yearslong decline of safety standards.

The arc of Boeing’s fall can be traced back a quarter century, to when its leaders elevated the interests of shareholders above all others, said Richard Aboulafia, industry analyst with AeroDynamic Advisory.

“Crush the workers. Share price. Share price. Share price. Financial moves and metrics come first,” was Boeing’s philosophy, he said. It was, he said, “a ruthless effort to cut costs without any realization of what it could do to capabilities.”

To drive down costs, Boeing chose to aggressively confront first its workforce and then its suppliers rather than partner with them. It left both, Aboulafia said, “angry and alienated.”

Today Boeing’s leaders are tepidly admitting that this shareholders-first, cut-costs, workers-be-damned strategy was flawed. But, for two decades, it worked. 

Boeing’s leaders delivered gushers of cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends — $68 billion since 2010, according to Melius Research — rather than investing in future all-new airplanes. 

To ensure they beat Wall Street projections every quarter, Boeing boosted the stock price with accounting tricks, such as pulling forward airline cash advances.

Its leaders outsourced work, sold off whole divisions and discarded key capabilities such as developing avionics, machining parts and building fuselages. On the 787, they even outsourced the jet’s wings to Japan.

They moved work away from Boeing’s highly skilled, unionized base in the Puget Sound region. They weakened unions and extorted state government with repeated threats to build future airplanes elsewhere.

They squeezed suppliers by demanding price cuts every year that in turn forced the suppliers into ruinous cost-cutting and left them vulnerable to collapse during shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In all this, from the early 2000s on, Boeing’s leadership emulated corporate America’s then most lionized and influential boss: Jack Welch, General Electric’s hard-edged CEO in the 1980s and ’90s.

Seattle-area Boeing employees and retirees have long complained about the negative cultural impact of the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. That swept in former 25-year GE veteran Harry Stonecipher to run things, the first in a train of executive leaders who had worked under and sought to imitate Welch as cold, imperial CEOs.

These Welch acolytes treated experienced engineers and machinists as expendable, ignoring the potential damage to Boeing’s essential mission of designing and building high-quality airplanes.

In 1999, Fortune magazine hailed Welch as “Manager of the Century” and when he retired two years later — having transformed GE into a financial conglomerate that incidentally made light bulbs, appliances and jet engines — its stock price was flying high. 

Likewise, Jim McNerney — who had been groomed at GE as a potential Welch successor and followed Stonecipher as Boeing CEO — retired with a $3.9 million annual pension in 2015 after 10 years leading the company, and convinced he’d left Boeing positioned for its share price to head inexorably upward. 

It all fell apart. 

GE’s financial engineering collapsed that company into near bankruptcy in the 2008 financial crisis. It had to sell off the light bulb and appliance divisions. The once-great American manufacturer was finally broken up completely earlier this month.

At Boeing, five straight years of disastrous airplane design and quality problems have ripped apart its reputation as America’s premier aviation icon. 

How can it recover?

Executives concede strategy was flawed

Belatedly, Boeing’s current leaders, overwhelmed by criticism, mockery and outrage since January, have finally admitted publicly that some key strategies they pursued for decades were flawed.

“Boeing, more than 20 years ago, probably got a little too far ahead of itself on the topic of outsourcing,” Chief Financial Officer Brian West said last month.

And in January, on CNBC, Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun conceded: “Did it go too far? Yeah, probably did.”

Both were speaking about major supplier Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., part of Boeing until it was sold off two decades ago, part of a broad divestment of assets to please Wall Street and boost the stock. 

Following a litany of quality lapses in Wichita, Boeing is now admitting a mistake and trying to buy Spirit back — “for safety and for quality,” said West.

Another mistake belatedly recognized: With annual bonuses for Boeing’s factory managers based largely on meeting cost and schedule targets, it was long a cardinal sin to stop the assembly line.

That meant unfinished jobs piled up on aircraft as they moved forward down the line, what Boeing calls “traveled work.” 

Sponsored

Done out of sequence, this work is more difficult and takes much longer. If too much traveled work piles up, it creates chaos. That’s what happened in Renton on the 737 assembly line.

“For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right, and that’s got to change,” West said. “Once you reduce traveled work, your quality gets better.”

Even the overarching commandment at Boeing until now — boost the share price — appears no longer sacrosanct.

Speaking of how Spirit might be fixed, West said: “It’s really about focus and running it, not as a business, as a factory. Run it as a factory and stay focused on safety and quality and stability.”

Yes, that is Boeing’s CFO saying business considerations now need to be lower priority in the jet-making operation.

“There’s a lot of change happening at Boeing right now,” West said. “It’s a hard moment.”

Ron Epstein, a financial analyst with Bank of America with a doctorate in aerospace engineering, is not impressed.

Before the panel blew off the Alaska jet, “everything from management’s point of view was going just swimmingly. They had no idea what was going on on the production line,” Epstein said. “It took almost a catastrophic accident to shake things up.”

“Darth Vader” as CEO

Adam Pilarski, veteran aerospace analyst with consulting firm Avitas and former chief economist at Douglas Aircraft, said in an interview that former CEO McNerney must take “a big share” of the blame for Boeing’s decline.

Aggressively anti-union, McNerney sited a new 787 assembly line in nonunion South Carolina. Then in 2014, he finally forced Puget Sound area Machinists to give up their pensions with threats to build Boeing’s next big widebody jet, the 777X, in another state. 

Later that year, he joked about employees “cowering” before him.

Pilarski said this came from “the GE mentality … not thinking about long-term relationships.” 

“If you have bad relations with your workers you can’t expect loyalty and great performance,” he said.

A former senior executive at Boeing — who is now retired and asked not to be identified criticizing former colleagues — said that even though Boeing has “the best aerodynamicists and engineers in the world … and the mechanics have done an extraordinary job over the years,” both Stonecipher and McNerney “made the workforce into adversaries.”

In 2013, McNerney, acknowledging that “I’m sounding like Darth Vader here,”
touted plans to reduce costs both by slashing jobs across Boeing and by squeezing its suppliers hard.

“If a certain group is not working with us … they’ll be on a no-fly list,” McNerney said of his suppliers. “They’ll not be allowed to bid on new programs.”

Forced to cut their own profits to raise Boeing’s, angry suppliers were damaged. Spirit AeroSystems, in dire financial straits last year, revealed that it had lost on average over $1 million on every 787 section it had built for Boeing since 2007.

Spirit builds the forward fuselage of all Boeing commercial jets and the entire fuselage of the 737 MAX. It has in the past two years delivered defective 787 fuselage sections and a series of MAX fuselages with various serious defects. 

After all the squeezing on price, Boeing had to bail Spirit out financially last fall.

Another thread in Welch’s GE strategy was a reluctance to spook investors by risking money on expensive long-term projects. Announcing such big financial commitments immediately dents the share price.

So in 2014, McNerney declared that Boeing must do more with fewer resources and would take no more “moon shots.”

“Every 25 years a big moon shot … and then produce a 707 or a 787,” McNerney told Wall Street analysts. “That’s the wrong way to pursue this business.”

Instead, Boeing would move forward incrementally, adding new engines to the 737 and thus developing the MAX instead of a much more expensive all-new jet.

In fact, though, big expensive development projects that produce a payoff only years later are the very nature of the airplane-making business. 

Every new jet program is a financial leap. If a company wants to stay in the airplane business, it has to make the leap. 

And Boeing’s primacy in the industry was built on revolutionary leaps, such as the 707 and 747. 

“In aviation, you do need moon shots,” said Pilarski.

Welch’s success while at GE inspired a generation of business school courses and MBA graduates. But in an ethics course this semester at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, a case study of Boeing’s decline produced a reassessment.

Tod Bergstrom, who taught the Boeing class, said that as the 150 students who took it go out into the business world, he thinks they “will be highly skeptical of Welchian management techniques.”

“They really had their eyes opened to a fascinating and ultimately sad trajectory in the last 25 years” at Boeing, Bergstrom said.

The legacy Boeing culture 

Longtime legacy Boeing employees offer a glimpse of how the company culture changed.

Stan Sorscher worked as a physicist at Boeing and later as a research analyst for the white-collar union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. He describes with passion the engineering culture that Commercial Airplanes CEO Alan Mulally created in the 1990s to develop Boeing’s last successful airplane program, the 777.

Boeing engineering and manufacturing groups, along with teams from suppliers and customers, worked together to solve problems on the project, each ready to make sacrifices for a better overall outcome.

But on the next all-new Boeing airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, a different development model took hold, with suppliers doing much of the detailed design work. Originally, only the tail fin was to be made by Boeing.

Instead of the 777’s collaborative engineering culture, Sorscher saw Welch’s top-down management approach come to Boeing. He called the 787 a “shoot-the-messenger program.”

Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: “Follow the plan. If you can’t do your job, I’ll fire you and get someone who can.”

The new approach created rivals rather than partners. Both suppliers and Boeing employees were made to “feel contingent, and precarious, and at risk. That they had a rival who could come in and take their job,” Sorscher said.

Boeing long ago conceded that developing the 787, its introduction delayed by years, was an operational and financial disaster.

Phil Chandler, a highly skilled machinist at Boeing for more than 42 years before retiring when COVID hit in 2020, in the last two decades of his career noted the same dictatorial approach on the factory floor.

“People who knew how to build an airplane were viewed as roadblocks. They slowed things down,” said Chandler. “The only word you could speak to executives was ‘yes.'” 

Whereas in the past, first-level and even second-level managers in the factory had come up through the ranks as mechanics and had deep knowledge of the work, after Stonecipher came in those jobs shifted to white-collar people with degrees, often with MBAs.

However smart those managers were, it took around 18 months for them to really learn how the operation worked, and they were moved to another position typically every one or two years, said Chandler.

“They were never allowed to stay long enough to become effective,” he said.

Analysts project it will take considerable time for Boeing to restore its culture and regain anything like its former glory.

“Boeing’s delivery volumes are unlikely to catch up to Airbus this decade,” Melius Research analyst Rob Spingarn told investors at the end of March. “If Boeing does not launch a clean-sheet aircraft, it may not catch up to Airbus in the 2030s either.”

Steps toward recovery

Calhoun is hobbled by ongoing regulatory and criminal investigations and will leave by year end. What can his replacement as CEO do to begin a recovery?

Any recovery relies on Boeing’s employees believing the company has a future and pulling together to achieve it. 

The pandemic decimated the ranks of experienced employees. Building back up and retaining the workforce is critical.

But data compiled by a company engineer shows a serious drop in Boeing salaries relative to inflation and the general rise of salaries in the Seattle region, a decline confirmed by SPEEA.

In 2013, middle-rank engineers at Boeing were earning 159% of the median household income for the metro area, the data shows. Ten years later, the same Boeing salary was down to 114% of that level.

“I’m getting squeezed more and more,” said the engineer, who asked not to be identified so as to avoid retaliation. 

If the relative value of his salary continues its slide, he said he’ll reluctantly think about relocating or leaving Boeing to get a job in tech.

The increased cost of raising salaries can hit the share price. Still, Boeing will certainly have to raise wages significantly for the blue-collar Machinists to avoid a strike when their contract expires in September.

“Boeing has to give the IAM just about everything they ask for,” said the former senior Boeing executive. “You’ve got to get the IAM on your side.”

Aboulafia agrees, saying management should approach the Machinist negotiations with a genuine sense of mutual interest: “Let’s save the company together.”

In addition, Boeing’s leadership must begin to look ahead, to speak publicly about building the next all-new jet and advancing technology to decarbonize aviation. 

Even if the launch of such a plane is years away, present it as a vision, as a moon shot, said Pilarski of Avitas. 

“Talk about it to your employees so they get excited and start believing in your future,” he said. “That element has been missing for quite a long time.”

Epstein is optimistic that if Boeing reaches for that future, it will recover.

“Airplanes connect the world. It’s just a cool industry to be part of,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that hard to attract people to what they do. Now just keep them compensated, happy, energized.”

Still, visionary talk from the top is not going to be enough. 

To convince employees they have a personal stake in the company’s future, there are two expansive gestures Boeing’s leaders could make near term.

The first: Move Boeing’s headquarters back to Seattle.

That would be symbolically powerful and to industry observers is logical. 

The move to Chicago in 2001, orchestrated by then-CEO Phil Condit and Stonecipher, served only to distance the leadership from Boeing’s workers. 

The relocation of the headquarters to Arlington, Va., in 2022 proved the Chicago move a failure, and equally makes no sense for Boeing’s main business.

“Seattle is the capital of aviation in the U.S.,” Pilarski said.

“You can’t run Boeing from the East Coast,” said Bank of America’s Epstein.

The second: An advance commitment from Boeing to build that next all-new jet in its Puget Sound region factories, with significant secondary work allocated to North Charleston, S.C.

“Tell the [workers] who know how to produce planes, who have been doing it for decades, that no, we’re not moving everything to a totally different place,” Pilarski said. 

For many years, Boeing’s leadership has steadfastly refused to offer such a promise to its workers. If the jet maker is to recover from the current crisis, is it time?

Dominic Gates:  206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com;  Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.

 

[956 Worldwide 34410]

The outcome is the intent and GE collapsing after Welch and stockholders got crazy rich by gutting the company was not things “falling apart.” 

[C-Man 27029]

Another whistleblower shining a light on the 777 and 787 models. Wonder if this one "offs" himself before he gets to testify.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/business/boeing-787-whistleblower/index.html

 

Quote

Federal authorities say they’re investigating Boeing after a whistleblower repeatedly raised concerns with two widebody jet models, and claimed the company retaliated against him.

Whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, alleges that Boeing took shortcuts when manufacturing its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets, and that the risks could become catastrophic as the airplanes age. The New York Times was first to report the whistleblower complaint.

His formal complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration, filed in January and made public on Tuesday, is not specific to the newer 737 Max jet that has been grounded twice by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Salehpour on Tuesday said his complaint raises “two quality issues that may dramatically reduce the life of the planes.”

“I am doing this not because I want Boeing to fail, but because I want it to succeed and prevent crashes from happening,” Salehpour told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.  “The truth is Boeing can keep going the way it is.  It needs to do a little bit better, I think.”

In response to the complaint, the FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.

The FAA has interviewed Salehpour as part of its investigation, his attorney Lisa Banks said. The FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.

“Voluntary reporting without fear of reprisal is a critical component in aviation safety,” the FAA said.  “We strongly encourage everyone in the aviation industry to share information.”

A Senate subcommittee will also take up the concerns at a hearing next week.

Boeing did not immediately comment on the claims about the 777, but disputed Salehpour’s concerns about the 787.

“These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the company said in a statement.

Gaps in the Dreamliner

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes, which entered service in 2011, could have 50-year lifespans – around 44,000 flights each, the company says.

But Salehpour’s complaint alleges crews assembling the plane failed to properly fill tiny gaps when joining separately manufactured parts of the fuselage. That puts more wear on the plane, shortening its lifespan and risking “catastrophic” failure, Salehpour’s attorneys alleged.

The allegations aren’t entirely new: For nearly two years starting in 2021, the FAA and Boeing halted deliveries of the new Dreamliners while it looked into the gaps. Boeing said it made changes in its manufacturing process, and deliveries ultimately resumed.

“We incorporated the join inspection and verification activity into our production system so that airplanes coming off of the production line meet these specifications,” Boeing said.

The 787 Dreamliners were not grounded, but the FAA twice investigated questions about quality control during the jet’s assembly process. The company maintained that the planes were and are safe to fly.

Salehpour’s attorneys said the FAA was surprised to discover through his complaint that the gaps were still an issue.

“I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,” Salehpour said. “By jumping up and down, you’re deforming parts so that the holes align temporarily … and that’s not how you build an airplane.”

Alleged retaliation led to another discovery

Salehpour said Boeing retaliated against him after he raised another concern about the 787 and a different plane model.

The whistleblower complaint said he pointed out to management the existence of drilling issues with the 787, and was then “ignored and ultimately transferred out of the 787 program to the 777 program.”

In his new role, Salehpour said he discovered subpar work with aligning body pieces, and pressure on engineers to green-light work they have not yet inspected.

In all, Salehpour said the issues involve more than 400 777s and 1,000 787s.

Boeing shares fell 2% on the initial news before recovering somewhat later in the day.

 

[Wally Fairway 5517]

FAA issues groundstop for Alaska Airlines

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-faa-issues-ground-stop-advisory-alaska-airlines-2024-04-17/

[InkaUtexas 25486]

Boeing Whistleblowers testifying.

[Captainant 27403]

34 minutes ago, Wally Fairway said:

FAA issues groundstop for Alaska Airlines

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-faa-issues-ground-stop-advisory-alaska-airlines-2024-04-17/

Separate from the Boeing issue though it would seem. Alaskan had a botched IT upgrade that took their weight and balance calculating system offline so they temporarily couldn't certify flight plans

[Incredulity 11541]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Alaskan had a botched IT upgrade

[C-Man 27029]

On 4/17/2024 at 10:52 AM, InkaUtexas said:

Boeing Whistleblowers testifying.

Dying too.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/02/boeing-whistleblower-dies-suddenly-claiming-safety-flaws-ignored-20760390/

Quote

A whistleblower who accused Boeing of ignoring safety flaws in the 737 MAX airplanes has died.

Joshua Dean, a former Spirit AeroSystems quality auditor, claimed he was fired for flagging concerns about lax standards at the company’s manufacturing plant in Wichita, Kansas.

His sudden death at the age of 45 on Tuesday came after suffering from a fast-spreading infection, according to his family and lawyer.

Dean’s lawyer Brian Knowles said it is a ‘loss to the aviation community and the flying public’.

Knowles told Al Jazeera: ‘He possessed tremendous courage to stand up for what he felt was true and right and raised quality and safety issues.

‘Aviation companies should encourage and incentivise those that do raise these concerns.

‘Otherwise, safety and quality are truly not these companies’ top priorities.’

Boeing came under fire for potentially fatal defects in its 737 MAX series.

The aircraft was involved in near-disaster when a door panel fell off of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a 737 MAX 9, mid-flight in January.

It’s lucky no one died when a door panel blew off a Boeing airplane mid-flight (Picture: Reuters)

Passengers lost phones and clothes, and were nearly sucked out, when the panel was sucked out, causing the plane to depressurize.

Spirit AeroSystems had built the door panel.

In a complaint filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, Dean accused Spirit of ‘serious and gross’ quality failings at its production facility.

He claimed his concerns about a serious manufacturing defect had been ignored.

Dean later testified in a shareholder lawsuit against the company.

He believed he was fired from Spirit in April 2023 to discourage others from speaking out about concerns.

A spokesperson for the company said: ‘This sudden loss is stunning news here at Spirit and for his loved ones.’

Dean is the second Boeing whistleblower to die this year.

John Barnett, a 62-year-old who was also represented by Brian Knowles, was found dead with an apparently ‘self-inflicted’ gunshot wound in March.

He had been in the middle of a lawsuit against Boeing after suffering retaliation for exposing safety problems with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

But Dean’s death appears to be due to natural causes.

Writing on Facebook last Friday, his mother wrote that Dean was ‘fighting for his life’, having caught pneumonia and suffered a stroke after an MRSA infection.

He had previously been fit and healthy, according to The Seattle Times, which first reported his death.

Dean’s aunt Carol Parsons said: ‘It was brutal what he went through. Heartbreaking.’

 

[Incredulity 11541]

obligatory

 

 

[butthurt 1520]

Seems appropriate to post again 

[RPM 26208]

The most disturbing thing about that picture is the pickup.

[C-Man 27029]

Sounds like there are 10 more whistle-blowers about to pay the ultimate price.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/04/us-news/boeing-faces-10-more-whistleblowers-after-two-die/

Quote

The sky is falling — at least on Boeing.

A second whistleblower has died under mysterious circumstances, just two months after another one allegedly shot himself in the head — and the attorneys for both men hope their deaths don’t scare away the at least 10 more whistleblowers who want the company to clean up its act.

Joshua Dean, 45, a former quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems, which assembles fuselage sections for Boeing, died Tuesday morning from a fast-growing mystery infection.

 

Dean’s death comes less than two months after Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, 62, died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 9.

Barnett, who had worked for Boeing for 32 years, was found dead in his Dodge Ram truck holding a silver pistol in his hand in the parking lot of his South Carolina hotel after he failed to show up for the second part of his testimony for a bombshell lawsuit against the company.

At the same time, Boeing said last month that it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of surviving whistleblowers.

It was announced abruptly in March that Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun would step down by the end of the year in a move widely seen as a reaction to the ongoing safety crises.

Brian Knowles, a Charleston, South Carolina, attorney who represented both Barnett and Dean, hopes their deaths were not in vain.

“These men were heroes. So are all the whistleblowers. They loved the company and wanted to help the company do better,” Knowles told The Post.

“They didn’t speak out to be aggravating or for fame. They’re raising concerns because people’s lives are at stake.”

Knowles and others inside the Boeing scandals are hesitant to speculate about conspiracy theories swirling around the two whistleblower deaths.

“I knew John Barnett for seven years and never saw anything that would indicate he would take his own life,” Knowles told The Post.

“Then again, I’ve never dealt with someone who did (commit suicide). So maybe you don’t see the signs. I don’t know.”

Knowles pointed out that the Charleston, SC, police are still wrapping up their investigation of Barnett’s death — and that it may take some weeks for tests to reveal more about Dean’s passing.

“It’s a stunning loss,” Spirit AeroSystems spokesman Joe Buccino said of Dean. (The company is not to be confused with Spirit Airlines.) “Our focus here has been on his loved ones.”

Buccino insisted that Spirit “encourages” employees to come forth with their concerns and that they are then “cloaked under protection.”

A Boeing spokeswoman declined to answer questions on Barnett, but said in a statement that OSHA had determined Barnett was not retaliated against, and that the company’s own analysis found that the issues he raised “did not affect airplane safety.”

“We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing and our thoughts continue to be with his family and friends,” the statement said.

“We encourage all employees to speak up when issues arise. Retaliation is strictly prohibited at Boeing.”

It’s news to other Boeing whistleblowers that Boeing and Spirit “encourage” workers to speak out.

They say they’ve either been retaliated against — or ignored.

Ed Pierson, 61, a former senior manager at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Washington, left Boeing six years ago and created the Foundation for Aviation Safety.

He had tried in vain to get Boeing executives to shut down production of the plane before the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and led to the planes being grounded.

“It’s an unstable company right now from the top to the bottom,” Pierson told The Post. “Senior corporate leadership is so fixated on not admitting the truth that they can’t admit anything.”

Pierson did not mince words when he testified before Congress last month about what he called the “criminal cover-up” he believes Boeing bosses have led.

“Boeing is an American icon,” Pierson said. “This company is incredibly important to our country, both economically and in terms of national security with its commercial aviation side and its military defense work. But it doesn’t work when you have the wrong people driving the bus.”

Barnett was a quality control engineer who worked for Boeing for more than three decades before he retired in 2017.

He broke his silence two years later to warn that Boeing cut corners to speed its 787 Dreamliners into service and in numerous interviews described how he had complained internally to the company about what he claimed were serious safety flaws.

After his apparent suicide in March, Boeing employees told The Post that Barnett had made “powerful enemies,” and one said workers were skeptical that Barnett’s death was suicide.

Dean had raised the alarm in 2022, while working at Spirit AeroSystems, a Wichita, Kansas-based company which manufactures major aircraft parts for Boeing.

He was a quality auditor when he raised concerns about improperly drilled bulkhead holes on parts for the 737 MAX.

But, he alleged, flagging the issue with his management had no effect.

Less than a year later, he was fired.

“I think they were sending out a message to anybody else,” Dean later told NPR of his firing. “’If you are too loud, we will silence you.’”

Boeing has been dogged by whistleblower testimony and congressional investigations.

A scathing House report issued in September 2020 found that the two 737 MAX crashes were the “horrific culmination” of “repeated and serious failures” by the company and air safety regulators.

“Boeing was a Seattle company. Back in the day a typical Boeing CEO was a hyper-Midwestern farm boy who saw airplanes as a kid and went off to Seattle to conquer the world,” Craig Jenks, who runs the Airline/Aircraft Projects Inc. consultancy, told The Post.

“Then the finance people started taking over in the 1980s and they moved the corporate headquarters to Chicago and then to DC. It means senior management is never around the factory floor.”

The most headline-grabbing safety lapse was in January, when a fuselage panel blew off a new Alaskan Airlines 737 — although late last month, a safety slide fell off a Delta 767 and washed up, with perfect irony, in front of the home of an attorney suing Boeing over safety issues.

In the Alaska Airlines case, a whistleblower told the Seattle Times that the fault lay with Boeing, whose records showed that after the fuselage was delivered by Spirit, a panel had been removed at Boeing’s Renton factory and reinstalled minus four crucial bolts.

In the air, the panel flew off — fortunately, at a low enough altitude that the plane did not depressurize.

“It is … very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business,” the whistleblower told the Seattle Times.

A number of Boeing employees have alleged to the New York Times that the manufacturer has allowed mechanics to sign off on their own work, cutting out a layer of safety assurance.

“Profit has overtaken the historically famous pride of Boeing,” Peter Lake, an aviation expert who has investigated a number of plane crashes over the years, told The Post.

“It’s all corporate greed now. It’s become a standing joke that when there’s any malfunction in an airplane, people say it’s Boeing.

“Southwest Airlines had an engine failure recently and people ignorantly blamed Boeing. That shows what a cloud the company is under.

“Who knows if they’ll be able to pull themselves out of this disaster?”

 

[lemonlime 5503]

 

[Captainant 27403]

AP: Justice Department says Boeing violated deal that avoided prosecution after 737 Max crashes

 

In a letter filed Tuesday in federal court in Texas, Glenn Leon, head of the Justice Department criminal division’s fraud section, said Boeing violated terms of the settlement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws.

The determination means that Boeing could be prosecuted “for any federal criminal violation of which the United States has knowledge,” including the charge of fraud that the company hoped to avoid with the settlement, the Justice Department said.

 

[RPM 26208]

 

[Brisketexan 104537]

5 minutes ago, RPM said:

 

I mean....that's an Airbus, not a Boeing bird, but ok.

[RPM 26208]

Delta, but yeah not Boeing.

[Basil 742]

Why let a pesky issue like "who actually made it" get in the way of shit piling on Boeing?

[NeverMarryAStripper 21781]

Maybe he was just pointing out that while it did catch on fire no doors fell off

[Paper_jam 828]

7 hours ago, RPM said:

Everyone stands around for several minutes without even attempting to squirt this with a handheld extinguisher? Granted it may not work, but at least look like you're trying.

[Deej 76524]

4 minutes ago, Paper_jam said:

without even attempting to squirt this with a handheld extinguisher?

[AUS-97HORN 11669]

3 hours ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Maybe he was just pointing out that while it did catch on fire no doors fell off

well that and NONE of the 10+ fucking workers even made a fucking move to either A) DQ the power...

or B) the most obvious choice when you see a fire.... GRAB A FUCKING FIRE EXTINGUISHER

Holy shit, 3 mins of them going: "wow, thats a cool fire in the wheelwell on a plane with people in it. its like 2 foot above my head but fuck it, its not my job to put out a fire"