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Boeing is no longer capable of building safe planes. If you are no longer capable of building safe planes, your next best option is to petition the government

Boeing is no longer capable of building safe planes. If you are no longer capable of building safe planes, your next best option is to petition the government to accept unsafe planes.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
That's only the next best option in the very short term. Boeing will suffer significant damage if there's another Max fiasco - more than they did from the first one. Probably much more. If your company can't build safe planes, the real "next best option" is to fix your company.
- gambiting 3y ago
  What damage can they actually suffer though? Boeing is a strategic asset of the US government, they would never allow any harm to come to it. Some heads would roll for sure, maybe even the government would step in and assume direct control of certain parts of the company, but it's not like it would go out of business, or like companies would cancel all of their orders and buy Airbuses instead - they could, but again, the US government would never allow that to happen, either through direct monetary action or promises and guarantees that whatever the worry is won't ever happen again.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    > What damage can they actually suffer though? Loss of market share. As in, customers actively looking at the type of aircraft when they book a ticket. Airplanes becoming reluctant to ordering Boeing. At this time, every $1 you invest in making it known what Boeing does since 15 years, results in $2 or $3 of loss of market share for Boeing. Absolutely the time to buy ads to promote articles about Boeing. I would actually trust Comac more than Boeing, as Comac has something to prove, whereas Boeing has been proven to crash planes and bribe the FAA.
    - traverseda 3y ago
      Can someone make a list of unsafe Boeing planes?
      - nostrademons 3y ago
        The 737 MAX and 787 have both had significant issues. Basically it's anything introduced after the merger with McDonnell Douglass in 1997.
      - eastbound 3y ago
        Boeing’s processes, not planes, are unsafe. In 2013 they received frames (the circular structures that make the fuselage) which instead of being machined, has been created manually. Voids were all in the wrong place because the workers had taken the blueprints symmetrically. Did they ditch the frames? Of course not? They remade the cuts so that it fits upside down! And soldered the I-beam parts that had been cut! Result: The circular frames, which are a critical structural component, have twice as many gaps and holes and soldered sections than the designed piece. Bulkheads, circular frames, MCAS… It’s appalling engineering practices. And the dinner party system with FAA, introduced by Mac Donnell’s practices when it was bought over, has to stop. They should not be friends in real life.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > What damage can they actually suffer though? Boeing is a strategic asset of the US government, they would never allow any harm to come to it. Boeing's staff and plant are strategic assets, its executives and shareholders aren't. The US government could totally let harm come the latter group.
    - p1esk 3y ago
      US government is much more broken than Boeing.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Not sure about that. I suspect that Boeing is considered a domestic strategic asset and is not allowed to die. No matter the incompetence.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  It's usually not possible to fix a company that is broken, simply because of Gall's Law. ("A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.") Large companies are complex systems; they develop their own set of internal incentives, communications architectures, org politics, membership tests, etc. Over time, these incentives inevitably adapt themselves toward maintaining the organization rather than delivering the product or service that is the reason why the organization exists. At that point, everyone who actually wants to deliver the product leaves, leaving an organization consisting solely of people whose full-time job is maintaining their position in the organization. Ask yourself: would you take a position at Boeing trying to "fix the company"? The only way out of this is to poach the few remaining employees that still have technical knowledge, setup a new company that refuses to employ everyone with a vested interest in Boeing, and take their market. This is hard for aerospace because of the sheer complexity of the product and the baseline quality levels needed to deliver a safe experience.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    I did, and it was one of the worst periods of my career. And I went in knowing it was going to be challenging, I wasn’t naive, it was just worse than I expected.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    > Ask yourself: would you take a position at Boeing trying to "fix the company"? As an executive with guaranteed $xM in pay over a few years? Sure — if I fail, I’ll just use that position as a stepping stone to my next executive role. Why wouldn’t I take a shot at something positive, when there’s little to no downside?
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      Are you actually fixing the company then, or just extracting value while maintaining the organization? This is why we have the world that we do.
- amputect 3y ago
  Fixing the company sounds good, but you have to remember that the people who would be fixing it are the people who got it to this point in the first place. I think it's very likely that nobody currently at Boeing has the ability and willingness to make the kinds of changes they would need to make in order to become a functional company again, because Boeing has spent over two decades systematically purging senior engineers from management and leadership in order to become another crappy company full of empty suits with MBAs, who don't understand the product they're making, and don't care if they're literally killing people and the company is rotting out from under them as long as they can monetize the rot to make their quarterly numbers.

Boeing is no longer capable of building safe planes. If you are no longer capable of building safe planes, your next best option is to petition the government to accept unsafe planes.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

That's only the next best option in the very short term. Boeing will suffer significant damage if there's another Max fiasco - more than they did from the first one. Probably much more. If your company can't build safe planes, the real "next best option" is to fix your company.

gambiting 3y ago
What damage can they actually suffer though? Boeing is a strategic asset of the US government, they would never allow any harm to come to it. Some heads would roll for sure, maybe even the government would step in and assume direct control of certain parts of the company, but it's not like it would go out of business, or like companies would cancel all of their orders and buy Airbuses instead - they could, but again, the US government would never allow that to happen, either through direct monetary action or promises and guarantees that whatever the worry is won't ever happen again.
- eastbound 3y ago
  > What damage can they actually suffer though? Loss of market share. As in, customers actively looking at the type of aircraft when they book a ticket. Airplanes becoming reluctant to ordering Boeing. At this time, every $1 you invest in making it known what Boeing does since 15 years, results in $2 or $3 of loss of market share for Boeing. Absolutely the time to buy ads to promote articles about Boeing. I would actually trust Comac more than Boeing, as Comac has something to prove, whereas Boeing has been proven to crash planes and bribe the FAA.
  - traverseda 3y ago
    Can someone make a list of unsafe Boeing planes?
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      The 737 MAX and 787 have both had significant issues. Basically it's anything introduced after the merger with McDonnell Douglass in 1997.
    - eastbound 3y ago
      Boeing’s processes, not planes, are unsafe. In 2013 they received frames (the circular structures that make the fuselage) which instead of being machined, has been created manually. Voids were all in the wrong place because the workers had taken the blueprints symmetrically. Did they ditch the frames? Of course not? They remade the cuts so that it fits upside down! And soldered the I-beam parts that had been cut! Result: The circular frames, which are a critical structural component, have twice as many gaps and holes and soldered sections than the designed piece. Bulkheads, circular frames, MCAS… It’s appalling engineering practices. And the dinner party system with FAA, introduced by Mac Donnell’s practices when it was bought over, has to stop. They should not be friends in real life.
- tivert 3y ago
  > What damage can they actually suffer though? Boeing is a strategic asset of the US government, they would never allow any harm to come to it. Boeing's staff and plant are strategic assets, its executives and shareholders aren't. The US government could totally let harm come the latter group.
  - p1esk 3y ago
    US government is much more broken than Boeing.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Not sure about that. I suspect that Boeing is considered a domestic strategic asset and is not allowed to die. No matter the incompetence.
nostrademons 3y ago
It's usually not possible to fix a company that is broken, simply because of Gall's Law. ("A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.") Large companies are complex systems; they develop their own set of internal incentives, communications architectures, org politics, membership tests, etc. Over time, these incentives inevitably adapt themselves toward maintaining the organization rather than delivering the product or service that is the reason why the organization exists. At that point, everyone who actually wants to deliver the product leaves, leaving an organization consisting solely of people whose full-time job is maintaining their position in the organization. Ask yourself: would you take a position at Boeing trying to "fix the company"? The only way out of this is to poach the few remaining employees that still have technical knowledge, setup a new company that refuses to employ everyone with a vested interest in Boeing, and take their market. This is hard for aerospace because of the sheer complexity of the product and the baseline quality levels needed to deliver a safe experience.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  I did, and it was one of the worst periods of my career. And I went in knowing it was going to be challenging, I wasn’t naive, it was just worse than I expected.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  > Ask yourself: would you take a position at Boeing trying to "fix the company"? As an executive with guaranteed $xM in pay over a few years? Sure — if I fail, I’ll just use that position as a stepping stone to my next executive role. Why wouldn’t I take a shot at something positive, when there’s little to no downside?
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Are you actually fixing the company then, or just extracting value while maintaining the organization? This is why we have the world that we do.
amputect 3y ago
Fixing the company sounds good, but you have to remember that the people who would be fixing it are the people who got it to this point in the first place. I think it's very likely that nobody currently at Boeing has the ability and willingness to make the kinds of changes they would need to make in order to become a functional company again, because Boeing has spent over two decades systematically purging senior engineers from management and leadership in order to become another crappy company full of empty suits with MBAs, who don't understand the product they're making, and don't care if they're literally killing people and the company is rotting out from under them as long as they can monetize the rot to make their quarterly numbers.