I hang around with a few pilots, most retired now. All are military trained and did left-seat, commercial, 747, big boy stuff. Here’s something from an email that was going around between them.
REPUTATION CHECK: We seem far from the days of
“If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”
The aerospace giant, once a standard-bearer for American technology and innovation, finds itself in yet another crisis, just five years after the last one. In that case, two 737 MAX 8 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people, sparked multiple probes, the ouster of Boeing’s CEO, and legislation from Congress.
The immediate threat posed by bolts on Boeing’s 737 MAX 9 line appears to be passing, now that the FAA has issued
instructions to fix them — but the reputational damage it has caused is spreading. Congress is readying hearings, the FAA has stepped up oversight and is
temporarily limiting one of Boeing’s production lines, and airline customers are starting to balk.
Boeing’s latest fall from grace has led to questions like: Just what is wrong at Boeing? Can any of their planes be trusted? Why are we back here — again? (It’s worth noting that some aspects of the legislative and regulatory response to the MAX 8 disasters in 2018 and 2019
are still being put into place as of this year.)
Those likely won’t yield comfortable answers. And now the manufacturer faces another period under the microscope as regulators begin looking into what appears to be extensive quality control issues that still exist across the company’s assembly lines, amid suggestions that Boeing has put quality behind profit.
Of course, Boeing is still a blue chip American company and it spreads its political contributions far and wide. In the 2022 campaign cycle, Boeing Co. logged over $4 million in contributions, and spent more than $13.4 million on lobbying,
according to OpenSecrets. And, beyond political contributions, Boeing is a significant employer in several states, with the jobs and economic benefits that brings.
So is Boeing too big to fail?
Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with AeroDynamic Advisory, said that Boeing doesn’t really fit that script, and that its executives rather appear to be “simply intent on destroying their competitive position.” Boeing isn’t dead in the water, yet. But Aboulafia said arresting its fall will require the board moving to eject people at the top “who appear to be trying to drive the company into the ground.”
Boeing still has “a lot of good people, a lot of good products, a lot of good technologies. [But] unless the board intervenes, you'll just see a continued downward path,” he said.
“The company marches from crisis to crisis, from loss to loss. Spiraling downward is not status quo — but on the other hand, yeah, [for Boeing it’s becoming] status quo.”
