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* Yesterday, the FAA told airlines to check panels on yet another Boeing plane. New York Times…
The Federal Aviation Administration recommended late Sunday night that airlines begin visual inspections of door plugs installed on Boeing 737-900ER planes, the second Boeing model to come under scrutiny this month.
The F.A.A. said the plane had the same door plug design as the company’s newer 737 Max 9. The agency grounded about 170 Max 9 jets after a door panel blew off one of the planes shortly after an Alaska Airlines flight left Portland, Ore., on Jan. 5, forcing an emergency landing.
The door plugs are placed as a panel where an emergency door would otherwise be if a plane was configured with more seats. […]
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, which both use the 737-900ER, said in statements that they had already started inspecting their planes of that model. Delta Air Lines, which also flies the aircraft, said it had “elected to take proactive measures to inspect our 737-900ER fleet.” None of the airlines expected any disruptions to their operations.
* Today from the NYT…
What Boeing has missed, as it tried to dump costs and speed production, was the chance to ensure that safety was a cultural core and a competitive advantage. Corporations can choose to push back against the Wall Street-driven notion that safety equals cost, and thus lower profits. In the late 1980s and ’90s, the aluminum giant Alcoa, under its chief executive Paul O’Neill, made safety the top priority demonstrating that a culture built around safety can actually be efficient, because accidents and defects decrease when employees know the company cares about their well-being. While assembling an airframe isn’t as dangerous as working with molten metal, when employees know they’ll be supported in building the safest possible aircraft as opposed to the cheapest, the end product will benefit — and buyers will have more confidence.
Choices made by Boeing’s leaders also had consequences. In 2011, the chief executive at the time, W. James McNerney Jr., made what became a fateful decision by greenlighting the 737 Max, rather than investing billions in developing a new short-haul aircraft. His decision wasn’t necessarily a bad one — there was looming competition from the Airbus A320neo — but it committed Boeing to a flight path the company proved unable to navigate.
Mr. McNerney’s decision meant rushing development of the 737 Max while at the same time managing the Federal Aviation Administration so that the certification of redesigned jet — whose engines had been physically moved forward — would not require retraining of pilots, thus saving customers time and money. Being good at managing the agency charged with ensuring your product’s safety can put the whole process at cross purposes. That combined with the decline in the company’s other competencies contributed to the two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that prompted the 737 Max’s grounding for nearly two years. And even before the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 incident, Boeing had been having significant problems assembling its 787 Dreamliner on its South Carolina production line.
And just when Boeing needed experienced employees the most, it suffered a brain drain. In late 2022, many Boeing engineers started heading for the door to lock in pension payouts (which could be hurt by rising interest rates) they had accumulated. When full airframe production returned after the pandemic, a lot of the talent didn’t.
* AP…
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says he is “disappointed” in ongoing manufacturing problems at Boeing that have led to the grounding of dozens of United jetliners, and the airline will consider alternatives to buying a future, larger version of the Boeing 737 Max.
Kirby said Tuesday that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its previous reputation for quality.
His comments came one day after United disclosed that it expects to lose money in the first three months of this year because of the grounding of its Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.
United has 79 of those planes, which federal regulators grounded more than two weeks ago after a panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines Max 9 in midflight, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. Investigators are probing whether bolts that help hold the panel in place were missing or broke off.
Kirby said on CNBC that he believes that the Max 9s could be cleared to fly again soon, “but I’m disappointed that the manufacturing challenges do keep happening at Boeing.”
“The Max 9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for us,” Scott Kirby said. “We’re gonna build an alternative plan that just doesn’t have the Max 10 in it.” [..]
Kirby told CNBC he believes the best case for 737 Max 10 deliveries is still five years behind schedule.
* The Hill…
Scott Kirby said Boeing needs “real action” to restore its reputation and that he has spoken with Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s CEO, to express his frustration.
“Well, look, you know, we’re Boeing’s biggest customer in the world. They’re our biggest partner in the world,” Kirby said in an interview with CBNC. “We need Boeing to succeed … but they’ve been having these consistent manufacturing challenges and they need to take action together.”
* CNN…
Boeing has had a series of quality issues that have dogged the aircraft maker for the last five years, ever since two fatal crashes of the 737 Max 8 in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding of the jet.
* An Atlantic article from 2019…
The isolation [of the headquarters in Chicago] was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.
For about 80 years, Boeing basically functioned as an association of engineers. Its executives held patents, designed wings, spoke the language of engineering and safety as a mother tongue. Finance wasn’t a primary language. Even Boeing’s bean counters didn’t act the part. As late as the mid-’90s, the company’s chief financial officer had minimal contact with Wall Street and answered colleagues’ requests for basic financial data with a curt “Tell them not to worry.”
By the time I visited the company—for Fortune, in 2000—that had begun to change. In Condit’s office, overlooking Boeing Field, were 54 white roses to celebrate the day’s closing stock price. The shift had started three years earlier, with Boeing’s “reverse takeover” of McDonnell Douglas—so-called because it was McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnell’s culture that became ascendant.
posted by Isabel Miller
Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 12:06 pm
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“… McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnell’s culture that became ascendant.”
The old Boeing culture is what Pritzker is doing. The McDonnell culture is what Rauner advocated.
Comment by Anyone Remember Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 12:32 pm
My parents and grandparents used to work for Boeing, and they were proud to be associated with the company. It’s a shame that things have fallen so far. Once you give up on quality as a standard, what have you got?
Comment by Friendly Bob Adams Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 12:33 pm
There is a lot of discussion about how Boeing really lost its engineering culture after the McDonnell Douglas merger. That management had too many folks who had worked at GE, and the Jack Welch mentality impacted quality and design.
By outsourcing too much and focusing too much on shareholder return (in part by outsourcing too much) they lost the plot.
I have read someone say they should bring back the folks who led and worked on the 777 project, the last ‘great’ Boeing aircraft.
It’s going to be interesting to see if they are willing to make the sacrifices necessary
to turn things around and if shareholders will accept those changes.
Comment by OneMan Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 12:40 pm
When they spun off Spirit Aviation (The fuselage maker), Boeing lost control of the operations and quality control….
I have an issue with Kirbys comments; while United nay be Boeings largest commercial airline customer, the are not Boeings largest customer over all. That status goes to the United States Military, hands down……
Comment by Downstate Surveyor Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 2:01 pm
It’s not Boeing, it’s McDonnell in a Boeing skin suit, and not only was their management corrupted by the Jack Welch mentality, the passenger plane and aerospace divisions were weakened because the management wanted to concentrate on defense systems and military craft.
Comment by Give Us Barabbas Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 2:03 pm
any curve away from science is bad. I have met one very big new staffer there and he’s nothing but science, a brilliant mind. hoping they get things back in gear. we cannot afford the demise of Boeing to leave us with Airbus no matter how good their planes are. there are some big operational reasons why even if their planes are good.
Comment by Amalia Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 2:08 pm
A similar loss of moorings from engineering has happened at ComEd, which has led to the ComEd Four trial and convictions.
Comment by Ares Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 2:20 pm
I will be boarding a Boeing 737-800 in a few minutes. Safety and quality are not industrial buzzwords, those are supposed to be commitments.
Quality costs money, that cost is less than the lives that could be lost and the reputation of an organization. In my field I demand safety and quality. Sure it isn’t building or maintaining aircraft full of people, but it is part of patient care that can determine what medical professionals can find in diagnostic procedures.
Comment by FormerParatrooper Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 2:55 pm
Not only does Boeing need to realign itself with safety (and union production), they should have started the redesign of the 737 from scratch about 5 years ago. Hope that project has been underway out of the spotlight. And kick those McDD execs to the curb.
Comment by Jibba Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 3:15 pm
They could have just left them as exits.
There was generally no problem with the proper exits.
Comment by We've never had one before Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 3:18 pm
There are some industries where profit should not be the first priority, aircraft manufacturing being one of them. Ultimately I think the only thing that would change the culture at places like Boeing is either having a board and CEO who emphasize the safety culture, or attaching civil and/or criminal penalties to individuals and not just corporations. If a CEO is looking at personal liability in situations like this and the Max 8 crashes, that might change the cost/benefit calculation. History has proven that sometimes the only time change happens is when it’s imposed on those cutting corners to make a buck.
Comment by MyTwoCents Tuesday, Jan 23, 24 @ 5:01 pm