Are Boeing's problems related to moving jobs out of Seattle? (Renton: employment, buy)

[pnwguy2]

I will link a provocative article from the Atlantic here. (apologies if you can't access, as it is subscription)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...arings/602188/

True, the 737-MAX is a Renton (Seattle area) based product, but the article explores how the general culture has changed with jobs moving to other States over the past couple of decades. Missouri, California, and South Carolina have the largest Boeing employment after Washington. And, of course, Chicago is the company HQ's.

[myname_isborat]

How about all the vendors that make parts for the US Boeing contractors that are not even in the US. Seems like a complicated problem. With that said the stock seems to have a firm bottom at 320. Seems like it will hit it again shortly and then buy it.

[pnwguy2]

Yep buy low. But this is perhaps Boeing’s biggest crisis since the failure of the SST in the late 60’s. I have said it before but Boeing is too big to fail. One way or another they will eventually get out of this mess.

[CrazyDonkey]

It is a bean counter's debacle. They built a FrankenPlane that at best is barely airworthy. If the engineers, who've been an afterthought up until now, can't make it safe, the smart thing would be to scrap it and start over, but, of course, that will never happen. No, they'll jerry-rig it, with a fix of a fix of a fix, to somehow pass FAA muster, then live in fear that it will crash again...

I wouldn't fly on it.

[StealthRabbit]

Boeing is not unique with it's problems. (There are many).

Those of us who have spent the last 40 yr in high tech / or high precision manf have witnessed many companies becoming driven to please the shareholders at the expense of the very skillset, quality, and value (s) that grew the company to success.

Add the new generation of managers and leadership who did not grow up through the company / building skills, having actual manufacturing experience and responsibilities. (no one likes to get their hands dirty in last 10+ yrs), So the results = Out of Touch management, listening to the incessant barking of the investors / financial performance at the expense of core contributions.

Newer managers are very intimidated to have employees who may actually know something / content that could lead to a liability of knowledge. It is much easier to plead "We didn't know about that risk!". Common comment from managers; "I don't want anyone with gray hair in my department!". Millions of dollars in training and hundreds of thousands of hours of experience walk out the door everyday, never to be replaced.

[Returning2USA]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

It is a bean counter's debacle. They built a FrankenPlane that at best is barely airworthy. If the engineers, who've been an afterthought up until now, can't make it safe, the smart thing would be to scrap it and start over, but, of course, that will never happen. No, they'll jerry-rig it, with a fix of a fix of a fix, to somehow pass FAA muster, then live in fear that it will crash again...

I wouldn't fly on it.

Hell no, I wouldn't!

[Scrat335]

Originally Posted by CrazyDonkey

It is a bean counter's debacle. They built a FrankenPlane that at best is barely airworthy. If the engineers, who've been an afterthought up until now, can't make it safe, the smart thing would be to scrap it and start over, but, of course, that will never happen. No, they'll jerry-rig it, with a fix of a fix of a fix, to somehow pass FAA muster, then live in fear that it will crash again...

I wouldn't fly on it.

I'm not an aviation expert but it really seems strange that you would take a design that was so airworthy and then alter it in such a way that it goes from aerodynamically balanced to the opposite. A passenger airplane is not a helicopter. Helicopters are designed to be stable/balanced in the air and you get movement, motion ECT by disrupting that balance. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

They redesigned that airframe and put larger engines on it, creating an aerodynamically imbalanced airframe and left the problem created to be remedied by a computer system.

I'm just a mechanic, HVAC tech and electrician so I may be mistaken about some things but you sure as hell will never find me on one of those planes.

[Gardyloo]

I think the Atlantic article has some validity; I and my whole family worked at Douglas in southern California in the bad old days before the McDonnell and Boeing takeovers, and everybody I knew then knew that Stonecipher was an arrogant a-hole.

But honestly, trying to make the 20-year bridge between Boeing moving its HQ to Chicago and the engineering and operational failures that grounded the MAX is - well, poppycock.

By all means one can point to a culture of profit-over-safety as a key element in this fiasco, but to state that the airframe and basic characteristics of the 737NG line makes for unsafe aircraft is rubbish. The crashes were related to bad software and even worse training, and to make matters much, much worse, Boeing embarked on a pattern of understatement and cover-up from the cowards on Mahogany Row. A world press that focuses on wrongdoing and executive f-ups (political and business both) for its daily bread had a gimme with Boeing's attitude. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Right, as if.

Boeing has been caught with its pants down, not because they aren't capable of resolving the MCAS and flight control issues, but because by consistently understating the gravity of the issue. It's also exposed the FAA's buddy-buddy relationship with Boeing's senior management (which led to self-policing by Boeing that was rife for abuse.) So when something else is found wrong during the fixit stage, and the press gets hold of it, it looks for all the world like everything is wrong. This leads to things like the statements in this thread that the whole 737 line should be scrapped, or "I'll never fly that plane again."

Speech is free, of course, but to me it discounts the thousands and thousands of hours, spent by thousands of engineers and technicians, each of whom has a family they don't want to die in fiery crashes - trying to fix these issues. I have trust that the FAA and the senior engineering and QC people at Boeing and their vendors are going to be nothing short of mental in making sure the MAX is safe before they allow one more revenue seat mile to be logged.

[thatguy950]

One word: Muilenburg

Aka the teflon don of aerospace

[CrazyDonkey]

Originally Posted by Gardyloo

Speech is free, of course, but to me it discounts the thousands and thousands of hours, spent by thousands of engineers and technicians, each of whom has a family they don't want to die in fiery crashes - trying to fix these issues. I have trust that the FAA and the senior engineering and QC people at Boeing and their vendors are going to be nothing short of mental in making sure the MAX is safe before they allow one more revenue seat mile to be logged.

I said, "If the engineers, who've been an afterthought up until now, can't make it safe...", not that they couldn't. Whether they will remains to be seen. I do think it is basically a "FrankenPlane", driven by marketing and cost-saving, over engineering.

The FAA is taking its own sweet time. If they approve Boeing's fix, and it crashes again due to faulty software, it'll ruin their reputation, or what little is left of it. And more than just FAA-approval will be required for it to be able to fly internationally.