Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 637 posts

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#291

Post by smileysteve »

lokedhs wrote: post #257
fooster wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect to be able to sit in my seat without having my knees crushed? How about that for a start?

One option is to not fly american airlines (with a lower case a). The highest rated US airline is 3 out of 5 stars on Skytrax. As far as I understand, the reason for this is that foreign airlines are not allowed to fly US domestic routes, and most US people don't fly international which means they don't know that things could be better. It also seems like people in the US to a greater extent than other countries only…

> It also seems like most people in the US only cares about ticket price,

Ryan Air, EasyJet, and other discount airlines suggest that Europe cares significantly more about price.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#292

Post by anongraddebt »

sudoaza wrote: post #281
georgeecollins wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. You must be very unhappy in your cubicle.

have you seen anyone ever happy in a cubicle?

I realize you are probably saying that in jest, but I once worked in a cubicle for a Fortune 50 firm. Loved it. The firm itself had average management, but the people on my team were a lot fun to work with.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#293

Post by lokedhs »

jolmg wrote: post #271
lokedhs wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One option is to not fly american airlines (with a lower case a). The highest rated US airline is 3 out of 5 stars on Skytrax. As far as I understand, the reason for this is that foreign airlines are not allowed to fly US domestic routes, and most US people don't fly international which means they don't know that things could be better. It also seems like people in the US to a greater extent than other countries only…

> most people in the US only cares about ticket price, which means that even if an airline wants to improve their quality they can't use it to compete With regards to quality, do airlines in other places generally provide more bang for the buck or are they just generally more expensive than US flights to provide for the higher quality?

To be honest, I don't know. It's hard to compare for the US domestic flights, since you have to decide on comparable routes.

That said, flights throughout Asia at distances similar to US domestic flights tend to be reasonably cheap.

I decided to make a comparison:

Fly Singapore Airlines from Singapore to Hong Kong. This will cost you 225 USD in economy.

A domestic US flight of the same distance would be San Francisco to Albuquerque on United Airlines. This flight will cost you 468 USD.

So it seems to me that Singapore Airlines is able to provide better quality at much lower cost. Perhaps the US airlines simply don't have to be better because there is no one that shows it can be done?

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#294

Post by jacquesm »

dmix wrote: post #157
jacquesm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions still make sense today. Without them labor conditions would likely go down quickly. There is plenty wrong with unions but to dispel the need for them without giving careful thought to their good sides is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

There are a lot of good unions can do but I think they went way too far in their demands over the decades of their existence (like making it super hard to fire delinquent workers and hyper specialization where one guy does one job, and refuses to wear multiple hats like any modern business requires, because his union requires him only to do that one job). It’s not like unions are bad or evil, this sort of scope creep…

That's not the reason why they continue to exist. They continue to exist because if they didn't the whole thing would slide backwards in a hurry and then we'd have to start all over again. I've seen a lot of union based excesses and there are tons of horror stories. With all those taken into account the situation is still far to be preferred over what you'd get without unions. Witness the kind of pushback IT companies give against unionization and you have to wonder what they're so afraid of, a level playing field definitely benefits the employees and collective bargaining rights is one of the greater goods to come out of the 20th century.

You will lose that at your peril. In a way the whole gig-economy is trying to do an end-run around any kind of social safety net, and looked at from that angle it will likely end bad to very bad for the participants, even if from their present day perspective it looks like a great deal.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#295

Post by somurzakov »

Xixi wrote: post #227
rectang wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about incentives . Sky-high executive compensation packages don't encourage people to do a better job — they insulate them from failure, thereby disincentivizing them and encouraging them to go down the path of short-termism.

Insulating CEOs and executive from failure is a good way to push them to take more risks, if that's what the board/shareholders want. The issue with the 737MAX is that Boeing was too risk-averse: they should have made a brand new plane, but went with what they thought was the low-risk route with the 737 re-engine. The 787 disastrous development ($36B of deferred production costs I think) was certainly a huge cause of…

it is unbelievable that the was MAX considered a low-risk in terms of selling planes, but ended up huge risk in technical perspective.

if they just stuck to evaluating technical risk first, and only then the risk of selling the plane - perhaps that route would have led them to developing a new completely plane.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#296

Post by lokedhs »

smileysteve wrote: post #291
lokedhs wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One option is to not fly american airlines (with a lower case a). The highest rated US airline is 3 out of 5 stars on Skytrax. As far as I understand, the reason for this is that foreign airlines are not allowed to fly US domestic routes, and most US people don't fly international which means they don't know that things could be better. It also seems like people in the US to a greater extent than other countries only…

> It also seems like most people in the US only cares about ticket price, Ryan Air, EasyJet, and other discount airlines suggest that Europe cares significantly more about price.

That is true. And these airlines never show up in the top half of the airline rankings. However, when flying these airlines you don't expect good service, and no one is going to proclaim that “flying is always a bad experience” because these airlines exist.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#297

Post by [deleted] »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #234
mihaaly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still a bit puzzled how cheerful some people seem about a product that was unable to fulfill its purpose: Starliner getting to its intended destination. Seems like they cheer that it stayed in one piece at least. Not too promising.

> I am still a bit puzzled how cheerful some people seem about a product that was unable to fulfill its purpose: Starliner getting to its intended destination. Calling a space capsule a product and treating it like some kind of tech product launch and framing it's success that way is weird. It's a spacecraft and the mission was meant to test its capabilities and get data about it during an actual orbital flight, then…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#298

Post by markus_zhang »

pm90 wrote: post #278
papito wrote: post #260

Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done.

Unfortunately this is much too true. Compliance controls are a sham. Auditing is garbage. Corporate America is made up of executives who unirononically fail to execute on anything. The few places that do execute are: startups (nobody trusts you or your product, you have to go the extra mile) and a few corporations with strong culture. It’s impossible for eg regulations to guarantee that corporations will follow the i…

And i heard that they are supposed to get a huge compensate because they "take larger risk" than the soldiers, while inn reality they put OTHER's life and money in risk while they themselves take fat compensate and even if SHTF they just resign to enjoy life in some islands.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#299

Post by anticensor »

Spooky23 wrote: post #68
PaulHoule wrote: post #21

The big question for Boeing is how they will transition to a post-737 world. Until now, Boeing's business plan is that they will be building a starship for NASA in 2060, but you will still be stuck with a 737 on Southwest Airlines, a A320 on Jetblue, and never know that aviation could be better. The 737 throws off a lot of cash, but the single-aisle monoculture makes flying miserable. A 737 replacement will be expens…

They won't until political winds shift and you get some regulatory intervention. I would project around 2030, when the major carriers are all ground away and the financial shenanigans of low cost airlines (example: Norwegian Airlines with NY->Europe trips that cost less than the parking) run out of gas. Without that, there's no motivation to do anything but shave every marginal dollar. Competitive forces are limited…

> remove seat cushions on the locomotives

A very short-sighted action. Driver seats are not like passenger seats, the drivers will strike if they are discomforted by the seat.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#300

Post by CharlesColeman »

dmix wrote: post #107
ceejayoz wrote: post #10

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamline... > Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators. Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. > Less than a month after the crash of the second 737 Max jet, Boeing called North Charleston employees to an urgent meeting. The company…

It’s funny how people treats unions as panaceas to all problems. It’s strange to present them as some sort of solution in this case, where there was widespread engineering and management cultural issues, and would therefore somehow have prevented major air disasters. Workers rights and forcing higher wages might be great for the working poor and it might actually make economic sense in certain niche industries where…

> It’s funny how people treats unions as panaceas to all problems.

> But it is not some grand solution to high level engineering problems caused by stupid cost saving priorities made by C-class executives and other weakness in quality down the line.

They're not a panacea to all problems, but they could be the solution or part of a solution to many of them. In this case the "stupid cost saving priorities made by C-class executives" were the major issue, and how do you deal with that? You increase the power of other, non-management stakeholders. Unions are the way you do that for labor.

Of course, in this case they're not the complete solution. Increased and more effective oversight by the FAA is probably more important, and there are other things as well. However, unions could be helpful by protecting employees who want to make a fuss over management decisions from management reprisal, for instance.

Post reply on HN