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

Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

finshots.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 354 posts

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#201

Post by epistasis »

aslatter wrote: post #150
GeekyBear wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies,” Jobs told me: They make some great products, but then the sales and marketing people take over the company, because they are the ones who can juice up profits. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when B…

I keep this clip open in a browser tab so I can go back to it from time-to-time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NASGb5m8s It's the same basic message from Jobs, but this time about Xerox.

I'm curious when this was recorded, but my guess is early 2000s or maybe late 1990s?

With how Apple has avoided ever becoming a monopoly in pretty much any area, and instead tries to just take the top most profitable customers, it really meshes well with this idea of not becoming a monopoly and having the company rot.

Edit: looks like this might be from Triumph of the Nerds, a series released on PBS in 1996. So before Jobs' return to Apple and Apple's turn around.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#202

Post by WalterBright »

danpalmer wrote: post #180
StopHammoTime wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Type ratings are not prohibitive to achieve once a pilot has achieved an ATPL. It’s about 5-6 weeks per pilot. Yeah, it’s a pain but it’s also not a devastating road block. Ironically if you hear some airlines talk about the whole point of MCAS and no extra type rating requirement didn’t actually factor in as much as Boeing thought. Training and aircraft expense is actual minor compared to fuel efficiency and availab…

Thanks, that's interesting to know about the outsourced maintenance, that does make sense and would certainly increase that flexibility. Re: pilot training. I could imagine that going from a 737 to a 787 would be substantially easier than from 737 to A320, due to standardisation in interfaces, processes, documentation, etc, within one manufacturer. Is that the case? 5-6 weeks does still seem like a lot of downtime fo…

The 757 and 767 are quite different airplanes, but they were designed to minimize the differences as the pilot sees them. This increases safety by pilots not getting confused about which airplane they are driving in a crisis.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#203

Post by bronson »

rootusrootus wrote: post #116
AdrianB1 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no way to raise the fuselage. That would require longer landing gear with no space in the wings to retract it, so it required new wings, leading to re-certifications of both the planes and the pilots and the associated costs. This grand-fathering of 737 is the reason it still does not have fly-by-wire in 2024: it simulates the antique original 737.

In retrospect maybe they should have based the MAX on the 757. It's more or less a stretched 737 with longer landing gear. Sounds perfect for installing those enormous engines.

The primarily 737 airlies wouldn't have switched.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#204

Post by tiff_seattle »

Solvency wrote: post #183
KennyBlanken wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wild is that all this happened even with the NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus on behalf of Boeing and M-D.

Source? Or... book even?

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/06/12/airbuss-...

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#205

Post by kelnos »

I was pretty disappointed in this article; I was expecting a deep dive into the merger and its effects, but I all I got was the surface-level stuff that everyone repeats over and over, without any verification that any of it is really the reason.

As other sibling posters have mentioned, it feels like there was a lot more to it. Sure, the McDonnell Douglas executives taking over Boeing after the merger certainly didn't help, but the regulatory, competitive, and economic environment had changed drastically by that time. I do wonder if the causality is a little reversed: the McD-D CEO taking the reigns at Boeing may have been more the effect of these shifts, a reaction to the relatively new shareholder pressure to control costs.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#207

Post by WalterBright »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #112
bluGill wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice do they have? Airplanes wear out from metal fatigue over time, so airlines must replace their airplanes regularly. It isn't safe to keep operating the same airplanes for decades. (this very much depends on what the plane is made of - so some airplanes from the 1950s are still safe while others from 2000 are not). Sometimes airplanes are scraped by selling to some "third world" airline that keeps operating…

> It isn't safe to keep operating the same airplanes for decades. Me, crying while flying a 50 year old Cessna 172. Oh, luckily you are wrong this time: most planes at top airlines are replaced with more competitive ones, not because they depleted the airframe. The rest is replaceable - airplanes replace engines more often than some people change their socks and everything else is either regularly checked or replaced…

A Boeing airliner is designed for 62,000 flying hours. After that, the airframe will no longer be reliable. Fatigue damage is pretty hard to detect. Also, corrosion creeps in.

For comparison, a car's life expectancy is maybe 3,000 hours or so. Airframe quality is way, way higher than car quality.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#208

Post by kelnos »

arcfour wrote: post #188
aslatter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep this clip open in a browser tab so I can go back to it from time-to-time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NASGb5m8s It's the same basic message from Jobs, but this time about Xerox.

How does this apply to e.g. the Bell System? From what I understand, their network was over engineered and they generally put out a very high quality product, and didn't need to do a lot of marketing.

You don't need to do any marketing when you're a government-protected monopoly and customers have a choice between having phone service with you, or no phone service at all.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#209

Post by WalterBright »

lovecg wrote: post #186
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system was visible if the airline paid for the AOA disagree lights to be installed. Why such a basic feature was even an option is the WTF.

I can’t find anything about that. As far as I can tell, the optional AOA indicator would also include the disagree alert which would tell the pilots something is wrong with the sensors, but that had nothing do to with MCAS per se. They still had no idea there’s this whole new system that uses only one of the sensors and repeatedly trims down. Even after the first crash they only went as far as recommend going through…

> recommend going through the runaway trim procedure

The EA crew did not follow the runaway trim procedure sent to them in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. The procedure is:

1. restore normal trim with the electric trim switches

2. turn off the trim system

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#210

Post by WalterBright »

shakow wrote: post #60
breadwinner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really that cheap? 737 MAX uses 20% less fuel. Incidentally, this fuel-efficient design is what lead to the design defect. The fuel efficiency is thanks to larger engine (larger engines burn hotter and use less fuel). To make the larger engine fit under the wing without raising the fuselage, they had to reposition the engine forward. This forward-positioning of the engine causes the nose to pitch up when acce…

> larger engines burn hotter and use less fuel I thought it was mostly due to the much higher bypass-ratio than burning temp?

I learned in college that the limiting factor in turbine efficiency is how high the turbine temp can go before it fails. Engine designers get better and better at finding ways to get the temp up. Jet engine turbine blades are really miracles of design and metallurgy.

The same improvements are being made to electric utility turbines.

Post reply on HN