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United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

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Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#141

Post by itsoktocry »

lamontcg wrote: post #107
boeinggoneone wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very likely everyone is dumbing down a complex issue by projecting their own biases on Boeing. Boeing is an incredible cash cow and is likely to be a duopoly (along with Airbus) for at least around 50 years or so. I don't see why anyone burn their house down for temporary warmth. Also, the kind of issues we are seeing do not point out to any short term profiteering.

> I don't see why anyone burn their house down for temporary warmth. Muilenburg got $62.2 million for burning his house down: https://www.manufacturing.net/aerospace/news/21109798/boeing...

CEOs get paid a lot of money. Is this news?

You think he'd rather the company be successful in his tenure, or unsuccessful?

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#142

Post by icegreentea2 »

baby_souffle wrote: post #20
consumer451 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a major shot across the bow of Boeing management. To me, the fact that there really aren't timely alternatives doesn't take away from the gravity of a major airline CEO saying this.

> I think this is a major shot across the bow of Boeing management. > To me, the fact that there really aren't timely alternatives doesn't take away from the gravity of a major airline CEO saying this. What's to worry about? United has no real alternatives. A shot across the bow implies that the next shot will be with intent to kill but united is stuck with boeing for at least a decade....

What? United does have some alternatives. I thought the article was quite clear that United was considering/planning on cancelling their MAX 10 orders.

Sure, United might still be flying a bunch of Boeings, and maybe some other orders might still go through, but there are alternatives for United.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#143

Post by Log_out_ »

Boeings military buisness is in for a nosedive to. It's in parts "allies" buying equipment as part of the package and another isolationist trumpel period will end that. Then there is the military, financed by lending and spending. And it doesn't lend from the American people, it lends from the we which does its trade in dollar and which will vote with its feet if the trade route protection falters and fails.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#144

Post by icegreentea2 »

WanderPanda wrote: post #57
pdonis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for planes the size of a 737.

Why don‘t they scale up? They seem to have all the regulatory capabilities to get a commercial jet on the market already. I also never understood why e.g. China doesnm‘t just buy Embraer (or take over all their employees) and builds out from a functioning product?

Scaling up would be hard. I think the E2 is a 4 seat across aircraft. It's maximum capacity configuration is already quite long (42m) with ~120-150 seats. A320 is like 38m long with ~200 seats (6 seat across).

Scaling into the A320/737 range would need a brand new design with wider fuselage probably. I'm not saying that Embraer could not do that, but sticking with the E2/A220 size range seems to be a winning combo - until recently (A220), they had no real competition from the big two. Maybe with the more recent weakness from Boeing, Embraer might want to consider a 737/A320 class design, but these things take time.

Also, as much as BRICs is a thing, I don't think Brazil would be too fond of selling Embraer to China.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#145

Post by okanat »

wnevets wrote: post #136
pie420 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's ridiculous. it's like saying i separate myself the employee from the private individual receiving the salary. the two are the same. Just because the catholic church can get away with separating the same entity into multiple parts doesn't mean anyone can or should

So if a company goes bankrupt you believe the board & shareholders are now on the hook for that debt?

We would probably live in a better world, if it did.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#146

Post by darrenf »

drak0n1c wrote: post #67
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #6

At this point, it’s quite pertinent how many corners Boeing has cut over and over again—the company’s culture and management is obviously poisonous. I’m probably a minority of folks, but at this point I’m flying on airlines with the fewest Boeing Max generation planes in their fleet. I also don’t really trust the FAA to properly regulate Boeing after years of a close relationship—the recent groundings are the bare mi…

In contrast, the relatively recent Boeing 787 has an impeccable track record and has become the most comfortable long distance aircraft. Is it a matter of separate teams, managerial era, or something else? The models with issues appear to be the older ones with retrofits. Perhaps there are failure vulnerabilities when mixing today's computer-reliant design into past institutional-knowledge-reliant human design.

“Impeccable” is doing a lot of work there! The maiden flight was 2 years late, a series of failures caused the first delivery to take another 2 years, fractures were found in wings… I could go on, this article has a timeline of just the things which went wrong up to 2014: https://www.ibtimes.com/boeing-787-complete-timeline-dreamli...

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#147

Post by lumost »

itsoktocry wrote: post #135
potatolicious wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what. I'm sympathetic to the notion that not every Bad Thing is because of "maximizing profits", but in this case you can point to incredibly specific things, done to maximize profits, that directly caused this crisis. After acquiring McDonnell, Boeing went on a spree of divestments where parts plants that supplied them were spun off into independent vendors. One of the biggest of these is Spirit Aerosystems, wh…

> After acquiring McDonnell, Boeing went on a spree of divestments where parts plants that supplied them were spun off into independent vendors. This isn't default bad. Do you build everything at your company, or buy some things? Specialization can be a boon. > with Boeing having relatively little leverage in improving this state of affairs (one may argue that it's not terribly interested in improving the state of af…

There is something different that happens in a vertically integrated engineering firms. In the event of a critical defect - very senior engineers will find out the specific people who caused the defect, and vet that the appropriate corrective actions have taken place. Likewise, if you do your job well on sub-assembly 529ca - you have the opportunity to be noticed and move up to bigger projects without changing firms. These records are persistent in the company, and it can be highly embarrassing and impactful to have caused the issue many years later.

When you've outsourced the supply chain, personal responsibility is washed in a sea of lawyers, managers, buyers, and other personnel - the incentive to do your job to the 80-90% of completion and no more is extremely strong as it makes everything look better over the next 2-3 years.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#148

Post by SoftTalker »

eitally wrote: post #5

Actions have consequences. Boeing decided they wanted to focus on maximizing profits rather than allowing organic growth to follow on continued high quality engineering and services. In regulated industries, especially where safety is of utmost importance, this is exceptionally risky. They F'd around and found out, and imho the only solution is leadership and strategy changes to shrink their business and refocus on b…

Airlines are contributary to this though.

Boeing was working on a "clean redesign" new airliner to replace the 737. They shopped it around and nobody wanted it. They did not want to train mechanics and pilots on a new type. They wanted a "better 737." Then Airbus came out with the A320neo and that also pushed Boeing towards another incremental rework of the 737 since a brand new airliner takes 10 years to get designed, built, and certified.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#149

Post by FredPret »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #117
FredPret wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Short term profits is what matter to the elite in these conglomerates That is not true. Long-term profits are by far the best thing for the owners in a corporation. See: Berkshire Hathaway. What happened here is someone got to be in charge who did not have the brain to do the job. When you see short-termism among CEO's, that's either due to a) owners not aligning the CEO's incentives correctly due to the owners' ne…

Honestly, Boeing makes the case for returning certain companies to elite control. Mullenberg, an engineer, burned down Boeing for tens of millions today. A family that controls it wouldn’t rationally do that.

The worst part is the 737 MAX development went way over-budget.

The idiots cut corners and didn't even save money!

It is genuinely important for big corporations to have owners with a very long investment horizon who are involved in corporate management. People who are planning for their great-grandchildren are essentially trying their best to set up a company that can last forever.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#150

Post by klardotsh »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #58
adrr wrote: post #21

Boeing should move the its HQ back to Washington state. They need to show the public that things are going to change and it starts with the executive team being next to the engineers. Microsoft had the same problem when Balmer was in charge, focus around sales and not engineering.

Are there many engineers left in Washington state? I thought they were shutting down the entire Washington state operation?

There are flocks of *at least* mechanical and software engineers in Everett (and I think maybe Renton, too) - source: many of them are my friends.
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