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

United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 231 posts

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

#191

Post by albert180 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #104
albert180 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will never happen as this would be a slamdunk case for Airbus/European Countries at the WTO against the US government

The U.S. simply Does Not Comply with WTO judgments against them, just like how they don’t follow UNCLOS, or the ICC. The U.S. makes international law - it does not follow it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-12/supply...

They don't need to comply as other countries have then the right to implement punitive import dutys and they already did so with regards of Airbus/Boeing

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

#192

Post by lamontcg »

pie420 wrote: post #140
lamontcg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has nothing at all to do with the window panel blowout though

it has everything to do with it. the current issues are a symptom of shortcuts and cost cutting at the expense of long-term growth and continued success. 737 MAX MCAS was the result of MBAs cutting costs when the right thing was to spend more and develop a new plane. Aircraft doors blowing open mid-flight is the result of MBAs cutting costs and outsourcing safety device manufacturing and install to ultra-cheap low qu…

But "just create a new plane instead of the MAX" doesn't address the other deficiencies that you point out. Spirit would be just as shitty at putting together 737-900s as 737-MAX9's (and in fact they're finding QC issues in 737-900s now)

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

#193

Post by theYipster »

balozi wrote: post #77

Try as I might, I cannot see any upside for an airline chief executive to make this kind of statements publicly. Sometimes a CEO needs to know that they don't have to publicly announce their internal deliberations. Well...unless he was drunk when interviewed, or wanted to divert attention from bad financial results, or both.

Also…

- showing his employees and the public where the blame belongs. No doubt United has some angry passengers given the flights they had to cancel due to the grounding of their Max 9 fleet. Also consider SNL’s sketch about Alaska… airline execs over there are no doubt fuming at Boeing.

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

#194

Post by WalterBright »

dotnet00 wrote: post #116
WalterBright wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA subcontracted about everything for the space program.

and between the end of Apollo and the emergence of "new space" companies like SpaceX, we saw them get taken for a ride by those very subcontractors with absurdly overpriced cost-plus projects that were always over budget, late and did the bare minimum to meet requirements. Funnily, even with NASA's example, we have several instances of Boeing screwing up everything in favor of short term gains. ULA had to be 'forced'…

> I'm also not really sure how NASA fits considering that they have no monetary profit motive.

The point is that subcontracting is not the problem.

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

#195

Post by tuna74 »

kotaKat wrote: post #63
tazjin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, an American company isn't going to start buying Sukhoi planes ;)

Hey now, the COMAC C919s are rolling off the line any day now... ;)

COMAC has delivered 4 this far.

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

#197

Post by ramesh31 »

>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.

One thing I worry about with complex products like aircraft in general, is what if we just forget how to do this stuff correctly? I mean the entire aviation industry was built in a single human lifetime. All of this was conceived and designed by our parents and grandparents. There's really no guarantee or precedent whatsoever in human history for that kind of knowledge transfer to occur between generations. I've been plagued by this feeling my whole life, that our generation (millenials and below) simply might just not be up to the task of keeping things going. It feels like we're starting to see those cracks.

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

#198

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

gumby wrote: post #83
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.

> Boeing should move the its HQ back to Washington state...Microsoft had the same problem when Balmer was in charge, focus around sales and not engineering. While Balmer was CEO the HQ was in Washington state :-) More seriously, Balmer is an excellent example, because I believe the Boeing case is more mendacious, yet more banal. Balmer seemed to have the right idea, yet utterly the wrong intuition. It's especially st…

> fatally he never learned what the business actually was

What I find fascinating about this post is that it mirrors the same behavior I saw in a small tech company of Amazing to see a $1M company (1990's dollars) making the same mistakes as a multi-$Bn one.

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

#199

Post by mk89 »

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…

You know, when a company this big does this kind of things it always makes me think: are they really the only ones?

It could be, or it could be that these are the guys that know how to navigate through these risks that you mention - until something bad happens and the world is then bashing them. How many things happen and we don't see them? And they get f** rich thanks to that lack of information (which they can rely on thanks to us employees, who normally keep an eye closed or complain and "just create the Jira ticket, we will handle it later"). If this can happen in such a regulated industry, there are loopholes, and they can't be the only smart guys to exploit them to "accelerate, simplify, streamline profits" and all that.

It reminds me of the VW scandal. A lot of other companies did that artwork (using a defeat device) to pass the tests. One company got the blame - no problem there, but finally, it was like a wake up call for everyone else.

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

#200

Post by throw0101d »

okanat wrote: post #145
wnevets wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The separation of 'natural' person [1] from legal persons[2] dates back to the Middle Ages and perhaps even Ancient Rome.[3]

It is how town/city charters were structured (the town is a legal person made of its inhabitants), as well as Medieval guilds (modern unions), universities,[4] etc.

Breaking down the legal separation could effect all of these legal entities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

[3] https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_journal/vol10/iss1/5/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University#Medieval_Europe

Post reply on HN