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What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

prospect.org

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Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#301

Post by FredPret »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #290
FredPret wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oversight we have into public companies is only financial. There's no annual third-party safety audit for engineering (yet).

Well there's the FAA oversight... Which has also hollowed out. NTSB is still an amazing accident investigator but better to prevent these things than wait for NTSB to step in

Maybe the FAA should hire three engineering firms to go over the designs and manufacturing and have them compete to see who can find the worst flaws. Just having one big entity (FAA) check up on one other big entity (Boeing) leads to problems.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#302

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pdonis wrote: post #242
baggy_trough wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing, and the United States as a whole, have been very richly endowed with capital. When you decide to stop adding to your seed corn and start to eat it down, but you began with an enormous mountain of it, you can eat well for a very long period of time.

I'm not asking why Boeing continued to make money. I'm asking why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed, and some kind of intervention wasn't made before two fatal airline accidents and other near misses happened. The point of the oversight we have is supposed to be to spot problems before they reach that level. If your answer is that not just Boeing, but our whole syst…

> why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed

Current brokenthink of the management class is that their job is to wage war on their own workforce and labour rights. In the process destroying human capital. This isn't just my conclusion based on the fact that FANG was fined for having anti-poaching agreement - country-wide, corporate spending on workforce training and upskilling has been falling for the past 20 years.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#304

Post by markbnj »

margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

>> It's worth reading, perhaps unless you're going to be flying on a Boeing plane anytime soon.

Just returned from Miami yesterday aboard a B757-200. I was intrigued because it has been so long since I've flown on one. The trip down was a 737-Max8 (or 9 I'm not sure). So I wondered if this was a plane that they had dragged out of retirement. Not like Newark-Miami is a backwater route.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#305

Post by ETH_start »

When journalists write about unions, like this:

>The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

They have a moral obligation to disclose their conflicts of interest in being unionized themselves.

The staff at The American Prospect are all part of a News Guild, with their employer mandated into exclusive collective bargaining with their bargaining unit:

https://wbng.org/unit/the-american-prospect/

They thereby benefit from laws that enshrine union control at the expense of contract liberty.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#306

Post by margalabargala »

m463 wrote: post #184
margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

It's really hard to recover from a downgrade in culture. I hear the same kinds of things about IBM. I'm pretty sure there are other examples. The tough part is - it is sad . Read about boeing and Tex Johnston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_M._Johnston#Boeing_Compa... and IBM invented the PC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Other examples include Xerox and Kodak.

I also wonder if it has happened in the past, with a subsequent recovery, to some American car companies? GM pre-2008 perhaps?

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#307

Post by DonHopkins »

But racist white supremacists like Elon Musk blamed it on "DEI" (which is their new dog whistle for the n-word). Same thing they say caused a container ship to hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

‘A Black guy’ didn’t cause Boeing’s midair blowout. Capitalism did:

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/boeing-airplane-safety-dei-...

Baltimore mayor claims 'racist' critics use 'DEI' instead of N-word to attack him:

https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/baltimore-mayor-claims...

>"Listen, I know and we all know and you know very well that Black men and young Black men in particular have been the boogeyman for those who are racist and think that only straight wealthy white men should have a say in anything," Scott said. "What they mean by DEI, in my opinion, is duly elected incumbent. We know what they want to say but they don’t have the courage to say the N-word."

>Scott was elected in 2020 with 70% of the popular vote. He is one among five mayors of color to have led the city since 2007. Over 60% of Baltimore residents are Black, according to Census data.

Lyman blames DEI for Baltimore bridge collapse, but admits he didn’t write social media post:

https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2024/03/27/utah-governor-candid...

>Utah Republican Phil Lyman, an outgoing state representative and current gubernatorial candidate, suggested diversity, equity and inclusion programs were to blame, at least in part, for the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#308

Post by margalabargala »

justrealist wrote: post #95
margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

> It's worth reading, perhaps unless you're going to be flying on a Boeing plane anytime soon. This is all bad for Boeing, but at the end of the day, nobody has died on an American carrier in a Boeing plane in a very long time. Aircraft safety is layers on layers on layers. Let's not FUD people into thinking that flying on the worst plane Boeing has ever put out is anywhere comparable to the daily risks of driving.

> but at the end of the day, nobody has died on an American carrier in a Boeing plane in a very long time.

This is coincidental. When the plug ripped out of the plane over Portland, it was pure luck that no one was sitting in that row. The seats were shredded. If someone had been sitting there, they also would have been shredded.

Boeing and their deteriorated quality culture is directly at fault for that one, and the only thing that prevented a fatality is a coincidence of seating arrangement.

As far as I'm concerned, that resets their safety clock.

If a new 737 were to literally disintegrate in midair, but by pure happenstance it was entirely staffed and occupied by skydivers wearing parachutes and as a result no one dies, that also shouldn't be handwaved off as "oh nobody has died in a long time" just because luck prevented an otherwise sure death in that specific scenario.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#309

Post by mianos »

tycho-newman wrote: post #250

Boeing’s crappy planes killed hundreds of people, true. But that was years ago! So a door blew off a plane. Did it crash? No. So a tire fell off a plane. Did it crash? No. It goes to show that even after a quarter century of decline, there’s enough engineering savvy to at least make some things fail to a known condition.

They killed 346 people just 3 years ago due to badly managed MCAS software testing. I guess I can't disagree as you as years is plural and, try, more than one year ago.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#310

Post by margalabargala »

deviantbit wrote: post #157
margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

What do you mean by "down hill"? Boeing has developed incredible technologies since the MD merger. They have been profitable w/ these technologies. You make a claim they were going down hill, what do you mean? I have a number of family members that work for Boeing, that have been in executive management, engineering and research. None of them ever mentioned MD as being the beginning of a decline. All of them tell a d…

This is a discussion of an article. You'll find a link to it at the top of the page. If you read the article, I am sure someone as intelligent as yourself will be able to use context clues to figure out what I mean by "down hill". That article is what I am backing up my claim with.
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