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

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

#331

Post by pseingatl »

kelp wrote: post #260
Rinzler89 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the size of the company, it's about the barrier to entry of the market they're in, how much competition they have and the amount of vendor lock-in. And civil aviation in general scores top marks in all those fields. It's a duopoly with an insane barrier to entry both technical, legal and financial with very long and complex vendor lock-in.

I wonder if this opens up an opportunity for Bombardier and Embraer to move up market into the 737s space.

Isn't Bombardier now owned by Airbus? But you make a good point: why hasn't Embraer moved into this space?

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

#332

Post by pseingatl »

constantcrying wrote: post #238
forgotmyinfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all're gonna hate this, but financialization and the relentless pursuit of profits. Every time this stuff happens, people ask why, and it's because of greed. When you focus on making money above all else, this is what happens. It's not a mystery.

No. Under nearly any other circumstance a company like Boeing would simply go under. If a car manufacturer pulled something like this they either have to fix it really fast or have to face severe financial consequences. You have to realize that Boeing's customers have no alternative. They will be buying planes from Boeing.

Unless the DoJ splits up Boeing, which is what they should do. If Apple's iPhone is a monopoly with dozens of Android alternatives, what does that say about Boeing?

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

#333

Post by ClumsyPilot »

partiallypro wrote: post #206
zer00eyz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire first half of this (tfp directly above this comment) article blindly supports the spin that there is some conspiracy where someone killed him. HIs own family goes into great detail all over the press about how he had anxiety and ptsd. That he quit his job on DR orders or the stress was going to give him a heart attack. The shit Boeing did to him was awful (stress, anxiety and ptsd) and Boeing should be bla…

I don't really even get the conspiracy theory that he was murdered, if Boeing etc are all so knowing and powerful why didn't they kill him years ago, well before he could tell his tale? Now they kill him because he already spoke out and they want to put the spotlight on themselves? The whole thing doesn't really make a lot of logical sense.

> Boeing etc are all so knowing and powerful

It sounds like you have some unrealistic overestimate of your safety against a determined criminal. This just an older gentleman, far away from home, alone, with no security.

One method is to hire a junky, or a homeless person, or some other desperate person to commit a crime. Affordable to the middle class! And even if they are caught, they would not know your identity.

Kadyrov regularly assassinates his critics in EU for example, and that's not even his 'territory' so to speak, https://warsawinstitute.org/kadyrovs-hitmen/

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

#334

Post by freeopinion »

peblos wrote: post #317
freeopinion wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> standing up a competitor is not really an option This is the part that bothers me. Why isn't it an option? Standing up a new orbital rocket company was not really an option in 2000. If Boeing can deliver 400 aircraft a year, why can't a startup deliver 6 in the next six years. I don't mean 6/year. I mean take 6 years to build your first 6. Or maybe it takes 12 years to deliver the first 6. Then aim to deliver one p…

Selling 6 planes is nothing. It wouldn’t even cover the standby aircraft of many fleets. You need large orders to make it feasible, and you need a strong product to secure those orders. FedEx, UPS and co. aren’t going to fund you long term unless you have a product and you need good teams and good funding to even get you to that starting block. Boom is probably the closest thing to what is suggested but many still do…

Obviously, selling 6 planes is not the end goal. But you have to sell 6 before you sell 600. Pre-selling an aircraft or two to a few shipping companies would pose a low risk investment to those companies, but provide a great lift for a struggling new hopeful. Look at how that worked for Rivian.

Your example of engines is an excellent point. Repeat that story 100 times to begin to understand the enormous difficulty. Which is to say, it won't be easy. I hope I didn't communicate that I thought it would be easy.

The story of Bombardier is maddening because it demonstrates that if you achieve unbelievably great things technically, you can still be assassinated by a million other attacks. The non-technical parts are what really seem to make this all a non-starter. But victory belongs to the bold.

And wouldn't it be a worthwhile ride to spend the next 20 years building incredibly cool stuff that eventually fails for whatever reason? Sign me up.

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

#335

Post by pseingatl »

djbusby wrote: post #18
iaoat2d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

Those old engineers cost too much! And we already know how to build planes. So, we can ditch them, my quarterly KPIs look good and with the money freed up from pushing them out it can land in my bonus check!

Or 20 billion in stock buy-backs, juicing the price.

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

#336

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #92
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this? Well at a first order, the answer is that the stock market as a system for promoting value creation is an imperfect approximation of an ideal value creator, and more and more we are beginning to see the myriad of ways this concept produces antisocial results. (See for example the state of hospitals and schools, and the rising rate of individuals with crippling…

I should add that our short term market-based approach to economic activity fails to produce appropriate housing outcomes, and that the approaches in Vienna or Singapore could end our homelessness crisis and make everyone happier. I recently read a doctor’s account of the homeless people who use the ER as a community space by complaining of minor illnesses, and it seems so clear to me it would be cheaper to give them…

> streets of San Francisco smell a LOOOT better

What happened to all the public toilets in US/UK? I remember there being many more, am I hallucinating this?

Many 2nd world countries still have them, for good reason!

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

#337

Post by josephg »

golergka wrote: post #324
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #70

The "funny" thing to me is that I'm old enough to remember when the merger occurred that people were predicting exactly what came to pass. It just took 25 years to finally happen.

Is it feasible to hold a short position on a stock for 25 years?

Sure. Just hold a small short position.

As they say, you’ve gotta be careful. The market can stay crazy longer than you can stay solvent.

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

#338

Post by idontpost »

margalabargala wrote: post #8
proc0 wrote: post #5

> Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal This sounds like the changes that have taken place in the software industry in the past 10-20 years. Engineers are meant to do much more than engineering, including testing their own software, managing project timelines, etc., however with software nobody dies, you just get crappy software that constantly breaks and need…

> however with software nobody dies The MCAS issue which crashed two Boeing planes was a software hack.

[dead]

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

#339

Post by diputsmonro »

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…

There is no comforting answer. Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down. In every industry it's the same. The guard rails have been systematically dismantled for decades by opportunists just like this, hoping to make some quick cash and jump ship before it falls down.

Whenever anyone points this out, they get labeled as cynics who hate capitalism and industry, and their complaints are swept under the rug -- after all, the company hasn't collapsed yet, so the worries must be unfounded!

This is exactly why strong government regulations and oversight is necessary. Strictly profit driven companies don't care about externalities like pollution or human lives. Literally, they only care about making one number go up, everything else (including the long term value of the number) means nothing at all.

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

#340

Post by justrealist »

margalabargala wrote: post #308
justrealist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Even if, worst case, 3 people had been sitting there and died (and people are tougher than seats), it would only move needle trivially vs cars.
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