FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - WS multibillion-dollar Max 10 order may face delays as aircraft awaits certification

Feb 8, 2024 | 4:18 am

#11

tcook052

A FlyerTalk Posting Legend

Join Date: May 2002

Location: YEG

Programs: HH Silver

Posts: 56,986

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sopwith

While statistically this may be true, when a couple of aircraft are forced into an irrecoverable dive and a door blows off another one in mid flight it shows an alarming deficiency in at least two of the design, manufacturing, QC and QA processes. These were preventable accidents. One wonders what else is wrong that we don’t know about yet.

Indeed and don't recall an Airbus aircraft model being grounded for 20-months by FAA as happened to the MAX.

According to some, the biggest Boeing defect is it's corporate culture that places profits before precision.

Historically, Boeing was renowned for its boundary-pushing innovations in aviation, which helped put commercial air travel on the map. But in 1997, Boeing bought a rival plane maker called McDonnell Douglas; instead of Boeing culture influencing McDonnell, however, the opposite happened. The engineer-focused company got a heavy dose of the cutthroat GE ethos as McDonnell’s CEO — a Welch disciple — became the president and chief operating officer, and later CEO, of the merged company. Other Boeing leaders, including James McNerney and current CEO David Calhoun, have also had stints at GE.

In Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, journalist Peter Robison describes an environment where safety concerns were concealed or downplayed, in part to be faster and cheaper than Airbus, the former underdog that overtook Boeing as the biggest commercial aircraft manufacturer in the world in 2019.

The company began relying more on subcontractors; It had its own fuselage plant until 2005, when it sold it to a private equity firm — that entity became Spirit AeroSystems. Today, Boeing only completes the final assembly of a plane after it sources parts from thousands of suppliers. Outsourcing is cheaper — but using so many suppliers reduces the fine-tune control and oversight a company has over the parts that make up their product, according to aviation experts.

Reply