Because, America

[Ivanhoe]

1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

I'm not sure they can rebuild safety culture before running out of money, ...

I don't think they can.

Question then becomes, what next?

Option A - 3rd party aerospace manufacturer that would be willing to do an LBO and begin a massive overhaul project. Boebus? BAEing? Lockheed Martin Boeing? Boetheon? Boetata?

Option B - nationalization ("Amtrak in the skies!"). Invest in body bag manufacturers. Wear a helmet.

Option C - yard sale. Part it out like a 1975 Dodge Dart and throw the rusty bits away.

[rmgill]

Bankruptcy and restructuring. New Management. Fire the old management. Corporate leadership gets held accountable for LONG term stock price, not short term dividends that later cause the company to go into a death spiral. 

[Ssnake]

I think Boeing management thinks that they are too big to fail, and I think they are right in the sense that the US government probably will not allow it to be bought up by foreign investors. After all, Boeing also plays a major role in national defense.

Which also means, as a company they will somehow continue to exist. But at some point I also think that the US government will have no choice but drop the hammer on them, hard.

I don't know if the huge pile of undeliverable aircraft wrecks in their backyard is somehow salvageable. This is what current management seems to believe, but they seem to believe in a lot of crap lately. And if these aircraft-shaped heaps of carbon fiber and electronics cannot be salvaged, I think that's going to be the moment of truth. Right now I wouldn't touch the Boeing stock with a ten foot pole, the real crash hasn't happened yet. It will come when the DOJ will really bring forward criminal charges and more airline companies like Qatar simply refuse to accept deliveries because their inspections show more problems that passed Boeing QC, which kinda looks inevitable to me at this point.

 

I suppose there could be a mix of A and B where the US government might assume partial ownership of Boeing to allow for a smaller company to take them over without bankrupting themselves in the process. I don't think the US government would be willing to let Lockmart buy them, it can only be a relatively small US defense company (but large enough to finance, say, half of Boeing at a stock price of under 50, possibly well under 20 bucks.

[sunday]

Now, it is no wonder that Space X was able to surpass Boeing in the contract for the manned space capsule. And at less cost, even.

[LT Ducky]

This is a truly sad fall of what was once the standard of the aircraft industry. I’ve gotten to know several airline pilots over the years and one of their sayings was ‘If it ain’t Boeing I ain’t going.’

[futon]

It all looks like issues on final assembly. Not the design of the plane. Maybe final assembly should be done off-shore. Quality American manufacturers have salaries too high to compete international. The catching up makers will naturally have lower labor costs because their coming up from below.

[Ssnake]

44 minutes ago, futon said:

Quality American manufacturers have salaries too high to compete international

I don't believe they are that much higher than European salaries. Boeing and Airbus are operating at comparable cost structures. Even with a considerable cost difference (say, 30%) airlines would still not exclusively buy Airbus because a second supplier is needed. You might then order only 30% of your fleet from the more costly competitor, or 25, but nobody wants to be completely dependent on a single supplier.

Before the Max8 disaster, Boeing and Airbus had a roughly equal market share. Even now new orders aren't exclusively placed with Airbus because they can't ramp up their production as fast as the airlines demand it.

[Ssnake]

58 minutes ago, futon said:

It all looks like issues on final assembly. Not the design of the plane.

But you have those final assembly problems in part because of the overreliance on suppliers. They demand engineering services from suppliers without engineering departments, at no-engineers-involved prices. Don't know how they thought that would ever work. It's the McDonnell formula that resulted them in failing so hard (717) that Boeing had to buy them, except that Boeing invited the vampires into their home with that merger.

No, this is a systemic, a corporate culture failure - not just a faulty process, if you follow the story and one Youtube video above.

 

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

and

 

[futon]

2 hours ago, Ssnake said:

But you have those final assembly problems in part because of the overreliance on suppliers. They demand engineering services from suppliers without engineering departments, at no-engineers-involved prices. Don't know how they thought that would ever work. It's the McDonnell formula that resulted them in failing so hard (717) that Boeing had to buy them, except that Boeing invited the vampires into their home with that merger.

No, this is a systemic, a corporate culture failure - not just a faulty process, if you follow the story and one Youtube video above.

 

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

and

 

Not properly screwed in seats, metal shreads left across wiring, loose floor, complaints that it looked like they hired people straight from fast food, are all final assembly stuff from the sound of it and is going to make it a problem, even if suppliers are perfect. If the talk is about an issue about suppliers, then which suppliers? Has it been identified? Suppliers without proper departments? Is that Mitsubishi or Kawasaki? Or is it the ones in Italy, South Korea, or other parts of the US? Those other countries are technically capable. Maybe "proper department" is label only. 

If the answer is in the video, I won't have time to watch it. Can the important points be extracted onto text?

JAL has forty-three 787s, most of which for international routes. When one drops off the radar, maybe we can recklessly assume why. They have a bunch of airbus airliners as well, properly from the result of what looks like problematic final assembly.

[futon]

3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

I don't believe they are that much higher than European salaries. Boeing and Airbus are operating at comparable cost structures. Even with a considerable cost difference (say, 30%) airlines would still not exclusively buy Airbus because a second supplier is needed. You might then order only 30% of your fleet from the more costly competitor, or 25, but nobody wants to be completely dependent on a single supplier.

Before the Max8 disaster, Boeing and Airbus had a roughly equal market share. Even now new orders aren't exclusively placed with Airbus because they can't ramp up their production as fast as the airlines demand it.

If quality american salaries are not much different, the quality of the workers themselves are. Or Boeing tried to cut corners for bigger profit margins by not hiring proper workers.

Edited April 16, 2024 by futon

[sunday]

5 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Even with a considerable cost difference (say, 30%) airlines would still not exclusively buy Airbus because a second supplier is needed. You might then order only 30% of your fleet from the more costly competitor, or 25, but nobody wants to be completely dependent on a single supplier.

Ryanair is for a ride, as they only use Boeing 737 planes.

Edited to add: Boeing did ask Ryanair for help in quality control, and Ryanair doubled the number of engineers detached to America to check-out planes. Link in Spanish.

Edited April 16, 2024 by sunday

[Ssnake]

3 hours ago, futon said:

If quality american salaries are not much different, the quality of the workers themselves are. Or Boeing tried to cut corners for bigger profit margins by not hiring proper workers.

If the first story is to believed, they systematically suppressed and squeezed out everybody managing quality control and insisting on adherence to the old safety culture, in pursuit of increasing the Boeing share price tenfold.

So, yes, part of their problems comes from hiring green staff, giving them minimal training. Part comes from minimizing supervision, actively deterring negative reports. Part comes from excessive outsourcing, pushed by MDD executives that failed with the strategy before, and apparently thought it was a grand idea to make Boeing fail with this too.

One of the major supplier that created problems seems to have been Spirit Aerosystems (briefly shown, not mentioned, in the Mentour video), which ironically used to be a Boeing plant that Boeing no longer wanted (2005), now they are thinking of buying them again, it seems, maybe to get a handle on the 737 production issues. More about the outsourcing-induced problems here:

My impression is, these problems are too numerous and too fundamental to justify the hope for a quick turnaround. Attributing Boeing's current problems to a small number of root causes that are easy to fix seems to be exactly the kind of wishful thinking prevalent among current Boeing leadership. I think the worst isn't over yet, but more problems will be brought to light once that the regulators are really going to look into matters in the course of the impending criminal investigations.

[seahawk]

3 hours ago, futon said:

If quality american salaries are not much different, the quality of the workers themselves are. Or Boeing tried to cut corners for bigger profit margins by not hiring proper workers.

It is not the quality, but the working conditions. In aviation everything is at least double checked. Which takes time and therefore costs money.

It starts slowly. Instead of having every screw and nut double checked you go down to representative checks. Then you reduce the time the worker has to set each connection further. At some point you reach the point at which the time is not enough to do it properly. Then your safety advisors should scream, but now you can decide to give the workers more time or further reduce the checks. It is simply a problem of culture. Just pay a bonus to the workers and the people controlling the work if few faults are found and you get the system to optimize itself towards lower standards.

Once you burden the people responsible for quality control with achieving co-operate goals you are going to run into problems and Boeing not only burdened them, they put active pressure on them to make "things work".

Edited April 16, 2024 by seahawk

[futon]

25 minutes ago, seahawk said:

It is not the quality, but the working conditions. In aviation everything is at least double checked. Which takes time and therefore costs money.

It starts slowly. Instead of having every screw and nut double checked you go down to representative checks. Then you reduce the time the worker has to set each connection further. At some point you reach the point at which the time is not enough to do it properly. Then your safety advisors should scream, but now you can decide to give the workers more time or further reduce the checks. It is simply a problem of culture. Just pay a bonus to the workers and the people controlling the work if few faults are found and you get the system to optimize itself towards lower standards.

Once you burden the people responsible for quality control with achieving co-operate goals you are going to run into problems and Boeing not only burdened them, they put active pressure on them to make "things work".

Yeah, so from the sound of all the actual examples of problems, that's specifically at the final assembly stage. Which means that the design of the aircraft is not the issue. And it sounds like even the supplier based scheme was not the problem either. Because if the final assembly stage had the right work culture, and every thing was being doubled check with comfortable work hours allocated to ensure a thorough check, then all the supplier parts would still just come together smoothly.

Edited April 16, 2024 by futon

[seahawk]

The crashes were a design error. And usually such culture expands to the suppliers. If price is more important than quality, you get the quality you are paying for. It gets worse if the quality control of the supplier and the OEM just look over faults.

Spirit is the typical example. Spirit also does work for Airbus, Bombardier and Lockmart - yet the quality problems concentrate on their work for Boeing.

Edited April 16, 2024 by seahawk

[Stuart Galbraith]

17 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

To be precise, the FAA doesn't want to get in the way of the airliner market. Their attitude towards general aviation is mostly obstructionist.

They really that hard on light aviation? Employs fewer lawyers I guess....

[Stuart Galbraith]

15 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

I don't think they can.

Question then becomes, what next?

Option A - 3rd party aerospace manufacturer that would be willing to do an LBO and begin a massive overhaul project. Boebus? BAEing? Lockheed Martin Boeing? Boetheon? Boetata?

Option B - nationalization ("Amtrak in the skies!"). Invest in body bag manufacturers. Wear a helmet.

Option C - yard sale. Part it out like a 1975 Dodge Dart and throw the rusty bits away.

if Rolls Royce is any guide, nationalize it, go through the place with a broom, clean up the rot, employ decent managers to fix the culture, then after 5-10 years, privatize it again. Oh, perhaps keep some shares back, so you can get some payback over the next 50 years for the money you put in.

The only other alternative, just nationalize the military production side, split it up into smaller companies, privatize, and just let the civilian aviation side wither away and die, and confront the ugly tomorrow of flying everywhere in Airbuses and Chicom airliners.

I still think they can fix themselves. But its going to take a real bastard at the top to kick it into shape.

[Stuart Galbraith]

10 hours ago, LT Ducky said:

This is a truly sad fall of what was once the standard of the aircraft industry. I’ve gotten to know several airline pilots over the years and one of their sayings was ‘If it ain’t Boeing I ain’t going.’

They did have had their ups and downs though. The Pan Am clippers, for all their grace an elegance, had a truly horrible safety record, something like a 3rd of them crashed. Usually without fatal results, but its still a bad look.

Then there is the B29, which had horrible problems. Now I grant you much of that was due to having problems with getting a truly inovatory combat aircraft into service during a war and rushing it, but the number of engine fires is still disturbing and difficult to defend, particularly as there was an alternative engine configuration proven as viable with the B39. After all, it didnt have to be allison inline engines. They coudl probably have got by with Merlins or Griffins.

Whats far harder to defend is the Boeing Stratocruiser. Considering they copied so much across from the B50, that should have been relatively straightforward. They lost 13 of them, and whilst it did mature into a truly revolutionary aircraft, it was a long hard road. Some of the lost aircraft were never discovered, and we still are not entirely sure what happened to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_377_Stratocruiser

All that out the way, there is no denying that between the late 1950's and the 1990's, it was a wonderful company, and undoubtedly worth of the respect people gave it. But then, so was Douglas before their corporate culture went mad.

Edited April 16, 2024 by Stuart Galbraith

[seahawk]

26 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I still think they can fix themselves. But its going to take a real bastard at the top to kick it into shape.

No, it does not. It needs another board and other investors, who value long time stability over short time payouts.

[futon]

2 hours ago, seahawk said:

The crashes were a design error. And usually such culture expands to the suppliers. If price is more important than quality, you get the quality you are paying for. It gets worse if the quality control of the supplier and the OEM just look over faults.

Spirit is the typical example. Spirit also does work for Airbus, Bombardier and Lockmart - yet the quality problems concentrate on their work for Boeing.

I'm of course open to hearing which accidents were due to bad design. It wouldn't surprise me if there are some. 

[seahawk]

Both MAX crashes imho were due to a bad design of the flight control system and also because awful communication about the new system.

[futon]

What about the 787?

[futon]

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

if Rolls Royce is any guide, nationalize it, go through the place with a broom, clean up the rot, employ decent managers to fix the culture, then after 5-10 years, privatize it again. Oh, perhaps keep some shares back, so you can get some payback over the next 50 years for the money you put in.

The only other alternative, just nationalize the military production side, split it up into smaller companies, privatize, and just let the civilian aviation side wither away and die, and confront the ugly tomorrow of flying everywhere in Airbuses and Chicom airliners.

I still think they can fix themselves. But its going to take a real bastard at the top to kick it into shape.

Send in Kazuo Inamori.

[Ivanhoe]

5 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

They really that hard on light aviation? Employs fewer legislators I guess....

FIFY

[rmgill]

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

They really that hard on light aviation?

Yes.