Is a Boeing 737 MAX the safest plane in service?

The HQ is not in Chicago anymore, it was moved to Arlington last year. To early to tell if its been beneficial at this point, but their performance on the Defense side has been abysmal in recent years. They've either lost competitions (JSF, Bomber, FLRAA) or when they do win they agree to ridiculous terms and lose their shirt on them. Hopefully moving the HQ close to the Pentagon can help with better understanding their customers needs.

 

You are not making a strong case for the headquarters being in Arlington, either... I still think Seattle would be better. They need to get back to an engineering culture and to the heart of the business. Their problem is not getting customers, it's making quality products and that is where the management team needs to be spending their time.

 

One can learn a lot from the marine. On a ship or boat, be it battle, cruise, cargo or racing, the captain/skipper is the one responsible for the safety and performance of his/her crew. Think about the captain is sitting in an armchair somewhere on land and has to guide the ship through a storm. Doesn't work!

 

Well said and sad to see the designers/engineers sacrificed at the altar of cost and schedule. How the Engineering Directors signed off on the MCAS design is mind-bogging. That tells you that no one is going to "fall on their sword" and cover for the engineers. They will let a bad design go through. Essentially, MCAS is not needed with a competent pilot.

Just a couple nights ago, they discussed the 737 Max on the "American Greed" TV show. It was interesting to see how the CEO defended the product. And when faced with the fact that 15 more crashes would occur over the aircraft's lifetime due to MCAS, decided to do nothing.

As a career AF Officer and Northrop Grumman engineer, it is sad to see Boeing's KC-46 Tanker issues that could have been prevented if Boeing had not protested the contract award to Northrop Grumman/Airbus. Northrop Grumman pulled out of the recompete after that, due to domestic politics, and now years later, there is still not an operational tanker. Boeing probably puts its best people on the commercial programs but it appears they are having trouble on almost every program, commercial and military. I hope the culture can return to producing quality products without compromising standards. That approach used to result in good profits too but apparently not enough when the board ties bonuses to production rates, profits, stock price, etc.

 

As an engineer who works for a company that makes highly technical products with a lot of MBAs making hugely influential strategic decisions, I can relate to the sentiment that someone with at least some Engineering experience at the helm is best.

But let's not forget that it was during Phil Condit's reign from 1996-2003 that Boeing moved from Seattle to Chicago and shifted the company's focus from commercial to military jets with massive acquisitions and restructuring, and fostering a very cozy relationship with the Federal Government.
Condit holds Engineering degrees from U of Cal Berkeley, Princeton and Phd from U of Tokyo, and has several aeronautical patents to his name.

How, specifically, do you see as unions as "strangling" Boeing?

Unions have quite a long history with the company: How Boeing’s relations with unions have evolved | HeraldNet.com

I'm not saying that Unions always act in the best interests of their workers and the company (intentionally or otherwise) but want to learn more about their impact on Boeing's current situation in particular.

There seems to be general agreement here that the drive for reducing costs in the interests of stock prices, dividends, CEO bonus' etc have ultimately hurt Boeing as an institution.

Outsourcing and moving company facilities (and workers) to cheaper locations are clearly and primarily done to reduce costs, sometimes to the detriment of product quality, delivery time, and not-too-infrequently COSTS.

In my company, Procurement will shop around and proclaim we can save xx% by getting these parts from China/Eastern Europe/India/Brazil etc. Great! What they usually don't properly take into account is the increased risk of fluctuations in transport cost and duration, currency rates, time zone and sometimes language and cultural differences slowing down Project Management decisions, etc etc etc.

I'd really like to hear what Bob has to say about being with Boeing during it's "Golden Age" with regards to it's Unionized workforce (both shop workers and Engineers).

 

I remember SPEEA going on strike during the height of the 777 development. Meanwhile the hundreds (or thousands) of contract (me included) and industry assist engineers continued moving the design forward. Such fun looking down on those engineers walking the sidewalks carrying their little signs. SPEEA was one of the main reasons I rejected overtures from management to go direct. At that time (early/mid 90's) merit raises were only a minor (<half) percentage of yearly raises. No way was I going to be lumped in with engineers who just wanted to punch in/out.

 

The Union is behind you.
Way behind you.

 

Someone is going to write a great book about all this, and I can't wait to read it.

 

In addition to what Jim posted, both unions at Boeing decided to go on strike just when airlines were jumping to Boeing when Air Bus was having problems.

 

"Flying Blind" The 737 Max and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison. It's a depressing read about a company that lost its way.

 

In 2020 when Boeing had layoffs in engineering, it was based on seniority, not on merit. I know a couple of good engineers who got layoff notices because they had just recently joined the company, or had recently switched roles. Meanwhile I know of a few guys who are terrible engineers and basically just coasting who didn't get layed off.
There was an incident a few years back where a bunch of guys (including the former Union president) got arrested for selling drugs at Boeing. They got convicted and did a stint in jail. When they got out the union got some of them their jobs back.

 

What makes an Engineer "terrible"?

There's a process for dealing with non/under-performing employees, Unionized or not.

 

Oh, I don't know, maybe the one that designs MCAS to use only a single sensor , when there are two sensors on the plane , when it is inexcusable not to have a minimum of three sensors for voting/redundancy , and then -- on top of that -- have the warning light for failure of the only sensor used to be an option (!!!???) .

 

Never worked in a union house I can see.

I was for various reasons in both Teamster (in the Jimmy Hoffa days) and AFL/CIO. For a period of time in my stupid youth I had maybe not support but a level of sympathy to unions. After a time and seeing a great number of really poor union employees I came to the realization never once, not one single time did I not see 100% union support for a terrible, dishonest, lazy, incompetent union card holder. Not a single instance of "You're right, hes a bum, get rid of him."

 

No argument from me on that **** up.... but.... you know that was a decision made by some bean counter to save cost.
UNLESS they were using improperly calculated probability models. Which really, even if the risk of a bird taking out the single sensor was <0.00001% should have been high enough to spend to the negligible cost of changing the code to disable MCAS entirely if the data from the 2 sensors was significantly out of agreement.

 

That choice was not the result of a single person, at all. I'm sure there were multiple levels of design review which took place involving several levels of engineering and management.

 

But I have.
One summer in the late 80's while in high school I worked in a supermarket and belonged to a Union.
My first job out of engineering school in the late 90s was in Production/Testing, inside a Unionized shop.
Then I worked in Germany for 3 years, surrounded by a Unionized workshop and Engineers.
I can't remember any glaring instances of incompetence or dishonestly, but sure I did see "lazy" Unionized workers.
I also have worked with plenty of what I consider lazy non-Unionized Engineers.
And we all know of plenty of instances, up to and including CEO level, of non-Union incompetence and/or dishonesty (sometimes coupled with massive golden parachutes).
I still don't understand how Boeing's troubles can be pinned on being "strangled by Unions". But I'm trying to keep an open mind.

 

I couldn't agree more with both posts. Without question the "bean counter force was strong with that one" . That said, it is inexcusable for any element of the organization to sign off on it, let alone all of them. I'm an engineer, I would have said no -- and would have gone public if I couldn't change the decision internally. I don't know a single engineer who wouldn't stand up and say no. It's the bean counters' fault, but many people in engineering should have taken a stand in my opinion because you don't design for disaster to happen, which is exactly what they did without any ambiguity.

I also left off that they didn't train the pilots to know how to deal with MCAS failure (because that wasn't the fault of engineering).

 

True, but lower-level Engineers can only do so much.
If they don't at least mention Roger Boisjoly in every single Engineering AND Management school's mandatory curriculum (Ethics), they should:
Roger Boisjoly - Wikipedia

 

My experience while working a (my one and only..) union job was soul-crushing. I never saw guys put so much effort into getting paid as much as they could for doing as little actual work as humanly possible. It's like the union "Bubbas" were always trying to pull one over on "The Man". And the union leadership from the very top down were all complicit in that. Seniority was everything and job quality was nothing. I couldn't wait to get away from those dirtbags. Anyway, that was my experience in a unionized workforce.

 

I've had different experience. Union machinists, lift operators, pipe fitters, hydro testers, and Engineers largely took pride in a job well done.
Did they come in early or work after hours without pay? Hell no, then again why should they? Start doing that and you'll be on call 24/7.
That's fine if someone choses to do that, but you shouldn't be forced to.

 

I spent 18+ years at a non-unionized aircraft manufacturer, and 21+ years at a unionized one. One of them had a good working atmosphere with equitable pay and benefits for all. Guess which one?

 

Interesting piece.

A Cycle of Misery: The Business of Building Commercial Aircraft

"You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't quit" – Jean Pierson, former CEO of Airbus

"There are no historic precedents or current parallels for the magnitude of financial exposure risked by an American airframe company" – George Ball, managing director at Lehman Brothers, 1982



https://www.construction-physics.com/p/a-cycle-of-misery-the-business-of?publication_id=104058&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=9bg2k

 

And Edward A. Murphy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_A._Murphy_Jr.