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- Jul 6, 2021
Boeing Troubles - One of the world's largest aerospace manufacturers keeps having problems with their planes.
- Thread starter Breadbassket
- Start date
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- Nov 14, 2017
Don't worry, his friends aren't buying it either.
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- Mar 5, 2018
Jack Welch was also a deep believer in the cult of Six Sigma.
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- Jun 18, 2019
Jack Welsh having his fingerprints on this makes sense.
I worked at a former GE company, and Jack Welsh’s methods absolutely gutted its function. It makes sense that the same thing would happen with his acolytes.
GE was huge into diversity hiring way before it was mainstream. GE appointed a butch lesbian and an Indian over our technical services unit for chemical manufacturing. They completely killed our goodwill with customers by firing all of our experienced technicians and continuously trying to scam them. Eventually when we were divested, they were removed, but the damage was done.
Fortunately, our main competitor was also formerly owned by GE and was in even worse shape.
Unions are a nightmare for production reliability, so I can’t blame McD/Boeing leadership for trying to dodge them, but mass outsourcing/subcontracting clearly had greater costs.
The sudden media frenzy over this makes me suspicious though. Boeing has sucked for a long time. I wonder why it’s all coming to a head now.
I worked at a former GE company, and Jack Welsh’s methods absolutely gutted its function. It makes sense that the same thing would happen with his acolytes.
GE was huge into diversity hiring way before it was mainstream. GE appointed a butch lesbian and an Indian over our technical services unit for chemical manufacturing. They completely killed our goodwill with customers by firing all of our experienced technicians and continuously trying to scam them. Eventually when we were divested, they were removed, but the damage was done.
Fortunately, our main competitor was also formerly owned by GE and was in even worse shape.
Unions are a nightmare for production reliability, so I can’t blame McD/Boeing leadership for trying to dodge them, but mass outsourcing/subcontracting clearly had greater costs.
The sudden media frenzy over this makes me suspicious though. Boeing has sucked for a long time. I wonder why it’s all coming to a head now.
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- Joined
- Jun 17, 2015
The joke is that MacDac bought Boeing with Boeing's own money, when the two companies merged in the late 90s.
For some reason, MacDac's staff/executives (who were responsible for sinking the company in the first place) were allowed to be on Boeing's board, where they proceeded to be as penny-pinching as possible. This included selling off some properties, outsourcing, and splitting parts of the company off to be ran separately (eg: Spirit Aerosystems (completely unrelated to Spirit Airlines), which was allegedly responsible for the Alaska Airlines door plug incident this January by not installing any of the 4 required bolts). Replacing the former leading team of engineers, Boeing's board was eventually filled to the brim with these accountants, who then moved Boeing's HQ to Chicago so they could get away from the Boeing Engineers complaining about the board's shitty decisions. The board/HQ was then moved again to Washington DC, ostensibly so they could lobby lawmakers more effectively.
Boeing's problems recently are the result of decades of mismanagement and a cozy relationship with the FAA, which was stretched too thin to effectively do all of its duties in a timely manner, and foolishly let Boeing monitor and handle certifications themselves.
United recently updated their SEC filing to indicate that they do not expect to receive any MAX-10s until after 2025. While they didn't say that they would be cancelling the 277 MAX-10 plane order with Boeing, it may be a consideration, seeing as how the main advantage of the MAX was its shorter waiting period before airplane delivery, as compared to Airbus.
Apparently, Boeing is looking to buy Spirit Aerosystems. The cynical part of me thinks it's a PR stunt to make it look like they're doing anything proactive with their QA.
For some reason, MacDac's staff/executives (who were responsible for sinking the company in the first place) were allowed to be on Boeing's board, where they proceeded to be as penny-pinching as possible. This included selling off some properties, outsourcing, and splitting parts of the company off to be ran separately (eg: Spirit Aerosystems (completely unrelated to Spirit Airlines), which was allegedly responsible for the Alaska Airlines door plug incident this January by not installing any of the 4 required bolts). Replacing the former leading team of engineers, Boeing's board was eventually filled to the brim with these accountants, who then moved Boeing's HQ to Chicago so they could get away from the Boeing Engineers complaining about the board's shitty decisions. The board/HQ was then moved again to Washington DC, ostensibly so they could lobby lawmakers more effectively.
Boeing's problems recently are the result of decades of mismanagement and a cozy relationship with the FAA, which was stretched too thin to effectively do all of its duties in a timely manner, and foolishly let Boeing monitor and handle certifications themselves.
United recently updated their SEC filing to indicate that they do not expect to receive any MAX-10s until after 2025. While they didn't say that they would be cancelling the 277 MAX-10 plane order with Boeing, it may be a consideration, seeing as how the main advantage of the MAX was its shorter waiting period before airplane delivery, as compared to Airbus.
Apparently, Boeing is looking to buy Spirit Aerosystems. The cynical part of me thinks it's a PR stunt to make it look like they're doing anything proactive with their QA.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2023
Holy shit. A bunch of cocky assholes in expensive suits are probably having a really bad night tonight.
Everyone is killing it with these posts, really a lot to think about.
But yes to @Wisseau 's point this was no secret, to the exent that tons of research and plenty of ink has been spilled already documenting the fatal shift in philosophy that led to our issues today.
I don't think anyone is saying that it's out of the realm of possibility that Boeing personnel suicided the whistleblower but it's also entirely possible that the guy realized (or had his family threatend or some such thing) he was in way over his head taking on the company like this.
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2019
It's also worth pointing out that this was Boeing reacting to Airbus coming out with the "we put better engines and a bodykit on it" A320neo that was poised to sell like a billion units (and apparently had more care put into its development). Boeing had to do something to get a slice of the pie and prevent the traditional American operators from buying dirty foreign planes by the hundreds, hence the MAX being rushed to market.
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- Joined
- Sep 6, 2019
Not to defend Boeing but that sounds more like Clear Air Turbulence than a technical issue.
Rei is Shit.
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
A Boeing lobbyist sent out a pissy email blaming the NTSB that lead to the guy getting fired;
An outside Boeing lobbyist on Capitol Hill sent an email to Republican members of Congress late Wednesday bluntly attempting to discredit the Senate testimony of National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy.
After The Seattle Times asked about the email Friday, both Boeing and the lobbyist scrambled to undo the potential damage.
In a statement, Boeing said it “did not authorize this communication and regret that it was sent. We deeply respect the NTSB and will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with them.”
The lobbyist responded that the message had been sent out inadvertently and without Boeing’s knowledge.
Homendy had scathingly criticized Boeing for failing to produce documentation of the botched installation work on the door plug that blew out midair on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Jan. 5.
She also testified that Boeing had not provided the names of all the employees involved, despite repeated requests, and that the NTSB had not been able to interview even the manager of the team involved.
The email was sent by former Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, now a lobbyist for Washington, D.C.-based Squire Patton Boggs, a prominent law firm that is among the largest lobbying companies in the world. It represents a list of well-heeled clients that includes the Saudi Arabian government.
According to a December roundup of new lobbying appointments on the political news site Politico, Boeing had then just hired Squire to lobby Congress on the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill and other legislation affecting the jet maker. Kingston was named to that team.
Homendy had testified that, over the two months since the blowout, the NTSB repeatedly asked Boeing for information related to the faulty installation last September of the door plug and had not received it.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” Homendy said.
Kingston’s letter directly contradicts this.
“In fact, the information that she requested two months ago has been received. What has not been provided is additional information that she just requested this past Saturday, March 2,” Kingston wrote. “Therefore, there have been only two full working days for Boeing to respond.”
This echoes a Boeing claim after Wednesday’s hearing that it provided “early in the investigation” the names of some Boeing employees who worked in the area of the door plug and that the NTSB had asked for a full list of everyone on the Renton aircraft door team only on Saturday.
After Boeing issued that statement Wednesday, NTSB spokesperson Eric Weiss said Homendy “stands by her accurate testimony.”
While Boeing’s official statement after the hearing that day began by offering “deep respect for the NTSB and the critical role they play in aviation safety,” Kingston’s email bypasses such niceties and just flatly contradicts that part of Homendy’s testimony.
Kingston goes on to make a further excuse for Boeing’s alleged tardiness in responding to the NTSB requests, writing that “some of this information is sensitive as it involves personnel, necessitating Boeing’s legal and human resources departments sign off on it.”
And focused solely on denying the NTSB’s position about its request for the names of employees, Kingston’s message offers no comment on another key part of Homendy’s testimony.
His email doesn’t mention Boeing’s failure to provide the records documenting the work that was done on the door plug.
At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, congressional criticism of Boeing’s lack of cooperation with the NTSB was bipartisan.
Ranking Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called it “utterly unacceptable.”
Kingston ends his email to the Republican members of Congress by offering to discuss the matter further and provide additional details.
In an email Friday, Kingston wrote “unfortunately, the email inadvertently was sent out by my office without my knowledge (or Boeing’s) and it should not have been sent.”
On Friday, NTSB spokesperson Weiss reiterated: “Chair Homendy stands by her testimony.”
After The Seattle Times asked about the email Friday, both Boeing and the lobbyist scrambled to undo the potential damage.
In a statement, Boeing said it “did not authorize this communication and regret that it was sent. We deeply respect the NTSB and will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with them.”
The lobbyist responded that the message had been sent out inadvertently and without Boeing’s knowledge.
Homendy had scathingly criticized Boeing for failing to produce documentation of the botched installation work on the door plug that blew out midair on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Jan. 5.
She also testified that Boeing had not provided the names of all the employees involved, despite repeated requests, and that the NTSB had not been able to interview even the manager of the team involved.
The email was sent by former Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, now a lobbyist for Washington, D.C.-based Squire Patton Boggs, a prominent law firm that is among the largest lobbying companies in the world. It represents a list of well-heeled clients that includes the Saudi Arabian government.
According to a December roundup of new lobbying appointments on the political news site Politico, Boeing had then just hired Squire to lobby Congress on the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill and other legislation affecting the jet maker. Kingston was named to that team.
Homendy had testified that, over the two months since the blowout, the NTSB repeatedly asked Boeing for information related to the faulty installation last September of the door plug and had not received it.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” Homendy said.
Kingston’s letter directly contradicts this.
“In fact, the information that she requested two months ago has been received. What has not been provided is additional information that she just requested this past Saturday, March 2,” Kingston wrote. “Therefore, there have been only two full working days for Boeing to respond.”
This echoes a Boeing claim after Wednesday’s hearing that it provided “early in the investigation” the names of some Boeing employees who worked in the area of the door plug and that the NTSB had asked for a full list of everyone on the Renton aircraft door team only on Saturday.
After Boeing issued that statement Wednesday, NTSB spokesperson Eric Weiss said Homendy “stands by her accurate testimony.”
While Boeing’s official statement after the hearing that day began by offering “deep respect for the NTSB and the critical role they play in aviation safety,” Kingston’s email bypasses such niceties and just flatly contradicts that part of Homendy’s testimony.
Kingston goes on to make a further excuse for Boeing’s alleged tardiness in responding to the NTSB requests, writing that “some of this information is sensitive as it involves personnel, necessitating Boeing’s legal and human resources departments sign off on it.”
And focused solely on denying the NTSB’s position about its request for the names of employees, Kingston’s message offers no comment on another key part of Homendy’s testimony.
His email doesn’t mention Boeing’s failure to provide the records documenting the work that was done on the door plug.
At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, congressional criticism of Boeing’s lack of cooperation with the NTSB was bipartisan.
Ranking Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called it “utterly unacceptable.”
Kingston ends his email to the Republican members of Congress by offering to discuss the matter further and provide additional details.
In an email Friday, Kingston wrote “unfortunately, the email inadvertently was sent out by my office without my knowledge (or Boeing’s) and it should not have been sent.”
On Friday, NTSB spokesperson Weiss reiterated: “Chair Homendy stands by her testimony.”
Super-Chevy454
kiwifarms.net
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- Sep 15, 2016
Now this part is just a dumb, Reddit tier take.It is not DEI, which retards @User names must be unique believe and see the root cause for everything. These are the people responsible:
Look white to me.
Yes, the guys in charge are white. And? Doesn’t prevent the same white guys to waste time and money to go full in on DEI initiatives, fill any engineering spot with minorities and shitskins and introduce “diversity” programs like zero drug testing at their factory, since minorities are disproportionately affected by the war on drugs and drug testing therefore = white supremacy.
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2022
That's not how this industry works. Killing a couple dozen/hundred/thousand of your customers' customers every year is just the cost of doing business.
About 20 years ago Boeing had an initiative codenamed YELLOWSTONE to produce three all-new clean sheet aircraft to replace the small 737, medium 767 and large 777 product lines with innovative new technical solutions. The first product of this approach was the medium-sized 787 Dreamliner which pushed a lot of design, operation and manufacturing boundaries and sold extremely well, but cost way more to develop and took way longer to deliver than expected, severely reducing Boeing's ultimate profit off the program. As a result of this, after a suspiciously-convenient change in top management, the top dogs announced the new approach would be not to do any more "moonshot" clean sheet designs but to leverage and update existing proven products with new third-party technology like better engines. This resulted in the 777MAX, a third generation 777 family derived from 1990s technology, but also the 737MAX, a fourth generation 737 family derived from 1960s technology. It's not hard to see now that the 737MAX was a bridge too far, and its legacy design constraints, which exist only to make Boeing's job cheaper and easier, have made it a Frankensteinian monstrosity that does not meet modern safety expectations.
The real issue is whether airlines will continue to publicly support the 737MAX in the face of popular resistance. Unfortunately they're kind of stuck with it because the global airframe duopoly is over-subscribed with order backlogs stretching decades into the future, so you can't just waltz on down to your local airliner dealership and fly away in a new plane today, or anytime soon. Airbus is essentially "sold out" and no one's buying Russian or Chinese unless they absolutely have to for political reasons.
ETA: Sadly, Bombardier, the merged result of Canadair and my plainfu deHaviland Canada, were poised to break the duopoly with their C-series, an absolute weapon of an airframe, but they ran out of money after being screwed over by the US government at Boeing's behest and ended up gifting the whole program to Airbus just so they could keep the production line open. It's a crying shame what those American glowie cunts did to that airplane and the keen-eyed bold manly moosefuckers who built it.
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- Dec 2, 2023
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- Feb 18, 2019
Maybe.
Given it was a knee-jerk response from me since I was thinking that someone will scream DEI while all those other issues were omnipresent. Then I looked at some posts while I was typing and got exactly those responses.
After all I think it is still not the big issue. You just do not attract the same qualified workforce if you slash the salaries, axe the pension plans and try to wrangle the Unions into submission. Those who give the workforce a say in all those little workplace matters.
It's not fun to work in a project and be too reliant on suppliers that deliver questionable quality while you know that those parts were done better and in-house a few years ago. It's not fun to see your workload increase bit by bit, because people get fired or simply not replaced after they leave the company for various reasons. And it is not fun to have your management try to pinch a penny wherever it can.
To bring the point home. Stonecipher began talks at Boeing about “A passion for affordability". I am not kidding. You know what brings out the great engineering autism that builds amazing things?
Apparently it is not building great, trying to push what can be done further. It is building affordable...yay...
I hope you get my sarcasm.
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- Jul 18, 2017
New Zealand has seized the black boxes from the 787 involved in the "turbulence" incident.
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- Sep 15, 2016
Their whole business model of flying in wings and shit from Japan, instead of building them at one factory also seems kinda retarded.
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- Aug 13, 2022
Yes but it also means no Japan-registered airline will ever buy a plane that doesn't have a Boeing logo on it, which makes it "good business".
(Those A380s ANA picked up for near-scrap prices after the original customer went broke are the exception that proves the rule).
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- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
Apologies for my ignorance, but isn't this just the outcome of the competency crisis, which itself is a result of corner cutting and DIE?
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2018
I was mostly memeing but
But you are right, the most of the rot is upper management ignoring or concealing poor work, mandatory overtime, prioritizing production numbers over quality, and penny pinching BS. Spirit Aerosystems ultimately exists as a cost-cutting initiative for Boeing anyway, something like 90% of their products still go to Boeing.
If you take a look at the lawsuit against Spirit Aerospace there are problems with inexperienced and under-trained staff but the majority of it is the clueless dickheads in charge.
Page 20, chapter 83 is where the Former Employee accounts of working conditions start. I would not trust Spirit Aerosystems to manufacture cardboard boxes, let alone components for 100-ton flying machines."
Online google drive link to the case
IMO these are consequences of DEI. When job requirements are reduced to get more diversity hires, compensation will decrease as well. Promoting people to line manager positions based on their minority status, rather than their experience, will demoralize workers, you'll get shitty work, and experienced workers will move to greener pastures. The same problems would occur if recruited and promoted a bunch of inexperienced straight white dudes in the same manner though.
But you are right, the most of the rot is upper management ignoring or concealing poor work, mandatory overtime, prioritizing production numbers over quality, and penny pinching BS. Spirit Aerosystems ultimately exists as a cost-cutting initiative for Boeing anyway, something like 90% of their products still go to Boeing.
If you take a look at the lawsuit against Spirit Aerospace there are problems with inexperienced and under-trained staff but the majority of it is the clueless dickheads in charge.
Page 20, chapter 83 is where the Former Employee accounts of working conditions start. I would not trust Spirit Aerosystems to manufacture cardboard boxes, let alone components for 100-ton flying machines."
Online google drive link to the case
coof coof
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2021
Wasn't the software issue with the MAXs something completely asinine like it only pulling data from instruments on one side of the plane without cross referencing instruments on the other side which caused the MCAS to repeatedly pitch the nose down? I remember hearing that from the guys working on them at the time. Completely pants on head retarded.