It was even worse than we knew.
And yes, the “suicide” does look very suspicious. After reading this, there is little I’d put past these “leaders.”
[Evening update]
On the other hand, how can a lot of these stories about wheels falling off, or engine parts falling off, or engines catching fire, be attributed to Boeing? They don’t build the engines. These kinds of things have to be attributed to the operator. Which says that the whole industry is fucked, probably because DEI.
Pretty sure Mayor Pete will be all over this. His knowledge of trains, bridges, and stuff is very transferrable.
I wonder how many of the MBA’s running Boeing from their spreadsheets could tell you who William Edward Deming was.
Boeing was in trouble long before Didn’t Earn It became a thing. The airlines are apparently infected with it.
It doesn’t matter, anymore, why the plane has an issue. It is now Boeing’s Fault, whatever happens. It doesn’t matter if this is the normal rate of maintenance or random issues. It is Boeing’s Fault, and every incident will make the news.
The narrative has been established. Boeing builds faulty planes. Changing that narrative will require some drastic measures on their part. Place your bets:
1) A PR Blitz!
2) Tout ESG and DEI efforts!
3) Shit on the competition!
4) Demand more government money!
5) Fire the CEO and replace the board, clear out the deadwood, and get back to the core business of making quality products.
My money is on 1-4. Number five would require effort, probably a decade’s worth of fence-mending and corporate blood-letting.
I made a comment somewhere else about “Just one door falls off a jet and people are saying all this stuff about Boeing” to which someone replied with the story about the old guy named Hans who was complaining about his reputation in a small town.
“You see all of those buildings in the town square? I built every one of them, but do people call me Hans the Carpenter? You see that arch bridge leading into town? I placed all of the stones, but do people call me Hans the Stone Mason? But I got drunk just this one night, and on my way home a goat crossed my path . . .”
During my last years of work in this century (I retired at the end of 2012), I watched the increasing effects of MBA management, corporate officer greed and corruption, and the rapid growth of HR/DEI. I wondered how it would all end. I guess now I have an inkling… One of my sisters is still working, is head of HR at a fairly large company.
Thank you for the evening update. I’m a bit tired of the Instapundit bunch attaching every maintenance problem to Boeing. I mean, there is something definitely wrong with all the tire problems in about a week’s time related to Boeing 777 operated by United Airlines out of California, but there’s a lot more correlation than just Boeing.
As for what Boeing is doing to their technical skills in the name of DEI; they aren’t alone. It is pretty much the goal of DEI to destroy technical proficiency everywhere.
That Southwest plane that lost some/most engine cowling yesterday was ~7 years old. After that long, it’s really a maintenance issue.
20 years ago, 6-sigma was the excuse for not maintaining competance and merit. Now it is called DEI or ESG. These problems will last until responsibility is brought back to the people who manage manufacturing.
Sad that Boeing has lowered itself to the reliability of their competition.
What the idiot media (talk about a redundant expression) and also including the mostly technically illiterates at Instapundit miss is that while the maintenance issues don’t have anything to do with Boeing, they and Boeing’s problems come from exactly the same place. During the covdiocy both the airlines and Boeing worked extra hard to get rid of all the senior people they could. The ones left don’t know diddly or squat. So far all the airlines have been very lucky that what has fallen off hasn’t caused a crash, they shouldn’t count on that luck holding but what are they going to do? The people they have left just aren’t good enough at their jobs to correct the problems and that goes all the way to the top.
The end result of this will eventually be the platitudinous:
If people were meant to fly, they’d have wings
You know, I always thought that reenacting Atlas Shrugged was a bad idea. This story doesn’t make me feel better about it.