...why Harry Stonecipher was really fired.

He wasn't popular, particularly with a lot of the former McDonnell Douglas people, and a lot of people think that he's been doing with Boeing's aircraft business the same thing that he did with theirs--running it into the ground, with Boeing now second place to Airbus. Certainly the Sonic Cruiser was a bad joke.

I'd like to know what the rest of the story is.

There has to be something big there. Supposedly this information was only brought to senior management's attention ten days ago. Since when do major corporations fire their CEO's over sex scandals? Since when do they do it in ten days?

There's something very strange going on here.

Actually, Harry was very popular among the McDonnell Douglas people. It was the Boeing people that (mainly) hated his guts. And Sonic Cruiser was Mullaly's baby, squashed by the McDonnell people on the Board of Directors.

As for the real reason he was ousted? Who knows? The only juicy thing to come out so far is that the relationship was outed by someone who passed an anonymous note to the Chairman of the Board -- much the same way Sears' shenanigans were exposed. A pro-Mullaly exec would be a good bet as to the source.

And now back to the Days of Our Boeing Lives.

Mike

He can run for President on the Democrat side. Proir acts don't count against them, and sex scandals are NEVER scandals.

I'm with Michael Kent up there.

Here in Seattle, talk is that the 'Boeing people' are ecstatic to have ousted Stonecipher - one of the McDonnell Douglas people. The integration between the two sets of executives won't be a textbook example of how to do this right.

IMNSHO this is the 'Boeing People' staging a coup after Stonecipher managed to tee off enough people. I don't know if Mullaly will will get to step up - but I'll bet there's a pile that want him to.

Here's a Seattle blog with further (but not exceedingly enlightening and laced with governor-race-sniping-still) commentary:

http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003906.html#003906

Whether or not Stonecipher ran MDD into the ground, it has little to do with Boeing's lagging behind Airbus. Boeing is in this position because they didn't pay attention to the threat from Airbus and didn't develop the models to respond. This happened under Condit's watch, who was a long time Boeing hand.

I agree with ATM about Condit being the bad guy for Boeing's performance vis a vis Airbus. Of course, he had a lot on his mind, trying to digest the remains of MacDac, Rockwell et al into something a plodding, no imagination commercial airliner manufacturer could love.