This poast is rather late, even by my quite dreadful standards, but all I can say is that it was a busy week that required some HARDCORE recovery. And that is precisely what I was doing yesterday. Part of that process involved a Netherflix documentary about Boeing, which is quite interesting, and genuinely terrifying in terms of its implications.
The previous film, Downfall, documented how and why the Boeing 787-MAX programme went so far off the rails that the aircraft’s MCAS led directly to two lethal crashes that killed over 340 passengers and crew between them. The new film, Freefall, looks into the broader safety and quality culture at Boeing.
Its findings are explosive, to say the least.
Basically, every Boeing 777, 787, and 737-MAX aircraft built in the last 20 years, could potentially be a ticking time bomb, because the quality issues are so severe.
Boeing was once a company of engineers, by engineers, for engineers. It had a quality and safety culture second to none. If there were ever a dispute on the factory floor, the last and final say came from the quality control teams and managers. Aircraft or procedures deemed unsafe, simply were not allowed to go on to the next stages – and if that meant halting the entire production line at their gigantic mile-long assembly plant outside of Seattle, then so be it.
That culture is long-gone. And the results are what we see today – of a company that prioritises profits over safety.
This did not happen overnight. As you will find in other places – there are some VERY good long-form videos on EWCHOOB about this subject – the rot truly started to set in after Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas. The latter company had a cutthroat, profits-uber-alles mentality, which the former CEO of the combined group, Harry Stonecipher, embodied and made real.
Stonecipher was YEETED unceremoniously following a bit of nookie with a colleague – and you have to go look up pictures of the guy to realise what an unappetising idea that would be for any woman. (I’m not saying he was a fatass, but… he was a fatass.)
The man to succeed him, was James McInerney, an alumnus of General Electric, from back when “Neutron” Jack Welch led the company. And if you know anything about Jack Welch’s management style, you know that he embodied the entire idea that the core guiding philosophy of any corporation must be profitability.
There is something to that idea, actually, if you think about it. The single most fundamental measure of success of any business is how much cash it generates. Without profits, you cannot have cash. And you can only create profit through one of three possible core methods:
- Increase sales while holding revenue constant;
- Decrease costs while holding revenues constant;
- Increase sales AND decrease costs simultaneously;
That is really all there is to it. (Some of you might be amazed at how many interview candidates – many of them from some of the “best” schools in the WORLD – I have personally quizzed on this exact subject, and who have failed utterly to figure out these things.)
The GE philosophy was to cut costs as much as possible. In an engineering company like Boeing, constructing some of the most sophisticated and complex machinery on Earth – where the correct functioning of said machinery is literally a matter of life or death – that meant cutting corners on the quality inspection teams, particularly in the new big Dreamliner plant in South Carolina.
Now, the documentary does have a clear bias against Boeing. That much is obvious. There is a particularly odious appearance from draft dodger and Ukraine-whore Sen. Richard Blumenthal, right at the end, during the testimony of Boeing’s second-to-last CEO, Dave Calhoun, in front of a Senate investigative committee.
None of this changes the fact that Boeing, which was once among the greatest of the great American companies, is now a financialised husk of its former self. It has gotten to the point where the phrase, “if it’s a Boeing, I ain’t going”, may well mean the difference between a safe flight, and a harrowing experience – or outright death.
This is because the documentary makes the key point that many of the safety lapses and parts quality issues that plagued recent aircraft, have never been fully resolved. There are 737s, 777s, and 787s flying around all over the world right now that have problems with parts and wiring, which have never really been checked.
And every single flight, every single takeoff and landing, brings those aircraft one step closer to a catastrophic failure.
Perversely and ironically, Boeing may well have created a situation where Western airliners, who once mocked the Russians for creating some of the most unsafe and dangerous aircraft in the world, might one day be forced to look at the Tu-214, Su-100 SSJ, and MS-21, as safe alternatives to Airbus. That day is a long way off right now – but it grows closer with every failure and disaster associated with a Boeing aircraft.
Anyway, having opened with such an ominous warning, let us close with the lovely lady of the week.
This here is Marga Bernalte Hindersin, age 37, from Barcelona, Spain – lovely city, I was there 5 years ago and I think very highly of it. She has preserved her looks amazingly well, considering her advanced age, and is apparently an actual really-for-real model, doing… modelling things, I guess. Judging by her Instathot page, a lot of that work involved flouncing around in bikinis and skimpy underwear.
Not, of course, that any of us are complaining about that.
Happy weekend, all.
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