Boeing has achieved the unthinkable this week: It managed to fall even deeper into crisis.
Adding to an already miserable start to 2024, Boeing stood accused Tuesday of routinely ignoring a whistleblower’s complaints about the allegedly critically flawed manufacturing process for its 787 Dreamliner planes. The whistleblower claimed Boeing retaliated against him and put him on the 777 unit as punishment. That’s when, he says, he found even more production problems.
Boeing strongly denies the claims and says it is confident in the safety of its aircraft. Still, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would investigate — adding to a growing list of federal probes into the beleaguered company, including a criminal investigation. And next week, a Senate subcommittee will hear testimony about the whistleblower’s case and will presumably air more of Boeing’s dirty laundry in public.
Is it really unthinkable given the reputation of how they are handling things.
Thing is, Sears' fate is Boeing's. Boeing, like a lot of the aerospace industry, used to be associated with high quality, trustworthy work that put the quality of the product ahead of all other considerations. Then the finance guys started calling all of the shots, promising yuuuuge returns for investors, and now the company is up -40% YTD and -50% over 5 years! Sears was similarly associated with quality products, and was similarly taken over by the finance guys promising yuuuuge returns for investors. Can, uh, can anyone confirm how that's going for them? How much money are the investors making now? Boeing's pain has not even begun, and it remains to be seen if investors are going to wise up and put people in charge that give a shit about the product, or if they're going to just go full throttle down the vulture capital route.
More companies and investors should see the hulking wrecks of the companies ruined by endless financialization and short-termism and realize here be dragons. But I doubt they will.
True. Boeings prior reputation is what made it a household name. However, ever since the 737 Max incidents, the way they are handling things just showcases the sorry state of affairs they have in place in the pursuit of profits. And silencing whistleblowers with assassinations isn’t doing them any good.
I don’t know why FAA still hasn’t revoked their ability to self certify and force them to certify with external companies like the rest of the industry.
The FAA needs to do some house cleaning. It sounds like they had an agency-to-corporate pipeline in place where there was a culture of buttering up regulators with the promise of better jobs in exchange for favorable regulatory enforcement.
I believe FAA is a captured agency as well, like just about every government agency at this point.
Oh I'm sure the top guy at Kmart/Sears is doing great. I forget his name. He basically just turned those stores into real estate sales, sold the brands, and banked.