Boeing has had a rough couple of weeks

[thewayne]

Things were looking slightly up for them when they announced the possible acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems (I may have called it Spirit Aerospace in previous posts), the maker of their fuselages. Spirit was formerly their own company, but in a brilliant move they spun it off into its own company, leaving them with zero control to remediate manufacturing defects before the tubes were shipped from Kansas to Seattle/Tacoma for assembly, requiring a "warranty crew" to be permanently stationed at the Boeing plant to fix them up.

Not a smart move.

In the last couple of weeks we've seen these Boeing jet lovelies:
--A wheel fall off one of its rear landing wheel assemblies on take-off, causing a lot of damage to parked cars. Fortunately no one was injured. A similar thing happened a month or two ago where a jet was waiting to taxi for take-off, and a nose wheel decided to roll away.
--Another jet, on landing, lost function of its rudder, greatly affecting its ability to steer. The front wheel, while steerable, is not intended to steer the plane at speed, but in an emergency - as this kinda was - it can be used as such and the plane made it safely to the gate. Later testing found a failed component

Now, as terrible as a wheel falling off is, those aren't Boeing's fault. That's problems with the individual airline's maintenance. The failure of the rudder system? Same thing. Part failure, maintenance not noticing it. Not Boeing's fault. Not good optics, but that's just bad luck.

But that isn't the biggie. The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the January 5th Alaska Airlines door blowout incident.

Here is a particularly damning line in the article: "Boeing has acknowledged in a letter to Congress that it cannot find records for work done on the door panel of the Alaska Airlines plane." They cannot find records for work done on the door panel. What the ever-loving fuck. Aircraft repairs have log after log after log. Individual parts have logs noting how many hours are on them. Well, maybe not parts, but certainly assemblies. Boeing's computer systems REQUIRE that this stuff be logged! And they can't find the records.

This might be a good time to short Boeing stock

https://apnews.com/article/boeing-ntsb-door-plug-emergency-landing-2d23408a25eff999579c88071836dbec

Comments

[bibliofile]

As ever, it's not the crime, it's the coverup.

[thewayne]

Indeed!

[kaishin108]

Argh, that company!

[armiphlage]

"brilliant move" - some MBA probably argued that splitting the company allowed them to shift liability, so if any incident happened (like a door blowing out), all the lawsuits would go to the totally-independent company instead of to Boeing. Ignoring that creating the totally-independent company increases the risk of an incident happening.

[thewayne]

Yep.  From what I've gathered, the problems seemed to have started with the merger with McDonnell-Douglas.  Apparently that's when the MBA bean counters and quest for quarterly gains took over the safety culture and caring out parts of the company began.

[disneydream06]

WOW, Time for the big heads to roll. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

In the case of a criminal investigation, it wouldn't matter if the entire C-suite resigned tomorrow, they would still be the subject of the investigation as they were the ones in charge when all the fecal matter impacted the rotary impellers.  It might appease Wall Street, but wouldn't matter a bit in terms of the investigation.

[disneydream06]

I was thinking more then just resignation. :o
Bring on the investigation. :o

[devilc]

This might be a good time to short Boeing stock

from your lips to god's ears.

[thewayne]

So say we all.

[dewline]

And now we have a dead whistleblower.

John Barnett.

[thewayne]

OMG and WOW.  He wasn't involved in the 737 Max program, still, very weird.  I just made a post about it.  Thank you for alerting me about this.

[captainsblog]

Move along, nothing new to see here.

Nothing except the dead bodies in the ocean.

From 2019:

https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution

[thewayne]

Yeah, they completely bollixed the MCATS system by relying on only one input.  No redundancy, and no easy override: you had to pull a circuit breaker to disengage it!  The Airbus system you just pull on the stick, system immediately overridden.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

In a heavy paperwork environment, if reports can't be found, it could be:

* Malfeasance up front, with reports not being created. This is actually hard because people expect them to be there and it jams up the system if not. So not likely.

* User error. Things can be deleted or overwritten accidentally. Common, but usually people notice it sooner.

* Equipment failure. A glitchy computer might fail to store or erase files. Always a possibility.

* Malfeasance after the fact, for instance, an employee going back and erasing files on purpose. Likely if someone was covering their tracks.

[silveradept]

The NTSB investigation and the criminal charges are probably going to make it abundantly clear how bad things are at Boeing, in both of actual maintenance and required documentation. The stock, presumably, will take a drubbing as more of the rot is exposed.

[thewayne]

I saw today that their stock is down 30-40%?!

[silveradept]

That would make sense, yes. Even if the investigation eventually clears them of serious wrongdoing, having had to go through it on the first place will tarnish the company image severely.