Everett, Seattle, Renton, Kent, Auburn — growing up in the Seattle area, we knew the chain of Boeing towns, where so many of our family members worked. My father worked in several of those plants as a diesel mechanic, my mother was wiring the planes, my brother works in the windtunnel unit, my sister was in marketing — we had a lot of Boeing pride. Before about 1990, when booking flights, I’d actually preferentially select Boeing planes over Airbus, because it was reassuring to be on a plane where I could imagine my Mom building cable assemblies with loving care.
No more, of course. Boeing, a company of engineers, merged with McDonnell-Douglas, a company run by profit-seeking military contractors, and oh boy, those flightless chickens have come home to roost, where “home” is no longer a series of factories but skyscrapers in Chicago. They got the John Oliver treatment this week.
I wouldn’t fly in a Boeing MAX plane myself. I’m just a timid little biologist, though…it’s a bad sign when your own former engineers refuse to fly in them. Ed Pierson, ex-Boeing engineer, says:
Last year, I was flying from Seattle to New York, and I purposely scheduled myself on a non-MAX airplane. I went to the gate. I walked in, sat down and looked straight ahead, and lo and behold, there was a 737-8/737-9 safety card. So I got up and I walked off. The flight attendant didn’t want me to get off the plane. And I’m not trying to cause a scene. I just want to get off this plane, and I just don’t think it’s safe. I said I purposely scheduled myself not to fly [on a MAX].
Our recommendation from the foundation is that these planes get grounded — period. Get grounded and inspected and then, depending on what they find, get fixed.
The people to blame are the executives at Boeing.
Boeing’s board of directors — they have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that their products are safe, and they’re not in touch. They’re not engaged. They don’t visit the sites. They don’t talk to the employees. They’re not on the ground floor. Look, these individuals are making millions of dollars, right? And there’s others between the C-suite and the people on the factory line. There’s hundreds of executives who are also very well compensated and managers that should be doing a lot more. But their leadership is a mess. The leadership sets the whole tone for any organization. Public pressure needs to continue.
That board of directors, and all those executives, don’t know what they’re doing. They ought to all be fired, and the company put in the hands of good engineers who prioritize safety and quality, but instead you’ve got accountants who just want to make lots of money, doing their “fiduciary duty.” Ironically, all that short term emphasis on profit is destroying the company, trashing their reputation, and killing people. I also wouldn’t invest in Boeing any more.
Hey, why are stock buybacks even legal? The executives seem to be more interested in artificially pumping up their stock prices than in, you know, building airplanes.
Oh well. It’s all great news for Airbus.