Claims of Shoddy Production Draw Scrutiny to a Second Boeing Jet
nytimes.comBoeing South Carolina teammates are producing the highest levels of quality in our history,” Kevin McAllister, Boeing’s head of commercial airplanes, said in a statement. “I am proud of our teams’ exceptional commitment to quality and stand behind the work they do each and every day.
Whoever is sitting down to write Boeing's PR response quotes needs to be fired, along with whichever c-suite exec is approving them. It's not acceptable to totally ignore actual safely issues being brought to light and respond universally with panglossian emptiness.
The quote about not needing to ground the Max, before being ordered to do so, was especially egregious.
> It's not acceptable to totally ignore actual safely issues being brought to light and respond universally with panglossian emptiness.
Not only is it acceptable, it's effective. Until a 787 actually crashes and provides unambiguous evidence that the whistleblowers are telling the truth, it's a he-said-she-said situation.
if there is a possibility that further analysis and research (of flight recorders, code inspections, ...) unambiguously proves a problem I don't see why precautionary grounding (by an authority with the proper jurisdiction) would be bad?
It isn't, but that's not what is under discussion here.
Although it seems to be the same playbook as used by Trump - which so far has worked well for him. Deny deny deny and say you're the very best.
Rent-free.
Keep your politics to yourself, it has nothing to do with the topic being discussed.
Boeing safety is a political issue:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/boeing-...
If a company tries (temporarily successfully) to use political connections to respond to safety issues, it's fair to bring that up in light of related safety issues.
Which of course has nothing to do with the actual political message in the original comment to which vondur was responding. Had that comment made any reference to a relationship between Boeing and a particular politician, or political group, it would indeed be fair to bring that to light.
It's relevant as it illustrates lying has become normalized and unpunished at the highest levels.
That statement wasn't political, and it has everything to do with the topic being discussed.
It wasn't political because Trump's "style" is a fact recognized by partisans on both sides; they just judge it differently. I can't even tell if OP is for or against.
It has to do with the topic because it's an observation of the same underlying trend: that lying is becoming a standard and accepted behavior in America. People are no longer punished for lying, so they are doing it more and more.
Profit before people / product / planet.
It’s been the downfall of many companies, and in this case, has resulted in the unnecessary death of many individuals.
Boeing is currently in the spotlight, but there are so many other companies - ranging from pharma to agriculture to tech, that also adhere to the above mantra and have been the cause of much death and destruction.
You can’t blame individuals, nor the companies here. The system they operate in requires them to report quarterly; with a priority on short term performance over a longer term outlook (it exists, but not overtly so). When you don’t meet those short term goals, both individuals (employee reviews, getting laid off etc) and the company (value on the public or private market) suffers.
I don’t know if there is a “fix”, or if it needs fixing at all, as our rapid progress is also down to this competitive and unforgiving environment.
> You can’t blame individuals
You can and you have to. Corporations are structuredi nsuch a way that there is always somebody who is in charge of a certain project or descision. Of course this might be hidden. in order to fight "Profit before people / product / planet", these individuals need to be punished. It cannot be allowed that blame diffuses in a corporation. Otherwise there will be no change.
That's actually not true. If the punishment is severe enough then it can be made to diffuse all the way back to the shareholders in a way that they will notice, and that will eventually bring about change.
The problem is that we have insulated the shareholders from responsibility so that granny can buy blue chip stocks to fund her retirement without having to actually pay attention to the bothersome details of corporate governance. Management is doing exactly what it was hired to do: maximize granny's ROI by any means necessary.
> The problem is that we have insulated the shareholders from responsibility
Do we? Shareholders take the hit when the corporation negotiates a fine instead of punishing the decision-makers responsible directly.
How much did dieselgate cost VW shareholders? How much did it impact the people that made the decisions?
How do you propose to punish shareholders?
Fine them? The market already does that, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in the 737 MAX case.
Jail them? Good luck with that.
What else can/should be done to them, in your opinion?
> Fine them? The market already does that, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in the 737 MAX case.
Really? How? The day before the Lion Air crash Boeing stock was just a hair under $360 a share. Today it's at $380. How exactly is that punishing the shareholders?
The market isn't punishing Boeing shareholders because everyone knows full well that the U.S. government will not allow the last domestic producer of commercial jets to go bankrupt.
Really? How? The day before the Lion Air crash Boeing stock was just a hair under $360 a share. Today it's at $380. How exactly is that punishing the shareholders?
Well, that's not exactly the whole story, is it? What happened on March 8?
https://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+stock
A single crash won't usually tank the company's stock, nor should it.
> What happened on March 8?
The stock dropped 5%. And your point would be...?
> A single crash won't usually tank the company's stock, nor should it.
This was two crashes. Caused by gross negligence. Yeah, that ought to put a dent in the stock price IMHO.
> You can’t blame individuals, nor the companies here. The system they operate in requires them to report quarterly; with a priority on short term performance over a longer term outlook (it exists, but not overtly so). When you don’t meet those short term goals, both individuals (employee reviews, getting laid off etc) and the company (value on the public or private market) suffers.
The question of responsibility differs from what one should expect. I think it's perfectly fine to blame the individuals and companies here. "I was just following incentives" is becoming the new Nuremberg defense.
Of course, to change what happens in reality most of the time, it's not enough to blame people; you need to change the incentives.
Related: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
Okay, I really want to get on board with your logic here, but there's a layer of abstraction that simply cannot serve as a firewall of protection from real culpability.You can’t blame individuals, nor the companies here.Mostly, I'm thinking about synthetic opioids. Mostly because you mentioned pharma in passing. Mostly I'm thinking about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and the Sackler family.
I can't really condone the idea that it's okay to throw your money into a magic black box, and ignore the reason why the black box magically grows your money.
If a pleasant financial advisor sits at a desk and tells you to feed your life savings into a worm hole, and on the other side you'll get triple back, as long as you never ask questions, sure, you'll do that.
But that right there is the origin of hundreds of thousands of lives lost to drug overdoses and addiction. Investors not asking questions, but just demanding returns. Who cares, as long as the checks come through?
The truth is, that level of commoditization is what gets people killed.
Turns out, sometimes a plane crash or massacre isn't the worst thing in the world. Sometimes it's a corporation operating a merciless business plan. But worse things don't always make for good headlines."I don't care how it works, I want 10% growth every year, minimum"Cheaping out on things is not unique to profit making companies. (For example, government policies that keep gas prices artificially low. Or American cities that keep water/sewer rates too low to fix aging sewers that dump massive amounts of untreated sewage into rivers every time it rains.)
There is no “fix.” It’s human nature.
the most rapid progress we ever had on earth was when bell labs was a monopoly and had no competitive environment at all
> Profit before people / product / planet
Socialist organizations do not have a better track record. Without a profit motive (and competition) there is no reason to please customers.
I'm reminded of the comment linked here on reddit from a former Boeing employee employed 2008-2009 (allegedly).
>To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production.
Honestly, I already feel guilty flying due to the crazy amount of pollution these planes put out. Now I've got a slight fear that my plane might randomly fuck up due to software and now I feel like I should just stay grounded.
Is this some new thing making rounds on the internet? Airplanes account for 5% of all CO2 emissions, and only a fraction of that is individuals flying. The average American would have to take a dozen New York-Tokyo flights per year to even double their carbon footprint.
I assume you’ve addressed more important sources of carbon emissions, such as moving to a state that doesn’t require heating in the winter or AC in the summer. (And it goes beyond saying that you don’t use Amazon prime or buy anything shipped air freight.)
This is off topic but it was startling to me when I looked at CO2 stats that there was so little air travel and so much energy generation and heating. I think we have just stumbled upon the real reason we haven't fully grokked climate change yet.. the problem is much simpler and more brutal than most of us perceive.
Installing a foam roof or replacing the insulation in your walls goes a long way and saves a lot of money on energy costs over time.
My family has installed a house-fan that we use whenever we like the out-doors temperature moreso than our in-doors temperature, which is quite often in our summer months at night.
The world's population can't all move to California, so that's not a sustainable option. But yes, improving home insulation is a low hanging fruit.
The overall impact of aviation is actually less than 5%, though it's fast growing and projected to be 5% and more. (And I doubt only a fraction is related to moving people around.) Note that aviation contributes to global warming in excess of its pure CO2 emissions; at very high altitude even water vapour is an issue. Another point of comparison: aviation's overall impact is about 10% of the entire transport sector, the same amount as all water based shipping.
Either way it's a huge amount, there is no such thing as just an integer percentage of overall emissions.
Source: Wikipedia and IPCC, mostly https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
Reminder that Boeing went to SC for massive government subsidies and a cheaper, non-unionized work force. But don't worry, I'm sure they're not being penny wise, pound foolish anywhere else!
(This behavior is by no means unique to Boeing or unusual at all).
The Charleston build out just felt rushed. From the IT perspective, it felt that everything was half assed, where the thought they could just stamp Everett in South Carolina. I have memories of managers flying back to Renton to just get mundane things for the South Carolina flight line when they probably should have been installed during construction.
When I left in 2010, it became somewhat of an internal joke that you were never fired from Boeing, just sent to Charleston.
Sure, the power of unions can sometimes be too much in terms of compensation demands but it certainly isn't like that frequently and their benefits far outweigh their negatives and outlier issues. However most importantly, in cases where there is poor worker safety, issues with production quality or life endangering corners are being cut, workers can speak up knowing that they have protections through the union should managemen be happy to retaliate about what they say. We are all safer because of those protections and securities a work force like that has.
In North Charleston, the pace of production has quickened. Starting this year, Boeing is producing 14 Dreamliners a month, split between North Charleston and Everett, up from the previous 12. At the same time, Boeing said it was eliminating about a hundred quality control positions in North Charleston.
These planes are going to start failing in unison in a few years.
Good thing Boeing isn't one half of a commercial flight duopoly, because boy that would be bad.
One has to wonder if the same problems exist with airbus
God damn, that’s horrible! FOD inside the aircraft at time of manufacturing?
Shit. I take back everything I said about preferring to flying civilian aircraft. Throw me on a P3 or C130 any day. At least we took FOD seriously on those old things.
Shame on Boeing, and shame on the CEO making the typical blanket phrase.