While an unfortunate topic, this article is a breath of fresh air at the Free Press. In-depth, focused, unbiased and genuinely focused on a meaningful issue that should concern most people. Excellent stuff.
The whistleblower death is definitely suspicious. But I wouldn't say this article is unbiased. Referencing the UA flight from San Fran to Japan losing a tire during takeoff on a 22 year old plane is not a Boeing mistake, but a United Airlines maintenance mistake.
Depends on why it failed but probably not Boeing's fault. FAA is increasing oversight of United and is considering restrictions on growth. They know more than we do.
Not saying the FAA is blameless. The revolving door between industry and regulators is a part of the reason Boeing's been having problems and wasn't reined in sooner.
However, FAA has more information than we do, and United can have problems of its own that are not Boeing's fault. United has been expanding and that doesn't always go well. Some of the recent United problems were described as maintenance issues - that does happen and the tire could be one of them. It's more likely a maintenance issue than a Boeing issue.
One reason it happens is because the FAA farms all it sates responsibilities out to the companies in the flying industry. The vast majority of the blame goes to the FAA and DOT. FAA is the dysfunctional entity I have ever seen or worked for.
If you forward to 2:00 minutes into this video from Blancolirio, you will hear the follow up to the lost wheel story which turned out to be a failure of the actual wheel itself, NOT a maintenance procedure gone wrong nor a Boeing problem in any way.
Let’s all do better to be responsible and post accurate information with what actually happened. Please avoid scaring the public with speculation and misleading hypotheses before the facts come out.
Either the wheel design was defective or it was beyond it's use date, the later would be a maintenance issue.....including required inspections. The first Boeing.
Great article. One aspect missing in talking about the culture at Boeing is the revolving door of executives between the FAA and the Boeing board. This same issue prevails between the FDA and boards of some major pharmaceutical companies. If it is indeed time to start rebuilding trust between government and the American people, this is a critical place to start.
It could be solved by making government salaries competitive with the private sector. At low levels, government employees are well compensated (think clerks vs. the private sector) but the higher you go, the larger the gap. For example, where I live, the salary for a Federal Judge is $75K. A private sector lawyer can easily make triple that or more. When I worked as a programmer for a public agency I made 1/3 of what I made when I switched to private.
Important government positions should be well compensated. Unimportant ones should be eliminated.
Are you factoring in a pension plan and essentially guaranteed lifetime employment since unionized government employees are nearly impossible to fire?
Don’t get me wrong - I would like to see many government positions pay more, but get rid of the pension costs and unionization first. The Federal workforce could probably be cut in half with no discernible impact on their output.
Their “pension” cost are only 1/3 of their retirement pay. In 1984 the whole government retirement system was overhauled. Changed to Part defined pension, part SS, part investment. Controllers also get paid higher salaries because they got out of the GS scales a long time ago
less than.... ? You are correct - Less than no return, which is essentially what we earn on Social Security trust funds. Since you brought up the point, one of the best ways to improve long-term Social Security solvency is by allowing some element of private investing, because money compounds at market rates vs. the current 0-1% rate. Many countries already do this.
Your figure for a federal judge sounds wildly off. A district judge makes $243,300 (circuit judges and Supreme Court justices make more). Administrative law judges are considerably lower, but according to Wikipedia the lowest pay for an ALJ in 2022 was $136,651. I will grant that any lawyer good enough to merit being a district judge could make more in private practice, but they don't need food stamps, and government will never be able to compete on salary alone; there are perks like prestige and job security.
Gold plated health insurance. One of my contractor employees (a few years back) left our company with it's $1,500 deductible per person and went to work for the government with $450 deductible per family. Plus I think they can retire before 65 and pay reduced premiums.
as a comment re pay. Yes, some jobs should be compensated at a higher level/salary. The issue with gov workers is that they may hold a senior job, but in many cases are not qualified, nor are they held responsible if something goes wrong on their watch. I am seeing that the historic accountability for errors or poor performance has disappeared, not just from government positions, but also from private companies or publicly traded companies. Even this latest Boeing fiasco has been festering for years. Now, someone or some groups of folks are taking the bullets for it (suicide issues aside). Consider the president who resigned is 68. What was he doing for the past 10-20 years? It is even worse in gov positions. It is almost impossible to fire a poor performer, as they are covered by civil service regulations. Those regulations need to be revised or removed and merit based roles and responsibilities and accountability instituted again. It has been a long slippery slope to mediocrity, and people are dying from it.
Trump changes the firing rules for VA and started working on the rest of the government. Joe got rid of that effort as pay back to his union buddies. Imagine that, unions making things less safe
I am a big fan of The Buck Stops Here. Part of the reason someone makes more than people below them is because they are Responsible (tm). And I am fine with arrangement. My dept doesn't make quotas, its the high paid boss that should take the fall.
You are right about not taking responsibility. There are also what I call the "skaters." People (in both government and the private sectors) who never take any chances or disagree with their superiors and thus never fail, but they never shine either, and they slowly move up the ladder into leadership positions. I outright tell my employees that if they are there to always agree with me why do I even need them?
In kindness, I disagree. One enters public service as a service to others, not just to make yourself money. I don't think we should pay government workers a LOW salary, but government workers often get pensions, and job stability not offered in the private sector to offset a LOWER salary for similar work in the private sector. Have an excellent week!
Google Bard: "According to the United States Courts website, which is the official source for federal judicial information, district judges earn a salary of $197,100, and circuit judges earn $209,100 [US Courts Judicial Compensation]. "
John Barnett tried to warn us. All honor to his name and dishonor to Boeing. Appreciate your coverage of a story that MSM is ignoring. Perhaps TFP and Joe should investigate his death - if you do so please state that you are in good health with no suicidal thoughts.
His "suicide" is about as believable as Epstein's. We are run by a governing elite who treat us like fools. Let's stop being foils for them. We know who they are. And who are the toadies who carry their water.
Bruce-- thinking about this alleged suicide, and how "We the People" seem to accept it (and Epstein's) as "business as usual." We are numb to it and have become totally complacent. Every day we become more similar to Russia!
Money that used to be spent on engineering R&D now goes to grease pols who get bribed with campaign contributions and seats on corporate boards, like Nikki Haley at Boeing. While Boeing is getting well deserved criticism, the problem extends across our "defense industry". Big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the $1.7 trillion F-35 have been vexed by reliability, maintainability, and availability (RMA) problems after over a decade of production. Last fiscal year, they were available for operations only 51 percent of the time. Problems include things like stealth coating issues, problems with the helmet tech, and trouble with the weapons systems. They can manage to keep a few flying to impress DEI generals and congressional appropriators at air shows but not enough to be a viable weapon system. If the shit ever hits the fan in places like the South China Sea our soldiers are screwed
The move to Chicago, organized crime, is reminiscent of the teamsters union & Jimmy Hoffa. It makes for a good movie. Just throw in some DEI & super hero’s in weird outfits. I think Pete Buttigieg should investigate since he’s done such a stellar job.
David Halberstam wrote a fine book "The Reckoning" on how the corporate profit mentality ruined America's quality edge in automobile production. He detailed the policy of putting "bottom lines" and shareholder profits over quality design and engineering. That occurred in the late fifties and sixties, and here we are again. Maybe his book should be mandatory reading for corporation executives.
This article refers to 1980 being the time when stock option executive compensation started. I don’t know if that was the tipping point, but at that time I witnessed a palpable change in corporate culture from industry to media, while working at Leo Burnett advertising.
Corporate culture shifted 180 degrees, from investing in R&D for top-line growth to “milking” large, established brands for profit. In the 1980’s, leverage buyouts began and brands were traded like baseball cards to “holding”companies with no understanding (or interest in understanding) the markets these brands competed in or their customers. These were strictly financial transactions.
At the same time, network television, which had disrupted newspapers (remember when each town had a morning and an evening paper?), was disrupted by cable television. Cable began the fragmentation of network audiences. Then the internet severed one generation from another.
Before cable, a popular network prime time show reached 30 million households (about a third of total households) in real time. Everyone, regardless of age, got the same jokes. Today, after the Internet, the most popular network news show reaches around 2 million (and the population has grown to over 350 million, so that’s less than 1%), and most of their audience is 50+. What everyone under 50 is watching is hard to track, hidden by black box algorithms that are so opaque, even the advertisers who pay to reach them don’t know if a click is real.
These algorithms are designed to divide us, so it’s hard to see the whole picture or to know what’s coming, just like the mortgage derivative black box algorithms that led to the 2008 financial collapse of the housing market.
Adding a layer of specificity to the Ford:Boeing analogy, one of Halberstam’s critical observations of Ford’s command and control culture under Henry Ford II was its disregard for feedback from workers at the assembly plants. Executives set the plans and the sole function of the workers, including plant managers, was to carry out those plans, even when they, as the employees in the best position to spot flaws in the plans, could see what was not working and why.
And this is how Toyota beat American car companies, by implementing Total Quality Control system where each worker was responsible for quality and could stop the assembly line if error was found. System was largely the brainchild of American engineer Deming.
Boeing received ISO9000 certification in 1999. ISO9000 is a stringent quality control designation that is awarded by a third party Inspection company and requires extensive semi-annual and annual audits. I would be curious about any investigative articles about this and what BIS Inc. response is (the company that certified Boeing).
ISO from the perspective of bottom line worker appears to be a money system where the worker is continually paying to be “re-certified” every three years. I’m not impressed to pay again and again for adaptive testing on the same subject.
I said it before, I will say it again - American business sucks. You know it. I know it. They make crap products, provide crap customer service and stand behind nothing. They are run by greedy apparatchiks who don't care about their products, employees or customers. Why? Nocera said it best. What they care about is the stock value which makes the top executives very rich because so much of their compensation is paid in stock options. And why do they get to and stay in power? Because they are in the pockets of people such as Larry the Fink who reward them and keep them in power. We have truly lost our way and our corporate class of greedy, inept cowards needs to be replaced en masse. And, until they are, taxed to the max to reduce their power. The companies that truly prosper are those who reward their loyal employees and care about customers. In acts not words.
American business doesn’t “suck”. Millions of businesses here are run efficiently, ethically and with a win-win-win approach. I know. I ran one. However, your point is true that C suites of large public companies are dominated by greedy egotists, and their comp is usually tied to stock price. Still, I don’t see any easy solutions or a better model for building organizations of a global scale.
I agree with you as I was referring to the large corporations. There are many fine smaller businesses in America - from plumbers to electricians to restaurants to beauty salons and hardware stores that give great service and care about their customers. And many small manufacturers that make excellent products.
I figure you meant large businesses as well, Bruce. CEO pay is crazy in this country, and bad ones can be hard to dislodge if they have the Board on their side. Clearly Boeing's board of directors was asleep at the wheel.
I would disagree, being a Bean customer for over 40 years. Their products are largely imported, their warranty and support parameters have softened, and the quality of their flagship boots has deteriorated. They had to do all of this to compete with REI, EMS, Land's End, and Eddie Bauer. All of whom manufacture products elsewhere and reap rewards at the back end.
I've always had a great experience with them in terms of quality and returns, but it's been a while since I've had any issues to substantiate that their customer service and /or return policy have changed.
To be fair and address your concerns, it's not the return policy I'm complaining about. Returns with them and most retailers (even Amazon) are usually fairly straightforward. The complaint I have is with overall quality. I had a pair of Bean boots re-soled after 25 years of use (new rubber bottoms). They completely destroyed the leather uppers, did not fix the pull-on loops effectively, and did not size the bottoms correctly. I took them to an outlet store and they told me "these should not have been re-soled, their too fragile at this point." This would have been acceptable, but the service group did not make that advisement. The boots never fit properly again. They are being thrown away this spring and I have to buy a new pair of shit-kickers next winter. Not sure if I will buy Sorrell's or another brand, but Bean - not so sure.
Boeing is another story of "Too Big to Fail", and the corporate culture expects that the government will bail them out. and it will. Strictly from a national security standpoint, there are only a couple of aircraft manufacturers left in the US capable of building the fighters and bombers needed to stay competitive with our adversaries, really only Boeing and Lockheed.
Just before Covid I was making several cross country trips to help several of my children with grandmother babysitting. I found myself using several airlines and several styles of planes. I hadn’t been paying attention to the actual plane until one trip the flight was in an Airbus. My first time. I actually wrote an email to my husband (an engineer who at one point helped build airplanes) and my children the following: “ I am very disturbed. The Airbus I just flew on is a significantly better airplane. Better design. Better comfort. It just “feels” more solid. It makes me sad because I want MY AMERICAN plane to be the world’s best and it’s clear we no longer do”. Now I’m no “America first crazy” but even an occasional flyer if they are honest and aware would be able to tell the difference in the planes from Airbus and Boeing simply on simple measures. I am
Deeply saddened that it has taken deaths to have Boeing face their crisis. Let’s hope they properly clean house and get
Let’s not conflate United 777 losing a wheel on takeoff with Boeing quality control issues. That plane wasn’t new. Any issues there belong solely to United and its maintenance practices. First thing I thought is they properly secure the wheel assembly and/or lug nuts after changing a tire … NTSB should be able to tell that one pretty quickly.
Correct, except it’s actually worse - both companies are no longer dedicated to excellence. United has publicly committed to 50% "diverse" pilots in the near future, and there’s no way to get there without lowering standards dramatically. No doubt their DEI efforts are much broader than that. Boeing is dedicated to share price over quality, as by now is obvious and well documented (I am not "anti corporate" and normally resist the cheap greed narrative, but here it does seem to be true). And our government watchdogs? Well one of the top FAA people is on video talking about how we need to provide a path from "ramp to cockpit".
Here’s the United announcement. Scott Kirby says 5,000 people through their Aviate program over the next decade, ~500 per year. That’s a normal year of hiring at a major airline, if there is such a thing (last couple of years post-COVID, United & Delta have hired 2K+ each year. Delta’s goal this year is ~1,100). The key part is this initiative is focused solely on their Aviate program; United will still have to hire through traditional means to meet their growth goals barring any economic downturn (meaning from military, regionals, other airlines). Take a look at the Aviate Program Guide. Chapter 2 has the eligibility requirements; there is still significant effort required by the applicant to qualify to start the process. Then additional requirements to remain in compliance with the program through training (Chapter 4), and even more requirements to transition to United’s mainline operation (Chapter 5). While Scott Kirby may have a “goal” of 50%, there’s nothing that says 50% is required or that United can even meet that goal based on the requirements. The press release makes for great PR but I’ll be curious to see if they can actually make it.
I’ve flown with great female and minority pilots. I’ve also flown with not-so-great white male pilots. Piloting comes down to the individual (personality and attitude are much more important than sex or skin color in skills development). As long as United maintains elevated standards (point of emphasis) and is not pencil-whipping the requirements they lay out, they’ll be ok.
Now, would I like to see Scott Kirby not dress up and dance around in drag? Yes.
I'm sorry, but I still don't know what John Barnett was saying. I mean specifically. I get the part about a culture of poor quality, but what specifically was wrong with the planes when he was working at Boeing? The Wikipedia article on him gets into more detail with his allegations, but really only presents his side. Boeing is given short shrift in responding.
For example, did Mr. Barnett expose the problems with the 737 Max that (indirectly) caused the two fatal crashes? My understanding was that they were related to the software-designed response to redundancy failures, not to hardware. I also read that American crews, when confronted with similar failures in the 737 Max, were able to overcome the problems and continue the flight. Their response to events was better.
One of the main problems with evaluating claims like these is that airplanes are so safe these days that accidents almost never happen. With very low probability events, it's impossible to draw statistical conclusions about safety without decades of experience: years are not enough. And statistically, Boeing airplanes remain very, very safe.
Two different issues with a common cause (executive management). The issue with the MAX is briefly explained in the article: they needed a next-gen, more fuel efficient plane (fuel costs being one of the only variables airlines have to work with) and were getting pressure from their customers to deliver sooner rather than later. So rather than design a new plane from the ground up, they put new engines on the existing 737 platform that don’t properly fit - changing the whole physics of the plane to the point where it won’t stay in the sky without the software fix they hacked into place (think duct tape). Problems with that software (testing was outsourced to India) and improper training (not requiring costly full retraining was another selling feature of the MAX) caused the initial crashes. There’s no way engineers made these decisions.
The problems the whistleblower was pointing to are general quality control issues as they rush the planes out the door. Those problems have been broadly discussed in the media as of late (having to fix improperly aligned rivets, etc).
"it won’t stay in the sky without the software fix”. The reason for the software wasn’t to keep the plane in the sky. The software, MCAS, was created entirely to boost sales. The reason being that the company promised the airlines that they would not have to expend time and cost on training pilots to fly a new airplane. If the flying characteristics of an airplane are unique, pilots should be trained to fly the aircraft within those parameters. The MAX with its more powerful, more forward positioned engines was essentially a new aircraft. But Boeing tried to hide this fact behind MCAS. The proof that MCAS was a sales tool is that the company didn’t make MCAS training mandatory. Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines are examples.
I think it’s a combination of both things. The no or less training needed was a selling point of the plane being a new edition of the 737 rather than an entirely new plane. But my understanding is the positioning of the engines which don’t fit properly because the plane was not designed for engines that size changes the flying characteristics in a negative way, not just in a way that requires different training, and the software tries to address that. So I think MCAS is intrinsic to the design decision (rush a hacked plane out to please customers sooner rather than losing them to Airbus which did design a new plane for the new engines). But I don’t know, this is just my understanding from what I’ve read.
Here’s the United announcement (https://united.mediaroom.com/2021-04-06-United-Sets-New-Diversity-Goal-50-of-Students-at-New-Pilot-Training-Academy-To-Be-Women-and-People-of-Color). Scott Kirby says 5,000 people through their Aviate program over the next decade, ~500 per year. That’s a normal year of hiring at a major airline, if there is such a thing (last couple of years post-COVID, United & Delta have hired 2K+ each year. Delta’s goal this year is ~1,100). The key part is this initiative is focused solely on their Aviate program; United will still have to hire through traditional means to meet their growth goals barring any economic downturn (meaning from military, regionals, other airlines). Take a look at the Aviate Program Guide (https://unitedaviate.com/documents/Aviate-Program-Guide.pdf?updated=20231120). Chapter 2 has the eligibility requirements; there is still significant effort required by the applicant to qualify to start the process. Then additional requirements to remain in compliance with the program through training (Chapter 4), and even more requirements to transition to United’s mainline operation (Chapter 5). While Scot Kirby may have a “goal” of 50%, there’s nothing that says 50% is required or that United can even meet that goal based on the requirements. The press release makes for great PR but I’ll be curious to see if they can actually make it.
I’ve flown with great female and minority pilots. I’ve also flown with not-so-great white male pilots. Piloting comes down to the individual (personality and attitude are much more important than sex or skin color in skills development). As long as United maintains elevated standards (point of emphasis) and is not pencil-whipping the requirements they lay out, they’ll be ok.
Now, would I like to see Scott Kirby not dress up and dance around in drag? Yes.
Agreed. I worked along some great leaders during my time in the military that were female and/or minority. But, I would NEVER have called them great female/minority leaders…they were just leaders. To do otherwise would have been an insult to them. Tuskegee Airmen were/are prestigious because of the standards the met and maintained … meritocracy is always the way.
Without these sorts of DEI efforts, I wouldn't have paid the slightest attention to a female or "black or brown" (these efforts are not oriented towards other minorities) pilot. I might have assumed a black pilot may have came through the military route. I wouldn't have cared one way or the other - and now I will.
"Piloting comes down to the individual". Exactly - and DEI takes the exact opposite approach. So MAAYYYYBEEE United will follow what you write above and not lower their own standards to meet their own (or government directed, which is likely coming as well - and again everyone will say it is "voluntary") goals. But what I see as DEI is implemented across the country, whether in private companies, institutions or the government, does not give me even a little confidence in that.
Let me be clear: my comments here are not trying to say Boeing doesn't have issues to fix. But, there are a few other things to consider:
What if Barnett was a disgruntled union employee, moved to the south from his home in Seattle, and was not happy about it? Further, what if he did just simply kill himself (tragic, still)? What if management made some changes to his job that he wasn't happy about? I have no idea if he was union or not, but it seems like it would have been a decent question to address in this article.
If Barnett was working in the south, it was probably on the 787. Likely not on the 737 Max program.
What if having a co-pilot on the Ethiopian 737-Max flight with 361 total hours (yes, total) in a high stress situation with a less than 30 year old pilot was too much for them to handle? Another commenter indicated that US based airlines had experienced similar situations and were able to maintain control.
On the Lion Air flight, the previous flight had experienced similar behavior. With a 3rd pilot in the cockpit, they were able to handle it. What if those pilots had the benefit of that experience? I believe they figured out how to disengage the MCAS. One of those pilots had the training and knowledge to know what to do. Was it because of training? Or trial and error?
This wasn't discussed, but those 737 door plugs are not new. I don't think they are "new to the 737-Max" The Alaska Airways failure doesn't seem like an engineering failure.
Bringing up the wheel coming off of the 20+ year old 777 in an article about Boeing was sloppy. There is a pretty low probability of that being a Boeing engineering/design problem. Pretty high probability of that being an inspection/maintenance/training issue with the airline.
Overall, I would not say this is a balanced job of reporting. There is a lot that Boeing needs to be held accountable for, but right now they are on the bottom of a media dog-pile.
The fact that Barnett's death isn't being investigated suggests that nothing is really changing, and also reinforces the idea that this isn't just a Boeing problem, that the govt is deeply involved as well. The FAA happily approved of all of this, and the govt is clearly helping to circle the wagons here.
I've worked directly with Boeing as a supplier for over 30 years and it's been heartbreaking to watch this company being run down by C-Suite, Wall Street shills. Unfortunately rolling a few heads at the top will not magically change this company back to what it was in 1990, it will take a generation of new leadership to imbue the rank and file with the correct direction.
I honestly don’t know if a generation of new leadership will be better considering what I see out there. Where would a new generation of good leaders come from? Perhaps the rise of classical education schools may produce them but that will take time. In the meantime, we have MBAs from Ivy League schools, Stanford, etc. which is only making things worse in corporate America.
I hear you. It's probably too much to ask. Like our politics the money is just too big of an dis-incentive for leadership to do the right things, the hard things, the things that take time and commitment to see a payoff. Everyone's gotten too myopic.
I’m no big fan of Boeing, but if half of this stuff were true, the airplanes will be falling out of the skies every day. They obviously need to get their act together, but this reads like one of the old hit pieces on GM. Not that I like GM either.
“I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy,” he told The New York Times in 2019. Really? Not one aircraft was good enough? Obviously an engineer mentality. But Mr Nocera KNOWS everything he said was true! He knows it, man!
Also, the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia were software related, not hardware. Even so, the final report on the Ethiopian crash stated “Appropriate crew management of the event, per the procedures that existed at the time, would have allowed the crew to recover the airplane even when faced with the uncommanded nose-down inputs.”
Sadly, these deaths may have been preventable, but were not related to the physical build out of the airplane. So, let’s investigate what John Barnett said, but not take it as Gospel.
Every crash in the end is blamed on the crew who just happened to be dead. They tried it on the plane that landed in the Hudson River after the bird strikes but the captain lived and challenged the assumptions that the FAA were making. Proving it’s the default position of the over seer’s. It’s always pilot error. No one can challenge our assumptions because they are usually dead.
Chuck, with all due respect, you have a very thin understanding of how the culture of the company led to the creation of MAX and the subsequent crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines airplanes. Research why Boeing opted to disguise the MAX as a plane that required minimal if any pilot training? Why was MCAS developed?
I’ve actually read quite a bit about Boeing and feel the whole “MCAS as a minor adjustment” idea was awful. But the crew at Ethiopian wasn’t capable of following proper procedures, and none of this has anything to do with the physical assembly of the plane.
I think what’s going to come out is that during Covid, a bunch of smart and experienced people retired, and, when it was time to build planes again, their loss created quality control issues. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a little early to declare that Mr Barrett “saw it all coming” in 2019.
The article was poorly written. The author does not understand the subject he is writing about. Pilots are required to undergo specialized training any time they fly a different “type” (737, 757, F-15 are all different types) of airplane. One of the main selling points of the 737MAX was the pilots would not have to under any additional training if they already were trained to fly the 737 “type”. The 737MAX flew like the older 737s most of the time but there were parts of the flight envelope where it didn’t and MCAS was created to make it fly like other 737s in those cases.
The tire falling off the aircraft had nothing to do with Boeing and everything to do with the poor maintenance habits of the airline.
Boeing has major quality control issues and deserves a lot of blame, but it would be nice if the author had some understanding of the topic beyond the whistleblower died suspiciously.
Chuck B, thank-you for your comments. I thought Mr. Nocera’s article was lousy journalism. Obviously there are problems at Boeing, but what he has written is hostile, unprofessional, and not well documented.
I just read online that Joe Barnett's mother told CBS that she blames Boeing for the grinding treatment that left her son despondent. Yet Nocera implies that there was a coverup and he didn't commit suicide. And why was Barnett testifying in SC, when the 747max was built in Renton, WA? The plane Barnett had an issue with was the 787 Dreamliner, which was built in Charleston. Barnett was 62 when died, and retired in 2017 for health reasons. As soon as retired he "embarked on a long-running legal action" against Boeing. This last is from a BBC news article which is easily located on the web. Nocera must have known all this when he wrote his article.
Good post. Boeing moved from being run by engineers to marketing, CFO types based on financials rather than manufacturing and quality. Much like the rest of the West.
God speed to Mr. Barnett's family and loved ones. Boeing moved from fact based to woke-based and based on this I would seriously question whether Barnett was suicided; when you are woke-based you do not operate on truth, therefore you are subject to politics which can be enforced in certain ways.
Boeing has been a dumpster fire for awhile now. I believe they have had a negative net income for the last five years.
But the idea that Boeing had the guy whacked is absurd. Secret underworld assassins that will carry out a hit on the orders of a corporate CEO and make it look like a suicide. Do not exist and would be the thinking of a person with an over active imagination.
Its far more likely the guy committed suicide deliberately making cryptic comments beforehand to go out in a blaze of glory. Now he won’t be forgotten. They’ll be in Netflix special in ten years made by a conspiracy theorist who has been obsessing over him.
Much in the same way a mass shooter wants to go out in infamy. Except this guy wasn’t a psychopath, he was a decent human being, and only hurt himself.
Epstein’s death showed me that anything can be done to anybody anywhere. My life has shown me that human beings can justify any action as being for the greater good if they work hard enough at it.
It is not hard for me to imagine someone involved in the scandal having the guy shot. It doesn’t have to be a top exec. It could be a supplier, an exec’s wife, an underling or even someone in the government “protecting” a relationship with Boeing.
Just like you shouldn’t believe everything you read you shouldn’t dismiss everything either.
I'm a retired Boeing manufacturing analyst. This article would like the reader to believe that John Barnett tried to save the lives of those passengers on the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines by pointing out what turned out to be a lack of training on what's known as the MCAS system, a auto-correction system found ONLY on the 737 MAX.
Barnett had no connection with the 737 MAX and to suggest he had knowledge of pilots lack of training on the MCAS system is just irresponsible.
Joe Nocera couldn't show us the reports of Barnett warning of the dangers of the MCAS system because THERE WERE NO reports by Barnett concerning MCAS. But Nocera left that tidbit out, because it leaves the door open for speculation, supposition and conjecture (making for a much juicier story)
I've known guys like Barnett during my career in aerospace, they become so completely absorbed in looking for the boogeyman in everything to the point of making unqualified grandiose statements like "bulldozing the Boeing board ofdirectors" would fix the problems.
I worked at Boeing, also, and have no sympathy for the company. Barnett’s death, however it may have come about, does nothing but add on to the series of negative events associated with the company. The MAX debacle was a symptom of deeper problems at the company, which the article correctly describes. Of course there were no warnings from Barnett about the 737 MAX since he worked in Charleston, far away from Renton.
It's the 737 MAX that scares me. Any civil aircraft that has had its design envelope stretched so far it needs software to maintain flight stability is pushing the limits too far when safety should be paramount. Curious to hear professional thoughts.
Noting that the changes to management that seem to have put short term profit maximization ahead of long term culture and innovation seem to have forced Boeing in this direction.
Exactly. I wrote about this above. And I’m amazed at how many people shrug when told that the new best plane won’t stay in the air without software. I write software, and that is a terrifying thought.
There is not a single commercial airliner built probably in the last 30 years that does not fly without software. And I'm talking hundreds of thousands if not million lines of code. The newer the aircraft the more lines of code it has.
Commercial pilots do not "directly" control the aircraft. When they move the wheel or stick, that activates a sensor (or many) that interprets what the pilot did and checks to make sure it doesn't violate some limit in the software. Then it tells the engine or flight control to do something.
Yes I am well aware of that. However there is a rather large difference between fly by wire and software that is specifically designed to stabilize improper flying characteristics of the plane due to poor design (putting on engines too large for the wings, thus requiring incorrect positioning).
Richard Aboulafia, an aeronautical analyst who has followed Boeing for a long time and is No Fan, disagrees with the regnant opinion that the Max was a huge mistake. Listen to his stuff.
Fair enough but you leave out WHY that system only exists on the MAX. And I thought part of the problem with training initially was that a selling point of the MAX was that airlines wouldn’t need full training because it wasn’t a new plane? To be fair I read that they had addressed the training issues with the MCAS after the first crash, and the second crew should have been aware and instead did everything opposite from what should have been done.
Perhaps the guy has his own issues as you describe, but the quality issues (separate from the MAX design decision) appear to be real from many recent reports.
To your point, a recently retired Boeing engineer told me two years ago that the MAX crashes resulted in part from a lack of pilot training, such that when the MAX airplanes began to depart from their scheduled course, those particular pilots didn’t know how to react quickly enough to override the software manually. I’m paraphrasing from memory a couple years ago, but that’s the gist of his comment.
Of course, I don’t know who is responsible for such pilot training. Was it Boeing, or the foreign airlines in those cases? Or a combination of both?
Also "The China Syndrome" (1979), which, although fictional, came out in theaters just several days before the actual Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
Unlikely perhaps, but given that there are documented cases of small business owners attempting to hire hitmen, or actually hiring them, to knock off pesky business partners, it doesn't fall into the realm of completely absurd. Corporate leaders are humans too, and humans are complicated and flawed people.
While an unfortunate topic, this article is a breath of fresh air at the Free Press. In-depth, focused, unbiased and genuinely focused on a meaningful issue that should concern most people. Excellent stuff.
The whistleblower death is definitely suspicious. But I wouldn't say this article is unbiased. Referencing the UA flight from San Fran to Japan losing a tire during takeoff on a 22 year old plane is not a Boeing mistake, but a United Airlines maintenance mistake.
Doesn’t that kind of depend? If UA was doing scheduled maintenance, then it still seems like a Boeing issue.
Agree. Boeing has a massive brand image issue and any mistake that occurs with Boeing aircraft just compounds the issue.
Depends on why it failed but probably not Boeing's fault. FAA is increasing oversight of United and is considering restrictions on growth. They know more than we do.
And you have confidence in the FAA because? They’ve had infinite duty for overseeing and insuring the safety of Boeing since day one.
Not saying the FAA is blameless. The revolving door between industry and regulators is a part of the reason Boeing's been having problems and wasn't reined in sooner.
However, FAA has more information than we do, and United can have problems of its own that are not Boeing's fault. United has been expanding and that doesn't always go well. Some of the recent United problems were described as maintenance issues - that does happen and the tire could be one of them. It's more likely a maintenance issue than a Boeing issue.
One reason it happens is because the FAA farms all it sates responsibilities out to the companies in the flying industry. The vast majority of the blame goes to the FAA and DOT. FAA is the dysfunctional entity I have ever seen or worked for.
If you forward to 2:00 minutes into this video from Blancolirio, you will hear the follow up to the lost wheel story which turned out to be a failure of the actual wheel itself, NOT a maintenance procedure gone wrong nor a Boeing problem in any way.
Let’s all do better to be responsible and post accurate information with what actually happened. Please avoid scaring the public with speculation and misleading hypotheses before the facts come out.
https://youtu.be/rN256wwVwrs?si=6BKv9AhS_AbVG6SR
Either the wheel design was defective or it was beyond it's use date, the later would be a maintenance issue.....including required inspections. The first Boeing.
Considering the age of the plane I would say that the design is fine and the wheel has certainly led a good reliable life.
Checking online it looks like the wheels are made by Goodrich Aerospace and the landing gear made by Heroux Devtek.
Great article. One aspect missing in talking about the culture at Boeing is the revolving door of executives between the FAA and the Boeing board. This same issue prevails between the FDA and boards of some major pharmaceutical companies. If it is indeed time to start rebuilding trust between government and the American people, this is a critical place to start.
The quoted email about the engineer being surprised if the FAA passes the 737 Max was priceless. Heads need to roll there too.
The “turd” email was referencing the 737 MAX not the 747. The 747 remains one of the greatest planes the company ever produced.
You are correct. Apologies.
Excellent point. Why do the FAA and FDA need executives anyway? They should be staffed by engineers and scientists, respectively.
It could be solved by making government salaries competitive with the private sector. At low levels, government employees are well compensated (think clerks vs. the private sector) but the higher you go, the larger the gap. For example, where I live, the salary for a Federal Judge is $75K. A private sector lawyer can easily make triple that or more. When I worked as a programmer for a public agency I made 1/3 of what I made when I switched to private.
Important government positions should be well compensated. Unimportant ones should be eliminated.
Are you factoring in a pension plan and essentially guaranteed lifetime employment since unionized government employees are nearly impossible to fire?
Don’t get me wrong - I would like to see many government positions pay more, but get rid of the pension costs and unionization first. The Federal workforce could probably be cut in half with no discernible impact on their output.
Their “pension” cost are only 1/3 of their retirement pay. In 1984 the whole government retirement system was overhauled. Changed to Part defined pension, part SS, part investment. Controllers also get paid higher salaries because they got out of the GS scales a long time ago
So, basically, we're getting less (efficient government) for more (cost).
In that most of the retirement is funded by investments, the government is paying less.
less than.... ? You are correct - Less than no return, which is essentially what we earn on Social Security trust funds. Since you brought up the point, one of the best ways to improve long-term Social Security solvency is by allowing some element of private investing, because money compounds at market rates vs. the current 0-1% rate. Many countries already do this.
I agree. It's time for an authentic audit of government agencies. Efficiency is not in their dna. There I go....dreaming again.
Your figure for a federal judge sounds wildly off. A district judge makes $243,300 (circuit judges and Supreme Court justices make more). Administrative law judges are considerably lower, but according to Wikipedia the lowest pay for an ALJ in 2022 was $136,651. I will grant that any lawyer good enough to merit being a district judge could make more in private practice, but they don't need food stamps, and government will never be able to compete on salary alone; there are perks like prestige and job security.
Gold plated health insurance. One of my contractor employees (a few years back) left our company with it's $1,500 deductible per person and went to work for the government with $450 deductible per family. Plus I think they can retire before 65 and pay reduced premiums.
as a comment re pay. Yes, some jobs should be compensated at a higher level/salary. The issue with gov workers is that they may hold a senior job, but in many cases are not qualified, nor are they held responsible if something goes wrong on their watch. I am seeing that the historic accountability for errors or poor performance has disappeared, not just from government positions, but also from private companies or publicly traded companies. Even this latest Boeing fiasco has been festering for years. Now, someone or some groups of folks are taking the bullets for it (suicide issues aside). Consider the president who resigned is 68. What was he doing for the past 10-20 years? It is even worse in gov positions. It is almost impossible to fire a poor performer, as they are covered by civil service regulations. Those regulations need to be revised or removed and merit based roles and responsibilities and accountability instituted again. It has been a long slippery slope to mediocrity, and people are dying from it.
take care folks
rich
Trump changes the firing rules for VA and started working on the rest of the government. Joe got rid of that effort as pay back to his union buddies. Imagine that, unions making things less safe
I am a big fan of The Buck Stops Here. Part of the reason someone makes more than people below them is because they are Responsible (tm). And I am fine with arrangement. My dept doesn't make quotas, its the high paid boss that should take the fall.
Yet, that it almost never what happens.
You are right about not taking responsibility. There are also what I call the "skaters." People (in both government and the private sectors) who never take any chances or disagree with their superiors and thus never fail, but they never shine either, and they slowly move up the ladder into leadership positions. I outright tell my employees that if they are there to always agree with me why do I even need them?
In kindness, I disagree. One enters public service as a service to others, not just to make yourself money. I don't think we should pay government workers a LOW salary, but government workers often get pensions, and job stability not offered in the private sector to offset a LOWER salary for similar work in the private sector. Have an excellent week!
Google Bard: "According to the United States Courts website, which is the official source for federal judicial information, district judges earn a salary of $197,100, and circuit judges earn $209,100 [US Courts Judicial Compensation]. "
You're right. I was looking at salaries for state judges. Still, you get what you pay for.
Exactly correct.
John Barnett tried to warn us. All honor to his name and dishonor to Boeing. Appreciate your coverage of a story that MSM is ignoring. Perhaps TFP and Joe should investigate his death - if you do so please state that you are in good health with no suicidal thoughts.
His "suicide" is about as believable as Epstein's. We are run by a governing elite who treat us like fools. Let's stop being foils for them. We know who they are. And who are the toadies who carry their water.
Bruce-- thinking about this alleged suicide, and how "We the People" seem to accept it (and Epstein's) as "business as usual." We are numb to it and have become totally complacent. Every day we become more similar to Russia!
This was well written. Shows what happens when standards go out the door, for whatever reason. Boeing is a metaphor for the U.S.
Money that used to be spent on engineering R&D now goes to grease pols who get bribed with campaign contributions and seats on corporate boards, like Nikki Haley at Boeing. While Boeing is getting well deserved criticism, the problem extends across our "defense industry". Big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the $1.7 trillion F-35 have been vexed by reliability, maintainability, and availability (RMA) problems after over a decade of production. Last fiscal year, they were available for operations only 51 percent of the time. Problems include things like stealth coating issues, problems with the helmet tech, and trouble with the weapons systems. They can manage to keep a few flying to impress DEI generals and congressional appropriators at air shows but not enough to be a viable weapon system. If the shit ever hits the fan in places like the South China Sea our soldiers are screwed
The move to Chicago, organized crime, is reminiscent of the teamsters union & Jimmy Hoffa. It makes for a good movie. Just throw in some DEI & super hero’s in weird outfits. I think Pete Buttigieg should investigate since he’s done such a stellar job.
LOL, 💯 Doc!
You will have to wait 3 more months, Pete is busy with maternity leave. The gravy train continues.
David Halberstam wrote a fine book "The Reckoning" on how the corporate profit mentality ruined America's quality edge in automobile production. He detailed the policy of putting "bottom lines" and shareholder profits over quality design and engineering. That occurred in the late fifties and sixties, and here we are again. Maybe his book should be mandatory reading for corporation executives.
This article refers to 1980 being the time when stock option executive compensation started. I don’t know if that was the tipping point, but at that time I witnessed a palpable change in corporate culture from industry to media, while working at Leo Burnett advertising.
Corporate culture shifted 180 degrees, from investing in R&D for top-line growth to “milking” large, established brands for profit. In the 1980’s, leverage buyouts began and brands were traded like baseball cards to “holding”companies with no understanding (or interest in understanding) the markets these brands competed in or their customers. These were strictly financial transactions.
At the same time, network television, which had disrupted newspapers (remember when each town had a morning and an evening paper?), was disrupted by cable television. Cable began the fragmentation of network audiences. Then the internet severed one generation from another.
Before cable, a popular network prime time show reached 30 million households (about a third of total households) in real time. Everyone, regardless of age, got the same jokes. Today, after the Internet, the most popular network news show reaches around 2 million (and the population has grown to over 350 million, so that’s less than 1%), and most of their audience is 50+. What everyone under 50 is watching is hard to track, hidden by black box algorithms that are so opaque, even the advertisers who pay to reach them don’t know if a click is real.
These algorithms are designed to divide us, so it’s hard to see the whole picture or to know what’s coming, just like the mortgage derivative black box algorithms that led to the 2008 financial collapse of the housing market.
Adding a layer of specificity to the Ford:Boeing analogy, one of Halberstam’s critical observations of Ford’s command and control culture under Henry Ford II was its disregard for feedback from workers at the assembly plants. Executives set the plans and the sole function of the workers, including plant managers, was to carry out those plans, even when they, as the employees in the best position to spot flaws in the plans, could see what was not working and why.
Sound familiar?
And this is how Toyota beat American car companies, by implementing Total Quality Control system where each worker was responsible for quality and could stop the assembly line if error was found. System was largely the brainchild of American engineer Deming.
“Ford Pinto” any one?
Boeing received ISO9000 certification in 1999. ISO9000 is a stringent quality control designation that is awarded by a third party Inspection company and requires extensive semi-annual and annual audits. I would be curious about any investigative articles about this and what BIS Inc. response is (the company that certified Boeing).
ISO from the perspective of bottom line worker appears to be a money system where the worker is continually paying to be “re-certified” every three years. I’m not impressed to pay again and again for adaptive testing on the same subject.
The Corporation: the Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit by Balkan is pretty good too.
I said it before, I will say it again - American business sucks. You know it. I know it. They make crap products, provide crap customer service and stand behind nothing. They are run by greedy apparatchiks who don't care about their products, employees or customers. Why? Nocera said it best. What they care about is the stock value which makes the top executives very rich because so much of their compensation is paid in stock options. And why do they get to and stay in power? Because they are in the pockets of people such as Larry the Fink who reward them and keep them in power. We have truly lost our way and our corporate class of greedy, inept cowards needs to be replaced en masse. And, until they are, taxed to the max to reduce their power. The companies that truly prosper are those who reward their loyal employees and care about customers. In acts not words.
American business doesn’t “suck”. Millions of businesses here are run efficiently, ethically and with a win-win-win approach. I know. I ran one. However, your point is true that C suites of large public companies are dominated by greedy egotists, and their comp is usually tied to stock price. Still, I don’t see any easy solutions or a better model for building organizations of a global scale.
I agree with you as I was referring to the large corporations. There are many fine smaller businesses in America - from plumbers to electricians to restaurants to beauty salons and hardware stores that give great service and care about their customers. And many small manufacturers that make excellent products.
I figure you meant large businesses as well, Bruce. CEO pay is crazy in this country, and bad ones can be hard to dislodge if they have the Board on their side. Clearly Boeing's board of directors was asleep at the wheel.
When our company changed from employee-owned the business culture was like night and day.
LL Bean is solid.
I would disagree, being a Bean customer for over 40 years. Their products are largely imported, their warranty and support parameters have softened, and the quality of their flagship boots has deteriorated. They had to do all of this to compete with REI, EMS, Land's End, and Eddie Bauer. All of whom manufacture products elsewhere and reap rewards at the back end.
That's sad.
I've always had a great experience with them in terms of quality and returns, but it's been a while since I've had any issues to substantiate that their customer service and /or return policy have changed.
To be fair and address your concerns, it's not the return policy I'm complaining about. Returns with them and most retailers (even Amazon) are usually fairly straightforward. The complaint I have is with overall quality. I had a pair of Bean boots re-soled after 25 years of use (new rubber bottoms). They completely destroyed the leather uppers, did not fix the pull-on loops effectively, and did not size the bottoms correctly. I took them to an outlet store and they told me "these should not have been re-soled, their too fragile at this point." This would have been acceptable, but the service group did not make that advisement. The boots never fit properly again. They are being thrown away this spring and I have to buy a new pair of shit-kickers next winter. Not sure if I will buy Sorrell's or another brand, but Bean - not so sure.
Understood. Too bad though.
I had to pay them to return & replace due to a sizing issue. That never happened to me before
Boeing is another story of "Too Big to Fail", and the corporate culture expects that the government will bail them out. and it will. Strictly from a national security standpoint, there are only a couple of aircraft manufacturers left in the US capable of building the fighters and bombers needed to stay competitive with our adversaries, really only Boeing and Lockheed.
yep, too much consolidation
America got a lot of great innovation when there we many rival aircraft companies. Now you have one behemoth each in the civil and military domain.
Just before Covid I was making several cross country trips to help several of my children with grandmother babysitting. I found myself using several airlines and several styles of planes. I hadn’t been paying attention to the actual plane until one trip the flight was in an Airbus. My first time. I actually wrote an email to my husband (an engineer who at one point helped build airplanes) and my children the following: “ I am very disturbed. The Airbus I just flew on is a significantly better airplane. Better design. Better comfort. It just “feels” more solid. It makes me sad because I want MY AMERICAN plane to be the world’s best and it’s clear we no longer do”. Now I’m no “America first crazy” but even an occasional flyer if they are honest and aware would be able to tell the difference in the planes from Airbus and Boeing simply on simple measures. I am
Deeply saddened that it has taken deaths to have Boeing face their crisis. Let’s hope they properly clean house and get
Back to a solid engineer-aviation culture
Let’s not conflate United 777 losing a wheel on takeoff with Boeing quality control issues. That plane wasn’t new. Any issues there belong solely to United and its maintenance practices. First thing I thought is they properly secure the wheel assembly and/or lug nuts after changing a tire … NTSB should be able to tell that one pretty quickly.
Correct, except it’s actually worse - both companies are no longer dedicated to excellence. United has publicly committed to 50% "diverse" pilots in the near future, and there’s no way to get there without lowering standards dramatically. No doubt their DEI efforts are much broader than that. Boeing is dedicated to share price over quality, as by now is obvious and well documented (I am not "anti corporate" and normally resist the cheap greed narrative, but here it does seem to be true). And our government watchdogs? Well one of the top FAA people is on video talking about how we need to provide a path from "ramp to cockpit".
Here’s the United announcement. Scott Kirby says 5,000 people through their Aviate program over the next decade, ~500 per year. That’s a normal year of hiring at a major airline, if there is such a thing (last couple of years post-COVID, United & Delta have hired 2K+ each year. Delta’s goal this year is ~1,100). The key part is this initiative is focused solely on their Aviate program; United will still have to hire through traditional means to meet their growth goals barring any economic downturn (meaning from military, regionals, other airlines). Take a look at the Aviate Program Guide. Chapter 2 has the eligibility requirements; there is still significant effort required by the applicant to qualify to start the process. Then additional requirements to remain in compliance with the program through training (Chapter 4), and even more requirements to transition to United’s mainline operation (Chapter 5). While Scott Kirby may have a “goal” of 50%, there’s nothing that says 50% is required or that United can even meet that goal based on the requirements. The press release makes for great PR but I’ll be curious to see if they can actually make it.
I’ve flown with great female and minority pilots. I’ve also flown with not-so-great white male pilots. Piloting comes down to the individual (personality and attitude are much more important than sex or skin color in skills development). As long as United maintains elevated standards (point of emphasis) and is not pencil-whipping the requirements they lay out, they’ll be ok.
Now, would I like to see Scott Kirby not dress up and dance around in drag? Yes.
I'm sorry, but I still don't know what John Barnett was saying. I mean specifically. I get the part about a culture of poor quality, but what specifically was wrong with the planes when he was working at Boeing? The Wikipedia article on him gets into more detail with his allegations, but really only presents his side. Boeing is given short shrift in responding.
For example, did Mr. Barnett expose the problems with the 737 Max that (indirectly) caused the two fatal crashes? My understanding was that they were related to the software-designed response to redundancy failures, not to hardware. I also read that American crews, when confronted with similar failures in the 737 Max, were able to overcome the problems and continue the flight. Their response to events was better.
One of the main problems with evaluating claims like these is that airplanes are so safe these days that accidents almost never happen. With very low probability events, it's impossible to draw statistical conclusions about safety without decades of experience: years are not enough. And statistically, Boeing airplanes remain very, very safe.
Two different issues with a common cause (executive management). The issue with the MAX is briefly explained in the article: they needed a next-gen, more fuel efficient plane (fuel costs being one of the only variables airlines have to work with) and were getting pressure from their customers to deliver sooner rather than later. So rather than design a new plane from the ground up, they put new engines on the existing 737 platform that don’t properly fit - changing the whole physics of the plane to the point where it won’t stay in the sky without the software fix they hacked into place (think duct tape). Problems with that software (testing was outsourced to India) and improper training (not requiring costly full retraining was another selling feature of the MAX) caused the initial crashes. There’s no way engineers made these decisions.
The problems the whistleblower was pointing to are general quality control issues as they rush the planes out the door. Those problems have been broadly discussed in the media as of late (having to fix improperly aligned rivets, etc).
"it won’t stay in the sky without the software fix”. The reason for the software wasn’t to keep the plane in the sky. The software, MCAS, was created entirely to boost sales. The reason being that the company promised the airlines that they would not have to expend time and cost on training pilots to fly a new airplane. If the flying characteristics of an airplane are unique, pilots should be trained to fly the aircraft within those parameters. The MAX with its more powerful, more forward positioned engines was essentially a new aircraft. But Boeing tried to hide this fact behind MCAS. The proof that MCAS was a sales tool is that the company didn’t make MCAS training mandatory. Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines are examples.
I think it’s a combination of both things. The no or less training needed was a selling point of the plane being a new edition of the 737 rather than an entirely new plane. But my understanding is the positioning of the engines which don’t fit properly because the plane was not designed for engines that size changes the flying characteristics in a negative way, not just in a way that requires different training, and the software tries to address that. So I think MCAS is intrinsic to the design decision (rush a hacked plane out to please customers sooner rather than losing them to Airbus which did design a new plane for the new engines). But I don’t know, this is just my understanding from what I’ve read.
Here’s the United announcement (https://united.mediaroom.com/2021-04-06-United-Sets-New-Diversity-Goal-50-of-Students-at-New-Pilot-Training-Academy-To-Be-Women-and-People-of-Color). Scott Kirby says 5,000 people through their Aviate program over the next decade, ~500 per year. That’s a normal year of hiring at a major airline, if there is such a thing (last couple of years post-COVID, United & Delta have hired 2K+ each year. Delta’s goal this year is ~1,100). The key part is this initiative is focused solely on their Aviate program; United will still have to hire through traditional means to meet their growth goals barring any economic downturn (meaning from military, regionals, other airlines). Take a look at the Aviate Program Guide (https://unitedaviate.com/documents/Aviate-Program-Guide.pdf?updated=20231120). Chapter 2 has the eligibility requirements; there is still significant effort required by the applicant to qualify to start the process. Then additional requirements to remain in compliance with the program through training (Chapter 4), and even more requirements to transition to United’s mainline operation (Chapter 5). While Scot Kirby may have a “goal” of 50%, there’s nothing that says 50% is required or that United can even meet that goal based on the requirements. The press release makes for great PR but I’ll be curious to see if they can actually make it.
I’ve flown with great female and minority pilots. I’ve also flown with not-so-great white male pilots. Piloting comes down to the individual (personality and attitude are much more important than sex or skin color in skills development). As long as United maintains elevated standards (point of emphasis) and is not pencil-whipping the requirements they lay out, they’ll be ok.
Now, would I like to see Scott Kirby not dress up and dance around in drag? Yes.
Agreed. I worked along some great leaders during my time in the military that were female and/or minority. But, I would NEVER have called them great female/minority leaders…they were just leaders. To do otherwise would have been an insult to them. Tuskegee Airmen were/are prestigious because of the standards the met and maintained … meritocracy is always the way.
Without these sorts of DEI efforts, I wouldn't have paid the slightest attention to a female or "black or brown" (these efforts are not oriented towards other minorities) pilot. I might have assumed a black pilot may have came through the military route. I wouldn't have cared one way or the other - and now I will.
"Piloting comes down to the individual". Exactly - and DEI takes the exact opposite approach. So MAAYYYYBEEE United will follow what you write above and not lower their own standards to meet their own (or government directed, which is likely coming as well - and again everyone will say it is "voluntary") goals. But what I see as DEI is implemented across the country, whether in private companies, institutions or the government, does not give me even a little confidence in that.
Let me be clear: my comments here are not trying to say Boeing doesn't have issues to fix. But, there are a few other things to consider:
What if Barnett was a disgruntled union employee, moved to the south from his home in Seattle, and was not happy about it? Further, what if he did just simply kill himself (tragic, still)? What if management made some changes to his job that he wasn't happy about? I have no idea if he was union or not, but it seems like it would have been a decent question to address in this article.
If Barnett was working in the south, it was probably on the 787. Likely not on the 737 Max program.
What if having a co-pilot on the Ethiopian 737-Max flight with 361 total hours (yes, total) in a high stress situation with a less than 30 year old pilot was too much for them to handle? Another commenter indicated that US based airlines had experienced similar situations and were able to maintain control.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ethiopian-airlines-et302-boeing-737-max-crash-timeline-2019-4#at-the-controls-of-the-flight-was-captain-yared-getachew-with-first-officer-ahmednur-mohammed-to-his-right-4
On the Lion Air flight, the previous flight had experienced similar behavior. With a 3rd pilot in the cockpit, they were able to handle it. What if those pilots had the benefit of that experience? I believe they figured out how to disengage the MCAS. One of those pilots had the training and knowledge to know what to do. Was it because of training? Or trial and error?
https://thepointsguy.com/news/lion-air-crash-air-speed-indicator-malfunctioned-on-4-previous-flights/
This wasn't discussed, but those 737 door plugs are not new. I don't think they are "new to the 737-Max" The Alaska Airways failure doesn't seem like an engineering failure.
Bringing up the wheel coming off of the 20+ year old 777 in an article about Boeing was sloppy. There is a pretty low probability of that being a Boeing engineering/design problem. Pretty high probability of that being an inspection/maintenance/training issue with the airline.
Overall, I would not say this is a balanced job of reporting. There is a lot that Boeing needs to be held accountable for, but right now they are on the bottom of a media dog-pile.
" but right now they are on the bottom of a media dog-pile”.
Deservedly so.
The fact that Barnett's death isn't being investigated suggests that nothing is really changing, and also reinforces the idea that this isn't just a Boeing problem, that the govt is deeply involved as well. The FAA happily approved of all of this, and the govt is clearly helping to circle the wagons here.
I've worked directly with Boeing as a supplier for over 30 years and it's been heartbreaking to watch this company being run down by C-Suite, Wall Street shills. Unfortunately rolling a few heads at the top will not magically change this company back to what it was in 1990, it will take a generation of new leadership to imbue the rank and file with the correct direction.
I honestly don’t know if a generation of new leadership will be better considering what I see out there. Where would a new generation of good leaders come from? Perhaps the rise of classical education schools may produce them but that will take time. In the meantime, we have MBAs from Ivy League schools, Stanford, etc. which is only making things worse in corporate America.
I hear you. It's probably too much to ask. Like our politics the money is just too big of an dis-incentive for leadership to do the right things, the hard things, the things that take time and commitment to see a payoff. Everyone's gotten too myopic.
Interesting to hear the perspective of someone associated with them. Thanks for commenting.
I’m no big fan of Boeing, but if half of this stuff were true, the airplanes will be falling out of the skies every day. They obviously need to get their act together, but this reads like one of the old hit pieces on GM. Not that I like GM either.
“I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy,” he told The New York Times in 2019. Really? Not one aircraft was good enough? Obviously an engineer mentality. But Mr Nocera KNOWS everything he said was true! He knows it, man!
Also, the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia were software related, not hardware. Even so, the final report on the Ethiopian crash stated “Appropriate crew management of the event, per the procedures that existed at the time, would have allowed the crew to recover the airplane even when faced with the uncommanded nose-down inputs.”
Sadly, these deaths may have been preventable, but were not related to the physical build out of the airplane. So, let’s investigate what John Barnett said, but not take it as Gospel.
Every crash in the end is blamed on the crew who just happened to be dead. They tried it on the plane that landed in the Hudson River after the bird strikes but the captain lived and challenged the assumptions that the FAA were making. Proving it’s the default position of the over seer’s. It’s always pilot error. No one can challenge our assumptions because they are usually dead.
Chuck, with all due respect, you have a very thin understanding of how the culture of the company led to the creation of MAX and the subsequent crashes of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines airplanes. Research why Boeing opted to disguise the MAX as a plane that required minimal if any pilot training? Why was MCAS developed?
I’ve actually read quite a bit about Boeing and feel the whole “MCAS as a minor adjustment” idea was awful. But the crew at Ethiopian wasn’t capable of following proper procedures, and none of this has anything to do with the physical assembly of the plane.
I think what’s going to come out is that during Covid, a bunch of smart and experienced people retired, and, when it was time to build planes again, their loss created quality control issues. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a little early to declare that Mr Barrett “saw it all coming” in 2019.
The article was poorly written. The author does not understand the subject he is writing about. Pilots are required to undergo specialized training any time they fly a different “type” (737, 757, F-15 are all different types) of airplane. One of the main selling points of the 737MAX was the pilots would not have to under any additional training if they already were trained to fly the 737 “type”. The 737MAX flew like the older 737s most of the time but there were parts of the flight envelope where it didn’t and MCAS was created to make it fly like other 737s in those cases.
The tire falling off the aircraft had nothing to do with Boeing and everything to do with the poor maintenance habits of the airline.
Boeing has major quality control issues and deserves a lot of blame, but it would be nice if the author had some understanding of the topic beyond the whistleblower died suspiciously.
Chuck B, thank-you for your comments. I thought Mr. Nocera’s article was lousy journalism. Obviously there are problems at Boeing, but what he has written is hostile, unprofessional, and not well documented.
I’m with you.
I just read online that Joe Barnett's mother told CBS that she blames Boeing for the grinding treatment that left her son despondent. Yet Nocera implies that there was a coverup and he didn't commit suicide. And why was Barnett testifying in SC, when the 747max was built in Renton, WA? The plane Barnett had an issue with was the 787 Dreamliner, which was built in Charleston. Barnett was 62 when died, and retired in 2017 for health reasons. As soon as retired he "embarked on a long-running legal action" against Boeing. This last is from a BBC news article which is easily located on the web. Nocera must have known all this when he wrote his article.
Good post. Boeing moved from being run by engineers to marketing, CFO types based on financials rather than manufacturing and quality. Much like the rest of the West.
God speed to Mr. Barnett's family and loved ones. Boeing moved from fact based to woke-based and based on this I would seriously question whether Barnett was suicided; when you are woke-based you do not operate on truth, therefore you are subject to politics which can be enforced in certain ways.
https://im1776.com/2024/03/18/boeing-decline/
Money and politics, yes, but what does wokeness have to do with it?
Not operating based on logic and fact.
People have been doing that long before wokeness.
Not at Boeing. When you hire people based on immutable characteristics rather than competency you have a problem.
Boeing has been a dumpster fire for awhile now. I believe they have had a negative net income for the last five years.
But the idea that Boeing had the guy whacked is absurd. Secret underworld assassins that will carry out a hit on the orders of a corporate CEO and make it look like a suicide. Do not exist and would be the thinking of a person with an over active imagination.
Its far more likely the guy committed suicide deliberately making cryptic comments beforehand to go out in a blaze of glory. Now he won’t be forgotten. They’ll be in Netflix special in ten years made by a conspiracy theorist who has been obsessing over him.
Much in the same way a mass shooter wants to go out in infamy. Except this guy wasn’t a psychopath, he was a decent human being, and only hurt himself.
Absurd? Hardly.
Epstein’s death showed me that anything can be done to anybody anywhere. My life has shown me that human beings can justify any action as being for the greater good if they work hard enough at it.
It is not hard for me to imagine someone involved in the scandal having the guy shot. It doesn’t have to be a top exec. It could be a supplier, an exec’s wife, an underling or even someone in the government “protecting” a relationship with Boeing.
Just like you shouldn’t believe everything you read you shouldn’t dismiss everything either.
I'm a retired Boeing manufacturing analyst. This article would like the reader to believe that John Barnett tried to save the lives of those passengers on the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines by pointing out what turned out to be a lack of training on what's known as the MCAS system, a auto-correction system found ONLY on the 737 MAX.
Barnett had no connection with the 737 MAX and to suggest he had knowledge of pilots lack of training on the MCAS system is just irresponsible.
Joe Nocera couldn't show us the reports of Barnett warning of the dangers of the MCAS system because THERE WERE NO reports by Barnett concerning MCAS. But Nocera left that tidbit out, because it leaves the door open for speculation, supposition and conjecture (making for a much juicier story)
I've known guys like Barnett during my career in aerospace, they become so completely absorbed in looking for the boogeyman in everything to the point of making unqualified grandiose statements like "bulldozing the Boeing board ofdirectors" would fix the problems.
I worked at Boeing, also, and have no sympathy for the company. Barnett’s death, however it may have come about, does nothing but add on to the series of negative events associated with the company. The MAX debacle was a symptom of deeper problems at the company, which the article correctly describes. Of course there were no warnings from Barnett about the 737 MAX since he worked in Charleston, far away from Renton.
It's the 737 MAX that scares me. Any civil aircraft that has had its design envelope stretched so far it needs software to maintain flight stability is pushing the limits too far when safety should be paramount. Curious to hear professional thoughts.
Noting that the changes to management that seem to have put short term profit maximization ahead of long term culture and innovation seem to have forced Boeing in this direction.
Exactly. I wrote about this above. And I’m amazed at how many people shrug when told that the new best plane won’t stay in the air without software. I write software, and that is a terrifying thought.
There is not a single commercial airliner built probably in the last 30 years that does not fly without software. And I'm talking hundreds of thousands if not million lines of code. The newer the aircraft the more lines of code it has.
Commercial pilots do not "directly" control the aircraft. When they move the wheel or stick, that activates a sensor (or many) that interprets what the pilot did and checks to make sure it doesn't violate some limit in the software. Then it tells the engine or flight control to do something.
Yes I am well aware of that. However there is a rather large difference between fly by wire and software that is specifically designed to stabilize improper flying characteristics of the plane due to poor design (putting on engines too large for the wings, thus requiring incorrect positioning).
Richard Aboulafia, an aeronautical analyst who has followed Boeing for a long time and is No Fan, disagrees with the regnant opinion that the Max was a huge mistake. Listen to his stuff.
Fair enough but you leave out WHY that system only exists on the MAX. And I thought part of the problem with training initially was that a selling point of the MAX was that airlines wouldn’t need full training because it wasn’t a new plane? To be fair I read that they had addressed the training issues with the MCAS after the first crash, and the second crew should have been aware and instead did everything opposite from what should have been done.
Perhaps the guy has his own issues as you describe, but the quality issues (separate from the MAX design decision) appear to be real from many recent reports.
To your point, a recently retired Boeing engineer told me two years ago that the MAX crashes resulted in part from a lack of pilot training, such that when the MAX airplanes began to depart from their scheduled course, those particular pilots didn’t know how to react quickly enough to override the software manually. I’m paraphrasing from memory a couple years ago, but that’s the gist of his comment.
Of course, I don’t know who is responsible for such pilot training. Was it Boeing, or the foreign airlines in those cases? Or a combination of both?
Boeing (with oversight from the FAA) bears responsibility.
Right, business driven assassinations have never occurred. Ever.
Brings to my mind the old movie “Silkwood.” Based on a true story.
*shudder*
Also "The China Syndrome" (1979), which, although fictional, came out in theaters just several days before the actual Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
Unlikely perhaps, but given that there are documented cases of small business owners attempting to hire hitmen, or actually hiring them, to knock off pesky business partners, it doesn't fall into the realm of completely absurd. Corporate leaders are humans too, and humans are complicated and flawed people.
In other words, it doesn't add up. But you still swallowed it. They take us for fools for a reason.
The world we live in today is that one day it is a conspiracy theory and far fetched. Next it turns out to have been true.
When investigations are ongoing on a corporation and people keep falling dead or disappearing. An old story but one I am very familiar with and will never forget. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,957704,00.html