Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

gravitas_deficiency , 6 months ago

At this point, Boeing should not be given the benefit of the doubt unless and until they are able to restore confidence in their QC processes and safety-first culture in general.

ocassionallyaduck , 6 months ago

More to the point: the bean counters running the company need to be replaced with engineers who know what it is this company is doing and what they build. It’s not an overnight fix, but so long as the C-suite is trying to go “lean and mean” every 5-10 years, this will happen again and cost lives.

gravitas_deficiency , 6 months ago

McDD really did an unbelievable amount of damage to Boeing. It’s an incredibly sad byproduct of the saga of deregulation and regulatory capture, alongside the massive downscaling of antitrust litigation and legislation.

Zerlyna , 6 months ago

Interesting. When I was growing up it was MDD, Lockheed and Boeing I flew. Now it seems it’s just Boeing and airbus. I wasnt keeping track when the merger happened.

jqubed , 6 months ago

Lockheed left the commercial market after the L-1011 didn’t sell as well as they’d forecast, and Boeing merged with McDonnell-Douglas in the 1990s. It was supposed to be a merger of equals, but the finance people at McDonnell-Douglas ran the show and won the merger over the engineers who ran Boeing.

Zerlyna , 6 months ago

Interesting. When I was growing up it was MDD, Lockheed and Boeing I flew. Now it seems it’s just Boeing and airbus. I wasnt keeping track when the merger happened.

Deebster , 6 months ago

Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO during the 737 Max crashes, was an engineer by training:

He received a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University, followed by a master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington.

– Wikipedia

And, of course, even though he put profits ahead of safety and is therefore partially responsible for hundreds of deaths, he walked away with a $62.2 million golden parachute. The incentives are not aligned with safety, aside from how it affects their share price.

winterayars , 6 months ago

I keep seeing people say this and

1. The CEO is not alone responsible for the culture, especially when he was only CEO for 4 years
2. He wasn’t the guy who oversaw the 737 Max development. That would be his predecessor, James McNerney, an MBA.

Obviously Muilenberg didn’t fix everything wrong with the company during his time there, for all i know he made it worse. However, i keep seeing this cited as some kind of own to the critique of modern Boeing and it isn’t. It just isn’t.

Deebster , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

I was responding to “the bean counters running the company need to be replaced with engineers” by pointing out that the man at the top is, at least by training, an engineer.

Let’s look at the timeline:

• 1985 - Muilenburg joins Boeing
• Aug 2011 - 737 Max announced
• Dec 2013 - Muilenburg becomes president of Boeing
• July 2015 - Muilenburg becomes CEO of Boeing
• Jan 2016 - First 737 Max flight
• Mar 2017 - FAA certifies 737 Max
• May 2017 - First 737 Max commercial flight
• Oct 2018 - Lion Air Flight 610 crashes
• Mar 2019 - Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes
• Dec 2019 - Muilenburg resigned

An aerospace analyst writes:

Dennis Muilenburg, whose strategy appears to be to maximize the share price for stockholders, and the executive team that holds stock and options. Having returned nearly $50 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks over the last five years, rather than invest in new products to better compete with Airbus, Boeing’s market share is falling and, given the aforementioned failures, is losing its reputation for quality and safety.

Are you seriously arguing that a man who is qualified to see the problems and dangers of the 737 Max and then chose to ignore them in favour of pressuring regulators and collecting profits shouldn’t be held responsible? He was in a senior position while the development happened and was in the top spot when it was certified. If the head of the company shouldn’t be held responsible, who should be?

Ignoring his time as president, four years is definitely enough time to see what kind of leader he was, and all of the internal messages coming out show no attempt to change the culture.

TheGrandNagus , 6 months ago

The fact that an aeroplane manufacturer can request exceptions for safety standards seems weird to me.

Is there a good reason for this?

evatronic , 6 months ago

They’re apparently for things that are already heavily tested in prior models and haven’t changed.

Like the cockpit door is the same in a bunch of planes, or something, no need to test it in every plane model, etc.

TheGrandNagus , 6 months ago

Fair enough, that sounds very reasonable.

Although the exemption Boeing was after certainly doesn’t:

the exemption Boeing had sought “involves an anti-ice system that can overheat and cause the engine nacelle to break apart and fall off.”

Yikes

abhibeckert , 6 months ago

There’s nothing wrong with requesting an exemption. It’s only a problem if the exemption is granted when it shouldn’t be.