Boeing Shortcuts to Failure
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In a follow up here to our ongoing coverage for years and years and years now when it comes to Boeing and too big to fail and problems we have with capitalism here in the United States. New York Times put on an interesting piece and got some really interesting statements, quite frankly. Basically, we don’t even know that we’re getting more information.
in regards to problems that Boeing planes have had that, quite frankly, you know, don’t make it on the news. You know, flights having to turn around, make emergency landings that we don’t even know about. Stuff that is reported to the FAA, but not reported. Basically, this company, this company is a mess. Things not being put
together right. I can give you some of the statements being made. There’s a gentleman by the name of Joe Jacobson, engineer and aviation expert, decade at Boeing, 25 years at the FAA. A lot of areas where things don’t seem to be put together right in the first place. The theme is shortcuts everywhere, not doing the job right.
Again, this is what happens when you become, in essence, too big to fail. This is kind of what we did here with our auto industry for an extended period of time where we had foreign companies come in and basically clean our clocks. The redundancies that are supposed to ensure that Boeing’s planes are safe, strained. The experience level.
of Boeing’s workforce has dropped since the start of the pandemic. The inspection process intended to provide a vital check on work done by its mechanics has been weakened over the years. And some suppliers have struggled to adhere to the quality standards while producing parts at the pace Boeing wants them. It’s amazing to me too. Such a simple fix. Such a simple fix if you actually had a true leader there that could actually see things further than the next quarter.
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or next year’s numbers. If I was running Boeing, be real simple. I basically open up, you have a problem with high quality workers and engineers and people retiring, because that was a part of it as well during the pandemic, even though Boeing got handed a boatload of taxpayer money, a boatload, they still, hey, why don’t you guys retire early? Why don’t you retire early? They pushed experienced people out the door.
They weren’t expecting people wanting to travel, dumb, okay? Who wouldn’t think that after being cooped up and the demand for airplanes. So they started laying everybody off, even though they took government money in and then everybody replaced them. This should have been instituted a while ago. Talk about the high cost of colleges and universities. Real simple. Real simple. You go around, you go around the entire country, okay? Kids that want to be involved in the aerospace industry.
engineers, you recruit at high schools. That’s right, you recruit at high schools. And you say, you know what, you want to go into this field, you come work for us or Boeing, we’ll give you a salary. We will send you to college. Pay for their schooling, educate them, almost like an apprenticeship program, except that you’re paid. Our military academies do that.
Yeah, you have to serve once you’re done, but you get paid the entire time you’re in school. You sign up with the company. We’re going to educate you. We’re going to pay you. We’re going to train you. And you’ve got to serve this company for a certain period of time. If not, guess what? You got to pay this money back. It’s not a difficult thing to figure out and do. Again, if you’re farsighted rather than nearsighted, and hell, why bother anyway? Why bother anyway? We’re too.
Big to fail, we’ve got massive defense contracts. Anyway, going through here, looking at the various different audits and the things that are happening on the assembly line, questionable practices, the cultural shift, trying to get the plane rate up and just keep crunching and crunching, crunching to go faster, faster, faster for years.
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We prioritize the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right.
One quality manager in Washington who left Boeing last year said workers assembling planes would sometimes try to install parts that have been logged or inspected and attempt to save time by circumventing quality procedures intended to weed out defective or substandard components. And it goes on and on. And again, it made me think about this is these are these are airplanes. Okay, these are airplanes.
Um, last time and it was, it’s honestly, it’s been too long. Uh, since I was, I was in Italy and I took the kids, um, we took a drive, took a drive to Medina from Florence. Absolutely beautiful ride Dana, like balsamic, but that’s also where Ferraris are made. Maseratis are made and other super cars. And we went to the factories. We actually went to a super car factory. It called Pagani.
at the time, a car over a million bucks, I think it’s over $2 million for this car. And you’re going in and they let you go through the factory. And you’re watching the workers. If there is the slightest, the tiniest little imperfection at all. And I remember them baking the various different carbon fiber parts, throw it out, do it again, throw it out, do it again. It had to be perfect.
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This is how Boeing is supposed to be run. This is how it should be run. But it’s not.
It’s not. And again, it’s the short sided nature. Now, capitalism will work and contain some of that when other competitors can get into the fold and get into it. Can’t do that here. Can’t do that here in the United States, even if somebody wanted to. Even if Apple said, you know what? You know, we’re going to open up. We want to decide to start making airplanes. Now they canceled their whole car thing. We want to open up our own. We’re going to start making Apple airplanes, jets.
government wouldn’t allow that to happen. They don’t want to be hurting Boeing or the competition. It’s a military contractor. Too big to fail. Too big to fail is not capitalism. And this is why we can’t make nice stuff anymore. Watchdogonwallstreet .com.
