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Boeing Needs to Be Led by Engineers, Time is Not On Its Side, Emirates President Says

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Boeing needs to be led by engineers if it wants to pull itself out of its current crisis, Tim Clark, the president of Emirates Airline, said Wednesday (www.cnbc.com) More...

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skyeagle
Yassine Cherfouni 1
Well , Let’s be real. Whether “ Engineers or Pilots “
The Fact is, It May Take a Take A Little “ Miracle “ For Boeing To Stand Again on Both Feet .

Boeing And Airbus Cannot be Allies anytime soon.

Boeing Leaders And Engineers will not be Meeting For a Dinner Ceremony Celebrating Success.

If The Difficulties That Boeing Had Experienced Do not Make it Better And Stronger, All its Efforts Are in Vain .
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nathansthepilot
Nathan Cox 1
As a 747 captain, I couldn’t agree more with the title. Let the engineers run the company so we have reliable, safe, airplanes. Of course Boeing had to make money, but that shouldn’t be its primary goal.
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dc3racer
dc3racer 1
The merger of Douglas and Boeing meant that the finally entity took its culture and strategy from McDonnell Douglas. A fatal mistake in my opinion.
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PegLegJim
Jim Welch 3
I was SUCH a fan of Boeing in years past, but they’ve successfully destroyed the trust so many of us had in them.
If they can recover from this disastrous management failure, I’m doubtful it will be in my lifetime. When I fly now, it will NEVER be on a Max OR a Dreamliner. When the engineers and production floor says they’d never fly in them, believe them.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
You'll go far if you believe any Tom, Dick or Harry that comes along. Get an education so you can think for yourself.
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sheldonlang
Sheldon Lang 1
I share your sentiments and opinions 100%.

A small company, a big company, a behemoth company, all have 1 thing in common. They are run by people. The weakest link in the chains of any organizational chart, are people. Too many of the people at Boeing let the company lapse, abandoning quality and replacing it with profits.. The old mantra "if it's not Boeing, it's not going, died off a long ago when the people of that day finally retired or left the company. There were probably a few who looked at their employer simply as a "job", but I get the sense that pride in accomplishment and performance was much more important to them.

The people of today especially, in the C suite, are Boeing's weakest link. And like a chain, the weakest link must be replaced before the chain completely fails.
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brwitte1
Barry Witte 1
Bring back Alan Mullally to mentor whatever "leadership" team is hired. He was among the last true engineers to lead Boeing.
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PaulPeckham
Paul Peckham 1
The same thing happens when a business grows too fast and starts making more gizmos than than is possible. I learned that 6 months after starting a business I ran for 25 years. Where do they recruit these giants of industry? Romper Room or Captain Kangaroo?
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sheldonlang
Sheldon Lang 2
Boeing needs to survive, but not at the risks it has been hiding from their customers and the public. When the executives get their heads out of the sand, understand and accept that the old way of doing things doesn't fly (no pun intended) and a new CEO develops a plan to regain the confidence of consumers, only then can this historic company re-establish itself within the industry.
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rjjones4314
Rpger Jones 2
Many facets to this problem. I agree with other comments, but taking a long view, we need to break this duopoly with Boeing and Airbus. Embraer arguably makes some fine planes. So does Bombardier. Unfortunately US laws, Boeing Lobbying efforts, and Unions have blocked their efforts to participate in the USA market with planes large enough to fill gaps left by Boeings ineptness. But maybe it is time for Congress, and more importantly Airlines insist on changes to open up this market to greater competition.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 0
It's difficult to take you seriously when you don't seem to know that the A220 is built in the U.S. or that you think the A220 is filling any gap that Boeing left due to ineptness. Must be Airbus' ineptness too, eh? You seem to be arguing for both Airbus and Boeing to compete with makers of smaller size airplanes even though neither wants to be involved in that market. What's next, a single engine Cessna trainer made by Boeing?
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dustinkempf
Dustin Kempf 1
So those other companies couldn’t even build a large commercial airplane if they wanted to with the current laws?
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rjjones4314
Rpger Jones 3
They can build them. But political pressures in the USA make it difficult to sell them. Case in point is the Airbus A220. It was originally engineered and built by Bombardier. But when Delta wanted to buy some, the Boeing lobbyist made it impossible to do so, so Bombardier had to sell the whole program to Airbus.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
So the laws prevent buying from Bombardier but allow buying the same airplane from Airbus?
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dustinkempf
Dustin Kempf 2
Wow, ridiculous. that’s not a free market economy.
Lobbying should be illegal
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jbleonard062
Jerry Leonard 1
The lobbies and the insurance companies run America.
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DouglasBiyd
DouglasBoyd Boyd 1
Boeing needs to have engineers in charge who were trained at Airbus.
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jbleonard062
Jerry Leonard 2
I worked at Boeing - Wichita years ago and quality control was job # 1. Nothing got past the inspectors. It was done perfectly or done over. I think greed interceded as I believe is the case with most American businesses today. A wise old friend of mine said “Greed will be the downfall of America one day and I am starting to believe he may be correct. I buy most everything from small local businesses rather than the national chains because the small businessman isn’t motivated solely by greed.
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AHAhlberg
Axel Ahlberg 3
Management by MBA may work for commodity businesses with minimal safety risk but that's not the airplane business. I've been hearing complaints about lack of quality workmanship, including engineering, for a couple of decades now as Boeing's succession of CEO's worry more about ROI than quality.
There are businesses, like airplane design and manufacture, that do not lend themselves well to penny pinching and where quality before quantity is always foremost. And if it turns out that Boeing can't compete on those terms then that's the way of things. Turning an ROI culture back to Quality First may not be easy but it has to be done. I wish them luck trying, but just as with the auto industry these days, it's going to be a painful change.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
What engineering complaints have you been hearing about for two decades?
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Nooge
Nooge 2
Ken warts and all will get to the bottom of a Wichita based American company and politicize the Boeing problems

I have notice a few cult members spewing this same nonsense

DALLAS (AP) — The Texas attorney general has opened an investigation into a key Boeing supplier that is already facing scrutiny from federal regulators over quality of parts that it provides to the aircraft maker.The request goes into detail in seeking internal discussions around Spirit’s efforts to create a diverse workforce “and whether those commitments are unlawful or are compromising the company’s manufacturing processes.” Paxton asked for a breakdown of Spirit's workforce by race, sexual orientation and other factors, and whether the makeup has changed over time.

Since a Spirit-made door-plug panel blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max in January, some conservatives have tried to link aviation safety to diversity at manufacturers.
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DavidCrowne
David Crowne 3
I have nothing against Stephanie Pope but strongly believe the the soul of Boeing has to be Engineering. That, not financial performance, is their reason for being. Enable that and embrace it company wide and the situation will get better.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
Everything around you that is man-made was engineered. It also cost money. Focusing on one over the other ends up with a lopsided system that doesn't work very well at all.
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GilbertWise
Gilbert Wise 2
Boeing chased the $ not quality. If they produced a reliable well designed and safe airplane then their planes would sell. Management pursued Too many ‘gizmos’ and shortcuts over sound engineering.
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dnjfletch
Dave Fletcher 2
The guy that guided Boeing through its heyday developing the 707, 727, the first 737s, and 747, was a lawyer. But he had strong advisers that were engineers.
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ed7778
Dennis Stockton 1
Imagine a different outcome of WWII if Wilhelm Boeing had not emigrated to the U.S. in 1868.
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hawaii79
Rich Whitescarver 4
As a former citizen of Kirkland, Wash. I can tell you that when Boeing moved corporate from Washington state to Chicago that move did them in.
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kelliott3ster
kelliott3ster 4
When Boeing took over McDD, a couple of McDD directors became the largest shareholders in the merged Company. They must have squeezed out the engineers, especially those in middle management. It will take years to reintroduce the original culture. Absolutely, an outsider needs to clean house. An insider with 30 years in the Company cannot do this. After all, the proposed person was hired 3 years before the merger, so has no experience with the old culture and has been promoted with the new culture as the management style.
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timhaight
Tim Haight 3
And trust me, they were the best but we earned every cent we were paid.
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sparkie624
sparkie624 1
I have worked on many 727's and 737's (all the way through the -800's)... I remember the phrase: "If It Ain't Boeing, I ain't Going!" I wish that standard held today!
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timhaight
Tim Haight 4
I couldn't agree more. The 727 was almost bullet proof, and the 737s were used to the point it was more maintenance the repairs. Can't find that in today's world very often.
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sparkie624
sparkie624 1
The 737-200's were bullet proof as well.. -300 wasn't bad, then everything seemed to start going down hill with the -500
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alexa320
alex hidveghy 1
Yup, flew both the -200 and the -800. Nothing in between.
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dann403aln
Dan Nelson 3
Where is Demming? We need an intervention!(TQM )
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timhaight
Tim Haight 15
Boeing needs to be lead by the people who are building their aircraft, not by the quest for larger deposits. They should have learned their lesson with the 787, importing bits and pieces from all over the world while they kept yelling faster faster. I was a manager on that aircraft and our people spent 10 to 12 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week doing nothing but repairing parts Boeing accepted as meeting specs without insuring they met specs. It was a terrible idea to farm out manufacturing without the inspection to assure correct parts came through the door.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
Who inspected and accepted the parts when they arrived? Obviously someone expected defects would be arriving and would need to be rectified. That's how you and your people were funded and kept employed as a quasi-permanent rework group.

But seriously, your people were trained to build airplanes—or fix shoddy work. Do you really think any of them were also trained or somehow had acquired the competence to lead a company of 150,000 people who design, build, test, certify, procure, sell, integrate, support, etc. products spanning commercial jets, drones, bombs, satellites, rocket transport, satellite launch services, biofuels, fighter jets, bombs, navigation charts, presidential transport, aerial refueling tankers, trainer jets, freighters, helicopters, flying surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, rocket launch services, mission control services, missiles, real estate management, security fire and paramedic services, volunteer community outreach, children's STEM programs, industry support, environmental cleanup, investigation participation or guidance, etc.?
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
All Boeing jet airplanes have been assembled from parts made all over the world. Northrop built major fuselage sections of the 747. The Japanese heavy industries, Italy, U.K. and Australia have built parts before the 787. Canada built the flight simulators.
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dann403aln
Dan Nelson 1
Why is the question ❓ The old Boeing system worked very well for everyone involved from the customers to the passenger.This has happened to many other industries including the automotive manufacturers, the number of auto recalls is staggering.
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timhaight
Tim Haight 4
I couldn't agree more, this quest to beat the bill collector's has gotten out of control. Yes Boeing pays very well, and the small chunks here and there allow these employees to live a comfortable life. But at what cost? When they stopped listening to the mechanics and other technology people and focused on the bank statements is when their problems took over. But no one can tell them that when their bonus became the quest instead of a safe profitable company building the best aircraft in the world it was only the beginning.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
You are indicating that Boeing tries to get out of paying its bills. Proof?

And what "small chunks" are you talking about?
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timhaight
Tim Haight 1
The small "Chunks" I speak of, are bonus perks All employees get from time to time. And not "Once" did I say anything about them trying to get out of paying their bills or anything else. I said farming manufacturing out without "PROPPER " inspections upon recipes onto the factory floor was the beginning to a major set of problems they did not expect to have to deal with. And "WE" the employees tasked with putting it all together got left to deal with, instead of making the people who made the parts correct their own mistakes.
You need to read what is written not what you think it says.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
I was referring to what you wrote: "…this quest to beat the bill collector's (sic)…"
I'm not familiar with any colloquialism that may refer to, so I took it literally. Care to explain?
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
P.S.: Isn't it better that "we" the employees fix the shoddy work? Why would you expect the people who did it wrong to do it right the second time?
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timhaight
Tim Haight 2
There is only (ONE) set of specs. Boeing already paid these people to supply a part that meets the engineering specs. Why should Boeing pay more to correct what they already paid for? It cost millions to have us rework what they already paid for, thus taking g money off the profits making the cost even more rediculas, and tieing up funds that could be used to compensate their own people. They were paid to deliver parts that meet specs period. They can rework their own incompetent at their own exspence, not Boeings. The parts should only be accepted when they meet spec.period.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
Ah, I see. Good, so you get to point fingers and blame, the airlines get a still-shoddy airplane and what passes for a free press these days gets to write more sensationalized click-bait headlines about Boeing to drive their advertising revenue. Nothing fixed, and the media wins.

P.S.: Boeing should pay to train them to do the job properly, again, because obviously the first time didn't stick. I presume "we" the employees will be too busy (blaming the McDD merger from more than a quarter century ago) to do any of the training. Very nice. Frankly, the only thing from McDD that infected Boeing was its no-matter-what-just-say-no labor unions that drove McDD into the ground and then found new life in willing hosts at Boeing. As McNerney said, the employees will still be cowering…
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sparkie624
sparkie624 4
The Old Boeing was great... The New Boeing has become greedy!
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dann403aln
Dan Nelson 1
Drove past the UPs terminal the other day and saw a 767 and 757 that are still in service. Thinking about the Max 737 and asking "what the hell has happened!Very sad.
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Siromega
Anthony Fiti 1
I was booking a flight earlier this week. United is still flying the 757-300s. That plane can’t be any younger than 20 years, probably significantly older.
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alexa320
alex hidveghy 1
757s are great aircraft, esoecwith the RR RB211s. Flew one with two different airlines in two different airlines. Never felt safer! Same with the 767-200/-300ER. Both solid airplane. Never flew thevMAX, just the 737-200 and then -800.
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dvond
dvond 6
Until we start focusing on the fact that self enrichment through massive regular untaxed stock buybacks is causing this decline (not only at Boeing by the way but at corporations across the board), these issues will never go away.
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lecompte2
lecompte2 3
Boeing needs to be run by pilots, not politicians. Aviation is in black and white not grey.
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pilotboobbear
pilotboobbear 0
You can be certain that when the American Corporate Media Machine sets its sights on a company and won't let it out of the news cycle, larger forces are at play. Nothing shows special interest's true colors more than news articles with a theme of "your safety is at risk".
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skyeagle
Yassine Cherfouni 1
Oh Yeah , I Agree Pascal. It takes Experience, Reactions Creativity And Quick Actions To be A “ Top Pilot “

Congratulations on Your Retirement And For Putting on Many Fight Time Hours And performances.



Respectfully
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skyeagle
Yassine Cherfouni 0
Well , “ Pilots Have A life And Family Too”
He/She Would like to Take Off And land Safely.

Someone Suggested “ Pilots “ Errors.

Most Incidents/ Crashes Are Not Pilot’s Errors.

We Know for a Fact , That it does not Make any Difference if The Aircraft Performance is Missing..” it tells you to pull up , WHILE ITS DROPPING You Rapidly “

As we All know , Logically, A New Manual would be Existent . The Pilots in Our Field Get Certified, Train And Get Familiar With A New Aircraft And Get Approved By FAA.

Again , This Can be Compared To Someone Drowning And The Boat that came to its rescue is Sinking.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
What are you talking about?
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 3
I agree with you, but in my day - which isn't that long ago, since I'm a young retiree - I didn't need a complex device to get out of a stall when the horn went off.

So, even if there have been design flaws or improvements introduced because of the need for economic competition, that shouldn't make up for the pilot's profession.
If the pilot has been properly trained, he knows when the plane stalls.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
So you didn't fly T-tail airplanes? It's not a complex device and it doesn't get you out of a stall. It's called a stick-pusher and it is a simple actuator that pushes the control column forward BEFORE a stall can begin. It prevents a stall, because if a stall begins the rest of your flight will likely have the flying characteristics of a concrete brick.
Also, whether the pilot knows when the plane stalls or not, the regulations require a stall warning to indicate when a stall is imminent.
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M20ExecDriver
M20ExecDriver 8
Led by engineers that ARE PILOTS, not computer nerds.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
A pilot is to an airplane as a taxicab driver is to a taxicab. They have been taught what they need to do when flying the airplane and may be able to indicate when the design doesn't permit them to do what they need to do, but it is delusional to believe that they have been taught how to design the airplane or build it, or run a company that does.

Also, since many piloting functions are assisted by or have been replaced by computers, excluding an engineer who is computer savvy probably won't turn out to be good advice.
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matonis
Peter Matonis 1
And, engineers that actually have a feel for the actual systems and structures. Not ones that can model the living hell out of something, a structure comes to mind, and look at computer results with the mentality of “green is good and red is bad.” It’s rampant in too many engineering offices everywhere.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 0
When nature's behavior can be reliably modeled to reveal modes of operation that definitively can be delineated into good or bad, that is better than leaving it to the perception of a human. Don't forget that humans have remarkably frail perceptive abilities. We have machines designed to take advantage of those frailties and make them believe that they actually accelerated to 150 knots, pulled 1.5G and climbed to to 38,000 ft., then cruised along and got tossed around by another airplane's wake turbulence while landing in a country on the other side of the ocean, while an observer outside thinks they've been smoking something good in that little box that moved a bit here and there and tilted this way and that, but never left the confines of a 10 x 10 x 10 foot volume of space that he's been watching very closely. Then we use the same machine to create the same somato-gravitational delusions to train those people to ignore the sensations and use only instruments to delude themselves that they are accelerating to 150 knots, pulling 1.5G, climbing to 38,000 … etc. Hard to believe we can condemn a person to death on the basis of a human's eyewitness testimony alone.
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 1
True, we have machines than can do all manner of things probably more accurately and more quickly than us mere mortals, but when cost cutting and quick fixes become the norm then these very helpful machines can become our enemy rather than our friend.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
There hasn't been any cost cutting or quick fixes, let alone any that have made machines our enemy.
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 0
The 737MAX crashes were caused by the flawed design of the MCAS installation on these aircraft. The subsequent investigation established that it was a cost-saving solution by Boeing which resulted in the flaw.
Perhaps my use of the word 'machines' was inaccurate but clearly an 'aid' which was supposed to help did the complete opposite and many people lost their lives. In this case I would suggest the MCAS was more enemy than friend and demonstrably did more harm than good.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 2
Nope. The pilots handled the runaway stab trim quite well, without any training on MCAS and without knowing that MCAS even existed. The crashes were caused because the pilots were not trained in 737 basics, so they didn't know how to shut off the electric trim system. Due to poor airmanship they allowed the final two runaway trim cycles to proceed unopposed, which caused the fatal unrecoverable dive. MCAS certainly exposed the deficiencies in pilot training and pilot performance, but that doesn't make it the cause of the crash. Besides, if MCAS was so deadly, how is it that it operated 22 times with no deleterious effect on the airplane (the pilots were maintaining the altitude they negotiated with ATC, no rollercoaster ride or, steep dive) and only became malevolent on the 23rd and 24th cycle?

Also, don't confuse the ignorant and prejudiced speculation by the news media for an investigation. The rubbish that was published came from using common sense to analyze a complex subject when a specialized education is really needed. As the adage says, "Little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Dangerous because the rubbish—generated from distorting, suppressing and inventing facts and relationships to fit within the common sense model of understanding—is actually quite easy to understand by those who also only have common sense instead of that advanced education. And what is easy to understand appears plausible and what is plausible eventually becomes accepted as factual. And there's the danger—actually the manifested tragedy: the lay public has only common sense, so the news media's plausible nonsense became the widely—globally—accepted truth. As Mark Twain said: "A lie travels half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." And he didn't know the half of what the internet can do.
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 1
The MCAS information was not included in the 737MAX pilot manuals or training guidance and therefor the pilots could not have known what was causing the problem that led to the crashes. This fact was identified by the crash investigators and subsequently the FAA went further and said that Boeing had deliberately sought to downplay the impact of the MCAS system.
Whilst some media speculation must be treated with absolute caution I think it unreasonable to appear to ignore the findings currently reported from the crash investigators (who are the experts) and the FAA.
Equally the deficiency in pilot training (in the MCAS) is the direct result of Boeing's decision to exclude it from the manuals. Their subsequent attempt to 'hide' the MCAS relevance clearly demonstrates that they new exactly what the problem was.
In this case the blame is with Boeing and not with the pilots.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
The memo of Boeing requesting FAA concurrence to remove MCAS from the ops manual indicated the reason: it was transparent to the pilots. News reporters couldn't understand what transparent meant so they used a 4th grader's logic and decided that Boeing was trying to hide it. Then they had to come up with a reason, so they invented that too: to keep the same type rating and save training costs. Well, if MCAS made the airplane fly like the NG, there would be no need for training, so why hide it? Nonsensical logic. Besides, a different type rating would be triggered by a difference in procedures, not control feel. BTW, transparent means there was nothing to make the pilots aware that MCAS even existed. Not even an ON/OFF switch; no levers, knobs or buttons to adjust its operation, no gauges, messages or procedures to monitor its operation or status, normal operation rotated the trim wheel but that couldn't be discerned from STS operation, and non-normal operation caused a runaway stab trim condition, which could be caused by numerous faults which the pilots didn't have to identify as there was only one procedure to handle it. So with a transparent MCAS, sim training was not even possible. It would be like trying to teach a driver how to shift gears by using a clutch, in a car with an automatic transmission. Pretty silly, eh? You didn't notice, obviously, that the MAX was returned to service with no sim training specified for MCAS. Still think "hidden" MCAS training caused the crashes? Aeronautics is simple to understand—if you have the proper education. Use common sense or an education by the news media instead… Little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
What information about MCAS should have been in the manuals? Apparently you didn't comprehend anything I wrote.
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 1
It's existence!!
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
Why? Of what use would it be? Per human factors engineering lessons learned in the Three Mile Island nuclear incident: don't clutter up an ops manual with useless information, it impedes retrieval of useful information and can become something to fixate on dangerously in an emergency.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 2
You fully right
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skyeagle
Yassine Cherfouni 2
“ Tell a lie on Saturday and you will be ashamed on Sunday “
“ You Harvest what you Sow “

You don’t just go for the Color or just because The Car looks good.If You would Like to buy a Car , you ought to check the quality the Engine and ask questions.
Same thing can be said About Aircraft purchase And orders .

It will take more than Replacing an CEO . Eventually, Boeing is on a spot light and can’t be in denial any longer.

It is expected, Airlines And purchasers Would Ask questions And question the validity, the status And The Engineering of The technology orders.

When Airlines leaders order New Airplanes, It’s for the Long Run .
How Far Can Boeing Fly in The “ Future “ and land Safely?”
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 1
You're quite right.
That's why I said it'll be hard to go back.
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chuckchern
Charles Chernicky 31
Anyone at that company that promoted the massive stock buybacks in recent years is complicit. When the priority becomes stock value and not your product, the results speak for themselves. In the case of Boeing, the direct result is people die. Nobody at that company has truly paid the price for their greed. Top management and the entire board should all be gone.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira -2
True, the results speak… one person died in a commercial flight operated by a U.S. airline anywhere in the world in the past 13 years. By your metric, stock value must not have been a priority over product and no one has been greedy. But in 2023 about 43,000 people died in the U.S. in automobile accidents. That's a whopping 117 people dead per day! What price did you recommend automobile manufacturers—American, Japanese, German—should have paid for their greed?
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btweston
btweston 2
Wow. You sure had you way with those goalposts.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 0
Would you prefer I compare 13 years of deaths due to automobile accidents?
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ashoksrinath
Ashok Srinath 1
These are dissimilar in so many ways!

How can you compare sophisticated, expensive aircraft to automobiles? How can you compare the sensor and equipment on an aircraft to what is in an automobile?

How can you compare airline pilots to automobile drivers? Airline pilots are generally mature, well trained and responsible. Large aircraft have a crew flying a plane, not some joker behind the wheel.

A closer comparison might be between passenger aircraft and buses.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 0
The statement falsely alleged that Boeing's priority being on stock value and not the product caused people to die. I pointed out that the argument didn't hold water when evaluating the practically zero deaths over 13 years in a region that comprises a significant chunk of global air transport operations, regardless of the manufacturer, and that for the same region 43,000 people die per year in ground transport vehicles. Your logic in denying the comparison seems to be based on the technological sophistication of the vehicle. Are you suggesting that it is ok for 43,000 people to die per year because a car is less sophisticated than an airplane?

At least you said "generally …well-trained…". In places where pilots weren't well-trained they crashed two 737 MAX airplanes that didn't have any design deficiencies. That much is discernible from the data recorded on those flights, which contradict the news media's version of events. Since I can understand both, I know which one to believe. The data also showed the pilots to have really poor airmanship. Still, I wouldn't refer to them as the "joker behind the wheel" because I believe their lack of training was not their fault. In fact nobody knows whose fault it was because the circus created by the news media blaming the airplane's design for the crashes gave the politically-pressured investigators an opportunity to conveniently skip any meaningful investigation of the pilot's training.

You seem to hold pilots in high esteem, and for good reason, but remember that by function a pilot is to an airplane as a taxicab driver is to a taxicab. News reporters haven't grasped that concept and believe a pilot should and does know everything about aviation and ask their opinion on topics they are ill-equipped to provide anything valid. Still, a few airline pilots pretended competence in aero engineering and not only provided the seminal notions that led the news media down the path of techno-nonsense hypotheses as to what was wrong with the MAX, but they also provided the media with flight simulator demos that they purported to be re-enactments of events on the flights that crashed, but were in fact fraudulent misrepresentations which allowed them to blame Boeing for "hiding" training on MCAS. That was pretty bold considering that if anyone bothered to compare the demos with the crashed flight data recorders… I wonder how they would have explained the egregious lapse in ethics.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 2
Hello , are we sure that there was problem on the aircraft, ? , the history is so complex, engine position , anti stall complex equipment
No the problem is an economic problem and The constant race to save money and cut costs
That's all there is to it.
It started with the reduction of cockpit staff.
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renb
Ren Babcock 15
What should have happened was the CEO of Boeing being fired.. two years ago. Simple quality problems really surfaced about that time and instead of getting better, it's gotten worse.

Put a very competent manufacturing guy in charge of each aircraft type and go through everything that goes into the assembling of them including outsourced items.. and fix the problems. You may not be able to redesign the MAX but at least you can build one free of defects.
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rgraham11
Robert Graham 6
In the real world, people who are a major factor in the killing of people go to jail. Design errors, faulty guidance, lack of quality control are all the things that caused two crashes and dangerous flying conditions. It should be jail and no bonuses.
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RJBrown409
Randy Brown 1
The pilots and airlines in second world countries are 99% at fault for the Max deaths. Boings fault is they failed to foresee the improper use of the product. With proper maintenance and training both incidents would not have occurred. Selling that system without redundancy is the mistake.
They failed to make it idiot proof.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
Since when are manufacturers responsible for the improper use of their products?! Humans are quite inventive when it comes to operating in deviant ways and no manufacturer could ever hope to anticipate all the ways… it's why the bad guys are always one step ahead of the good guys. You should read a book by William Langeweische "Fly By Wire, The geese, the glide, the miracle on the Hudson." He explains how Airbus saw the opportunity to make their airplanes idiot-proof by incorporating flight-envelope protection into the fly-by-wire technology they were introducing with the A320 series, but decades later how frustrated the chief architect was that pilots somehow still managed to crash the airplanes at the same rate as they crashed Boeing's airplanes.

P.S.: The pilots that crashed weren't idiots. Although they showed remarkably poor airmanship which ultimately compounded with their lack of training to result in an unrecoverable dive, they can't be blamed for not receiving the training, that was the airline's responsibility. I can't say whether the airline was at fault for the lack of training either, that was for the investigators to find out.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 6
We need competent engineers at the helm of Boeing, not just philosophers and economists, and we need to give pilots back their responsibility.
The constant addition of technologies designed to help interpret the actions that need to be taken to pilot aircraft is counterproductive.
It's time to let pilots "fly by the seat of their pants"
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira -1
What technology helps to interpret the actions that need to be taken to pilot the aircraft? Aren't those called flying lessons? And fly by the seat of their pants sounds suspiciously like "Fake it until you make it." Er, no thanks; two airlines had apparently adopted that approach instead of giving their pilots proper training and the result was the crash of two 737 MAXs and the death of 346 people. And to hide that fact the MAX was grounded for 20 months under the false pretext that its design was being fixed because it was unsafe.
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ssobol
Stefan Sobol 2
Can't train your pilots on things you don't know exist.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 0
I wouldn't be surprised to hear that those two airlines don't know that stabilizers exist. When Adam Air 574 crashed in 2007 investigators discovered that they had not been trained on what to do if the autopilot self-disconnected in flight. That led to all Indonesian airlines being banned from European and U.S. airspace.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 2
You right!
You think about anti stall?
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 6
The two 737MAX crashes were NOT pilot error (or lack of training) as you suggest. The crashes were as a direct result of the flawed design of the Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System (MCAS) and investigators stated that both Boeing and the FAA had allowed a cost-saving solution which resulted in the design flaw.
The problem was cost cutting and quick fixes at Boeing and it is clearly an issue, that to some extent even now, has still not been fully resolved.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 3
I completely agree with you.
Perhaps I misspoke
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 1
I agree with you but , technology and engineering must share the head of the company , equal shares
The design engineer and his management must be wise, must have wisdom and must be strong enough to make themselves heard and convince their board that it's the right decision.
Technology doesn't replace everything, and certainly not the pilot.
Technology needs to equip cockpits to facilitate crew work, but not replace it.
That's the job of the pilot who's been given the flying lessons.
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fredwyse
fred wyse 23
Harvard Business School now has the blueprint to the swift sabotage of even the strongest icon of manufacturing. Hopefully they teach this to the next generation of aspiring business leaders. This is your dividend.
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Nooge
Nooge -3
I see you did not go to Harvard Business School
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dvond
dvond 1
Where do think the first draft of the current blueprint came from?
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sparkie624
sparkie624 12
I would agree... Engineers need to take the lead and QC needs to have more authority as well.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 2
You want engineers to build the airplane?!
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 0
Of course, but it’s not so simple, I think , we can’t go Back…we have now to find, choice and pay engineers able to manage the risk, find reliable solution Which were dictated by the necessary savings that had to be made to keep Boeing competitive.
As a result, these solutions are not sustainable.
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n914wa
Mike Boote 18
IMHO, Boeing also needs to relocate its headquarters back to Seattle.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 1
People are alleging that management inappropriately interferes with design and manufacturing operations. You want them colocated… so they can interfere more effectively?
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n7777r
Derek Vaughn 2
That would be a good start...and I mean start.
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wx1996
wx1996 2
Engineer's with MBAs made a great company. Accounts have killed it. And they are asking for multimillion dollar bonuses to fix it. They need to go! The share holders need a large leader to fire them.
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n914wa
Mike Boote -2
Accountants don't run companies. They simply report results.
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GeorgeDinius
George Dinius 3
Unless, of course, accountants are hired to run the company.
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wx1996
wx1996 37
Engineer's with MBAs made a great company. Accounts have killed it. And they are asking for multimillion dollar bonuses to fix it. They need to go! The share holders need a large leader to fire them.
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pwpereira
Pete Pereira 2
Weren't those intrepid engineers asleep at the wheel or busy scoffing at that tangled-up multi-national mess of a startup airplane maker across the Atlantic, only to wake up one day to find that scruffy startup had become a household name: Airbus, a formidable airplane-making competitor that was eating Boeing's lunch? And then weren't they the ones who merged with McDD? They were the ones who could do no wrong, except maybe they didn't eat their Wheaties and spinach, because—as it is told here in the comments, incessantly like a stuck record, even 25 years later—they got sacked instantly by the big bad wolves from McDD, who wiped out the angels of old and imposed Satanic rule without even a hint of a fight. Goes to show—you can't put too much faith in that halo around someone's head. Maybe they should've stuck to engineering. Oh wait! Even their designs had their fair share of issues… cargo doors blowing off, autonomous conversion to the convertible open-air style of flying, rudders that went London-ways when the pilot commanded Tokyo-ways, and many more, but just like the design issues of today, none were due to incompetence or willful negligence and the resolution of each served to raise the knowledge and art of the field of aeronautics. And yes, they too had to cope with moronic news reporters whose hubris belied the fact that the full extent of their aeronautical knowledge was gleaned from the back of a matchbox, unable to convince them that what they published was utter gibberish, or as put more politely these days: had plenty of mischaracterizations. Not that the news media cares, of course.
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 1
You right
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ghstark
Greg S 0
Bad news, it's actually the shareholders that killed Boeing, and you can't fire the owners.
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dann403aln
Dan Nelson 30
The customers will have the final word, not the company executives, investors and government agencies.
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CHRISMORGAN
CHRIS MORGAN 17
Absolutely agree, I think this is the point that is behind Tim Clark's (Emirate Airline chief) comments If airlines begin to see major delays with their programmed deliveries from one sauce they will inevitably consider looking elsewhere. Equally, if they sense a passenger distrust of a product they will look for an alternative.
He is very clear that the best way to restore faith in Boeing is to put it back in the hands of engineers and who can argue with that??
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aurodoc
aurodoc 7
And here lies the problem-"looking elsewhere" When you have a duopoly there is no realistic elsewhere. Airbus could never take up the new business. Where else? COMAC, Sukoi? Nope.
If Airbus tried to increase production they would end up cutting corners and would be in the same situation as Boeing. When you have essentially 2 worldwide commercial aircraft makers the only solution is to create enough change in Boeing to produce defective free aircraft that ensures public trust. That is why a complete overhaul of management and the BOD is necessary.
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Canary6
Thomas Mchugh 3
And don’t forget, Spirit which may be part of the problem, also makes part for Airbus
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E71462
Pascal JURECZEK 4
Nobody
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