Boeing Management Sucked Through Gaping Hole In Plane
Do you feel safer now?
The FBI’s been investigating ever since the door blew off that Boeing jet that was missing some bolts, so that means it’s time for a performative company shakeup to keep the stock price from going into a tailspin. You know what they say, when God blows open a door, he also blows open a window!
The CEO Dave Calhoun and Commercial Airplane division president Stan Deal will be floating away by golden parachute, and board of directors chair Larry Kellner is placing up his tray table. Board member Steve Mollenkopf will stand up and awkwardly shuffle to the aisle, stepping on stale pretzels and trying to figure out where to look before taking Calhoun’s unsettlingly warm vinyl CEO seat.
See, Boeing does care about your safety!
Making shitty airplanes has been a bad habit, but they can quit anytime they want, Calhoun told CNBC.
"We have this bad habit in our company. When you move it down the line, it sends a message to your own people that ‘Wow, I guess the movement of the airplane is more important than the first time quality of the product.’ And we have got to get that way more balanced. Without a doubt."
Yes, they have to balance sending out the unsafe planes. Balance.
That’s a nice way of admitting that what recently dead whistleblower John Barnett and the FAA long ago concluded was the truth: a years-long pattern of cutting corners, ignoring quality control, deceiving safety inspectors, and supervisors urging employees to “work outside the proper procedures.” Just what you want to think about while you plan your next vacay!
Departing CEO Calhoun himself was an ass-covering hire, appointed CEO in 2020 after the crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines in 2018 and 2019, which killed a total of 346 people and involved the failure of a Boeing flight-stabilization feature called MCAS, and led to Boeing paying more than $2.5 billion in fines for conspiring to deceive the FAA when they neglected to mention this new feature that plunged a plane’s nose speeding to the ground.
But for a company that made about $78 billion last year from commercial and government contracts, that is what CEOs call “the cost of doing business.” And it’s good enough for investors! On news that management would be departing to make a connection, they stepped aside, let them gather their belongings from the overhead bin, and boosted the stock price two points.
Buy us a bus ticket!
In the old days, Boeing management was located in Seattle and had to be involved in the building of its planes.
But then they moved headquarters to Chicago and Virginia to be "closer to their customers," apparently ignoring that the planes they make allow their customers to get to Seattle instead of having to take a wagon train.
And they open up factories in South Carolina, a state that was anti-Union.
Strangely enough, divorcing your management from your workforce and damaging the unions that had allowed you to have one of the best workforces in the world has consequences.
Its not just with Boeing. This is what happens when you let MBAs with no actual experience in manufacturing run companies with their only goal being bigger profits and not things like sustained excellence or safety.
I've been coming to the conclusion that every business school in the country is completely useless. Like why would anyone ever hire an MBA, unless your goal is to run your company into the ground?