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!
‘Wow, I guess the movement of the airplane is more important than the first time quality of the product.’
WTF does that even mean? Did he learn that language from the Corporate Strategy Fairy on his last trip to an Aspen Corporate Leaders Conference? JFC
This ‘late stage capitalism’ has become a cancer on American corporations always trying to boost short term stock price and profits at the expense of long term growth. Boeing has been doing it for 20 years, but is particularly odious because they now factor in death as an expense of doing business. Lives mean nothing to these people. Only profits do.