The “Boeing lesson” for CX really isn’t highlighted in this article. To me, Boeing has struggled in the last decade for two reasons that CX can learn from.
1) Boeing has outsourced too much of their core competencies. In an effort to save money and market globally to the PC crowd, Boeing sent far too much work outside the country. As a result, they lost their quality controls and supply chain management.
2) Boeing is constantly battling their employees and pitting the very people who design and make their airplanes against the Company. They aren’t as bad as CX, but the results are very similar.
As for the Daily Beast’s analysis of the narrowbody market, I could poke holes all day in their article. The C Series (A220) is very far from a commercial success (look at delivery numbers). Similarly, the 737MAX is very far from a commercial failure. It has certainly bloodied Boeing’s nose (again, like 787 did), but there are thousands of orders out there and most of those and many more will deliver over the next decade. The MCAS tragedy is nearly sorted.
The narrowbody market isn’t about long thin routes which the C Series excels at. The average sector length is about 600nm (less than 2 hours). That’s why A321XLR and CS aren’t very big deals. Narrowbodies need to excel at moving 100-200 people 1.5-4 hours, reliably, several times per day. This notion that the market requires a 7 hour mission is a fallacy. That’s why we see many times more jungle jets (Embraer) out there than CS. It’s also why 737 is still a very popular airplane with the airlines, notwithstanding the current MAX disaster.