PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Will Boeing Become The Next McDonnell Douglas?
Old 1st Mar 2021, 12:37
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Blacksheep
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...a corporate culture with a 20 year emphasis on cutting cost at the expense of engineering and production excellence.
Having had a relationship with Boeing as a customer since moving into Technical Services in 1990 I can relate to that. Thirty years ago Boeing was the epitome of customer service. The downward spiral seems to have coincided with the move of corporate HQ to Chicago. Since then it has been a continuous round of cut-cut-cut and from a service point of view we began to have to pay for support services. Drawings needed for repairs were no longer available except at a cost for "intellectual property". The customer engineering departments (Renton and Everett were separate) became distant and we lost the personal contacts that we previously enjoyed within the ATA centred support staff. It is noticeable that the same can be said for all aerospace companies headquartered in the USA. Heavily subsidised by defence contracts, the Defence Department has stepped in to restrict supply of technical data and procedures have been imposed that delay the supply of spares. Airbus on the other hand is open with their data, support services, although not as personalised as we knew thirty years ago, are reasonable. Boeing needs to be split into Defence and Commercial and the Pentagon's grip on services removed.
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