Originally Posted by
Winemaker
All this is and has been giving me stomach aches since the McDonnell Douglas fiasco. My father was a Boeing engineer back in the 60's; we moved to Huntsville for the space program and I eventually returned to Seattle for most of my grown life. To see what has transpired and to see all the warning signs that were ignored just pains me.
I was hired by Boeing at one point but turned down the job when my employer made me a better offer (I actually received a Christmas bonus check not having worked a day, which I returned; I still have a copy); this was a great company with great employees who cared about what they were doing. I hope but doubt they can recover - management needs to lose their golden parachutes and be fired but that ain't gonna happen.
The move of corporate to Chicago then to Washington says it all. They'd be wise IMHO to return to Everett, beg forgiveness and rediscover their roots. Too bad that won't happen.
The funny thing is that McDonnell Douglas was an "okay" defense contractor.
As a civil aviation designer, well, they designed a widebody with a variety of single points of very plausible failure, some of which did, and a successor with a tiny empennage that required the highest landing speed of any subsonic commercial aircraft along with no way to determine whether you landed or bounced. They never got the complete commercial aviation mindset. However, I think most people would agree that generally the DC-9 series was a good and highly reliable performer as long as you greased the jack screws and didn't chuck too much wing ice into the engines. DC-10 not so much. The KC-10 had a pretty good record, though, I think?
I haven't read much about the rationale for the merger in a couple decades. It seems like McAir and Boeing fused well on some programs e.g. Longbow and Chinook, possibly because manufacturing stayed put and so did most of the personnel. But Boeing's new(ish) military programs have been disastrous.
I don't understand why this particular hybrid cross had to be created though. The principle of hybrid vigor has been completely inverted into hybrid weakness. You thought you were getting the Borg "best of all worlds" and oh hey that went the other way.
Is there some reason that the 717 wasn't chosen for a lightweight fuselage redesign? At least it seems plausible that it could be re-engined with "big ol' fans." If there was a whole fuselage redesign it could also get an oval cabin. Idk, the possibility of that is probably utterly dead for 20 years though.