Airline customers want to meet with the Board
Excerpt from start of Wall Street Journal article (March 22):
"Boeing ’s biggest U.S. customers are taking their frustrations directly to its board of directors.
A group of airline chiefs recently requested a meeting with Boeing’s board to express concern over the Alaska Airlines accident and production problems that have upended the industry’s plans, people familiar with the matter said.
The airline bosses want Boeing directors to address the mounting fallout from the Jan. 5 panel blowout on a 737 MAX and to spell out their plan for fixing the aircraft maker’s quality problems.
Boeing has responded by offering to send Chairman Larry Kellner, a former chief executive of Continental Airlines, and other board members to meet the leaders of its key U.S. customers as soon as next week, the people said. Boeing directors also are expected to meet in coming weeks with CEOs of international airlines that rely on its jets."
Can't tell with any certainty if the airline chiefs wanted to meet with the entire Board in the setting of a Board meeting, though that would appear quite an unlikely scenario (despite the way the article descibes it). But perhaps further reporting will provide more clarity.
This development (or at least, it's a news item) prompts another observation. In situations where a company is insolvent or nearing insolvency, forms of receivership may be activated. (Not practicing in the field of creditors' rights or restructurings so I hope I've got this correct). Boeing already is subject to unusual and possibly unprecedented restrictions or limits on production rates, as well as other regulatory oversight steps, imposed by the FAA. And . . .
And at the same time, the DOJ investigation into the door plug Rapid Unplanned Disassembly event is taking flak from the NTSB and various industry worthies as interfering with "just culture". But DOJ has to deal with the pendency of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, even if at this time cooler heads prevailing might have argued against any criminal proceeding against Boeing in the first place. The imperatives of the DPA also would appear to have been intensified by the federal appellate court ruling which held that the crash victims' families have to be given their (proverbial) "day in court" pursuant to the Crime Victims' Rights Act. I hasten to point out that even if the DPA should never have been entered because the criminal case shouldn't even have begun, and correlatively even if (therefore) the crash victims' families should not really be identified as "crime victims", the DPA is a legal fact of life.
But is that the end? Could it be possible to construct a new form?? I'd called it, "federal regulatory receivership." (1) The DPA provides some statutory authority, not enough, but it's something to start with. (2) Convene a higher-order form of something called the PBFA, Policy Board for Federal Aviation. It's an interagency group which (as I understand it, which may not be very much) deals with policy issues where various federal agencies, offices and departments all have one or more pieces of an overall issue and nobody owns the entire decision process. Modify it, bring in the necessary heavyweights from FAA and NTSB. Let key senior staffers from the Congressional Committees (and subcommittees) with significant jurisdiction participate as observers (not any Reps or Senators, thank you). (3) In exchange for the United States Federal Government agreeing in principle not to extend the duration of the DPA, subject to a satisfactory proceeding before the Mega-PBFA, Boeing will ..... here's the hard part, of course. Boeing will straighten-up and fly right.
Give the crash victims' families their day in court, when this ad hoc regulatory convening is presented and (presumably) approced. I believe their tesitmonies would have powerful impact. I have sensed some complacency in Boeing's approach - not in the specifics, which have been endlessly written up. Instead, a kind of "well, planes crash every now and then, let's be grown-ups about it." At least, let the families have their say, for whatever it may be worth and whatever impact it might have.
I mean, if the Airline Boss community wants to talk to "the Board", as an old Second Affirmative Speaker in Today's Debate and presenting the Affirmative Plan, I'm just trying to say, give them a Board to talk to, one that could actually get Boeing back onto a proper and forward-looking track.