Nearly all of Boeing's problems over recent years has been cutting costs, some may say "corners", to save money and improve the company share price. FAA needs to do its functions properly and if it cannot/will not then legislation needs to put through for the FAA providing the law/rules/manpower/cost to do so. Apart from B747 and B777, most other aircraft programmes have had problems and some far more serious then others.

I'm tempted to suggest the problem isn't Boeing but the USA. My ex employer (software) was much more interested in the cost of a program than the outcome.

Unfortunatelly, this type of thinking has spilled over to this side of the Pond too - that is what worries me. Just look at Smartwings single-engined flight across half the EU and many more of similar. I can only keep fingers crossed that EASA will not go the FAA way, but... almost all of the CAA job was already transferred to industry - Quality managers and internal auditors are pretty much doing what CAA used to do, CAMO organizations performing Airworthiness inspections and issuing ARC - all perfect opportunities for cost-cutting, shares/incentives increasing oriented management.

esscee

That seems fairly easily fixed, just raise the cost of failure. The problem is that failure has become the cheapest option, which wrongly sets the corporate incentives.
If any crash automatically incurs a $1 billion penalty, safety would attract the kind of loving scrutiny that engineering oriented companies are happy to provide while also keeping Wall Street on board.

They pay the costs of two program setups now. The problem seems to be those costs are high enough to hamper new program financing. The longer they wait the more expensive this gets already.
What they need is a serious long term investment and product strategy which they had before. Like reuse existing 787 technologies for NMA and NSA or whatever they call new small widebodies and the 737 follow on.

Also additional costs with delays and other issues hinder new R&D.
I would like to know if Boeing has even "broken even" on the 787, which I doubt.

Not yet it seems. The current shims issues and new delays will not help it but on the long run it should be fine. But this Dreamliner created financial gap seems to be what halted their smart project Yellowstone family.

Do you have a source for this claim?

568

Published numbers say that Boeing would break even at ~1,500 deliveries - which BTW is about what they currently have on the order books.
The current problems will no doubt affect those numbers, but again published reports say that - pre-pandemic - Boeing was netting over $20 million per 787 delivery. So not exactly the black hole that some have suggested.

Alty7x7

It was widely quoted at the time that an engineer from Charleston would not let his family fly in one built in his factory

https://bigthink.com/politics-curren...1#rebelltitem1

TD,
Thanks for the answer.
Up until the pandemic Boeing was making good headway with 787 and MAX sales. The unfortunate closing of international borders due to Covid and the MAX accidents obviously hurt Boeing, customers, suppliers et al and this obviously includes Airbus.

Inspections by FAA
 

Reporting in Wall Street Journal for March 18 print edition and on website now states that FAA has taken over the final airworthiness inspection duties for four 787 aircraft prior to delivery.

First two paragraphs of news item (byline, Andrew Tangel):"Federal air-safety regulators have stripped Boeing Co.’s authority to inspect and sign off on several newly produced 787 Dreamliners, part of heightened scrutiny of production problems that have halted deliveries of the popular wide-body jets.

"The Federal Aviation Administration said its inspectors, rather than the plane maker’s, would perform routine pre-delivery safety checks of four Dreamliners that Boeing has been unable for months to hand over to its airline customers while it grapples with various quality lapses."

Article also states that WSJ had reviewed an FAA summary dated March 12 of its regulatory actions. And that "the agency said it would hold on to its Dreamliner approval authority 'until it is confirmed all shimming issues are resolved and airplanes conform to the FAA-approved design.'”

Whether or not this adds or detracts from basis for viewpoints about whether the 787 is "done for", SLF/atty here does not know.

the 78 may be okay yet. In these times it may find a use as the larger aircraft are now too big for their roles.
That said the 78 is increasingly a damaged good in comparison to something like A330NEO.
If Boeing do the 79 project, it'll likely take out the lower end 78 and the upper end 73. But we shall see, they have to keep giving the airframes away

etudiant

The question would then become a legal battle as to who was liable for this penalty with the airline trying to prove it was the fault of the aircraft whilst the manufacturer going hell for leather proving it was human error as to what brought it down - the pilots will always be the losers.

I'm shocked to read that Boeing were fined in 2015 yet continued on, pretty much as previous and the current fine is still significantly lower.... reminds me what an astronaut was reportedly to have said when asked how he felt about going into orbit:

"How would you feel, knowing you are going to be blasted into space, in a rocket made from hundreds and thousands of components, all built to the lowest possible price".

Seems that Boeing has lost its way in it's determination to chase $$$ rather than excellence....

Agree entirely to all of the above.
However, I think if there is a big disincentive for potential liability, it would change behavior for the better.
Right now, kill a few hundred non US passengers, liability is at most $1MM per head. That needs to change, stat.
What we need is serious ambulance chasers in the commercial air transport sector such as we had in US general aviation.
Admittedly, they also killed that industry in the process...
Is learning possible in this business??

I would suggest we at an inflection point for the 787 program. Continue the deny, obfuscate, dissemble strategy which to date is Boeing’s go to plan for dealing with all their F* Ups, or get serious about addressing the production problems, especially at Charleston.

So far it is not looking good. We now have 4 programs that are unlikely to hit production break even, 737 Max, 747-8, KC46, and now the 787.....

It would be somewhat surprising if the Max didn't turn a profit. Despite the problems, the orders are not insignificant.

The 737 Max program budget was 3 Billion. The Max’s cost to this point is an estimated 17 Billion to settle all claims against Boeing and get all the grounded Max’s flying. They have also lost almost 1000 orders plus they are in a very cost competitive market and are undoubtedly going to have to offer an extra price incentive on new orders given the fact that it is damaged goods.

Bottom line it is hard to see how they can ever generate enough per unit profits to ever hit break even. It is important to point out that before the Max crashes the 737 Max program was setting up to be a massive cash cow for Boeing and was going to fund the NMA and 777X programs.

The only bright spot for Boeing is supporting the legacy 737 fleet. They used to do well on the wide body side too, but a lot of that legacy fleet is now in the desert and unlikely to fly again as well as representing parts that Boeing won’t be supplying.

Thank you, Big Pistons, your post highlights the real costs of Boeing's management failures most effectively, in language Wall Street can understand.
Sadly I've not seen a similarly succinct summary in any of the Street analysts reports. Guess no one there wants to bite the hand....

Big Pistons Forever

Don't forget the pickle fork cracks on NG 73s.
Matters not what the cost to Boeing is. The American taxpayer will be paying corporate welfare for years to the largest military supplier.
Move along move along. Nothing to see here.