Boeing at X-Roads?
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Commit to offering a new plane with 24 months.
. Will that ever see production ? I doubt it personally , but if the environment challenge is taken seriously we cannot continue with the current aircraft technology , Both Boeing and Airbus need to develop a totally new greener aircraft .
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FBI reportedly informs pax Alaska 1282 they may be "crime victims"
If Airbus can increase US production capacity in the US, I'd expect they would find buyers for the output, and less cooperation from the US government with nuisance lawsuits from Boeing.
But they are already researching a possible new aircraft . Just back from an event in Geneva called Airspace World, more ATC-ATM based , but Boeing had a large stand there advertising their new aircraft : the transonic concept they are developing with NASA,
. Will that ever see production ? I doubt it personally , but if the environment challenge is taken seriously we cannot continue with the current aircraft technology , Both Boeing and Airbus need to develop a totally new greener aircraft .
. Will that ever see production ? I doubt it personally , but if the environment challenge is taken seriously we cannot continue with the current aircraft technology , Both Boeing and Airbus need to develop a totally new greener aircraft .
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Boeing does not need a new aircraft, the company has indicated the timeline for a new aircraft is the mid 2030's and it woud be a narrow-body aircraft. And I'm not so sure it wouldn't be prudent to exit the NB segment altogether and have Airbus struggle to fill in the capacity there and see how they cope with demanding customers.
For example Saudia announced in November that "by the end of the year" (2023) they were expecting an answer from the "manufacturer" (Bloomberg identified Airbus) if they can promise to deliver more than 150 A320 in a specific time-frame. It's nealy April of 2024 now. And that's ONE customer.
That being said, I've commented elsewhere on the web that BOTH Boeing AND Airbus need to do well, and that's exactly what the Chief Financial Officer of Airbus said day before yesterday at CNBC, that they're not happy with the problems at Boeing.
I would love for the HQ to move back to Seattle but this would send a signal that they put their focus on the commercial side of things. And although it has generated the most revenue ($36 billion as opposed to $24 billion for Defense and $18 billion for Global Services in 2023) Boeing doesn't want to be identified as a commercial planemaker only. Plus, I doubt the state of Washington can provide the company the kind of tax incentives Illinois has or will continue to.
For example Saudia announced in November that "by the end of the year" (2023) they were expecting an answer from the "manufacturer" (Bloomberg identified Airbus) if they can promise to deliver more than 150 A320 in a specific time-frame. It's nealy April of 2024 now. And that's ONE customer.
That being said, I've commented elsewhere on the web that BOTH Boeing AND Airbus need to do well, and that's exactly what the Chief Financial Officer of Airbus said day before yesterday at CNBC, that they're not happy with the problems at Boeing.
I would love for the HQ to move back to Seattle but this would send a signal that they put their focus on the commercial side of things. And although it has generated the most revenue ($36 billion as opposed to $24 billion for Defense and $18 billion for Global Services in 2023) Boeing doesn't want to be identified as a commercial planemaker only. Plus, I doubt the state of Washington can provide the company the kind of tax incentives Illinois has or will continue to.
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# 536
"federal regulatory receivership" seems to be getting near to nationalisation , or at least a "national champion" in the French model ? A lot of the aerospace industry round the world is run in that way, so may be it is not the worst arrangement.
The belated involvement of the Airlines is interesting too. My impression is they have had a very hands-off attitude to the quality of the planes they buy, and have relied mainly on the official regulation not only to enure that the design is aceptable, but also to ensure quality control in manufacture. That is not the case is many other engineering industries, where an Owner buying several $ 100 millions of kit would either put in his own inspectors across the manufacturing process or would recruit representatives from DNV, Lloyds etc . The state of affairs at Boeing appears to be such that United, Ryanair etc should have their own inspection teams on site 24-7 , sitting on the shoulder and following their individual planes through the build, and at a level of detail that they would automatically be aware of all deviations such as the plug /door opening and rework incident, that would be quite normal for other industrial sectors ( I would expect that the Customer Inspector would chose to witness re-work in person, and that there would have been be a third-party or Customer rep watching this plug opening and remounting - indeed , such activity should be "hold-point" not to go ahead without Inspector's approval) . Some of the events that apparently have occured in Boeing production are the sort of thing that the Customer should know and should have say-so on whether is is allowed. EG, the pressure shells with wrong size holes / extra holes in the wrong places : in other industries, I can't imagine that sort of condition being accepted by Customer's Inspector, and it doesn't really matter if the outcome is functional or not - my Employer is paying for a good plane and they'll have one according to the drawings and without the extra holes thank you very much.
"federal regulatory receivership" seems to be getting near to nationalisation , or at least a "national champion" in the French model ? A lot of the aerospace industry round the world is run in that way, so may be it is not the worst arrangement.
The belated involvement of the Airlines is interesting too. My impression is they have had a very hands-off attitude to the quality of the planes they buy, and have relied mainly on the official regulation not only to enure that the design is aceptable, but also to ensure quality control in manufacture. That is not the case is many other engineering industries, where an Owner buying several $ 100 millions of kit would either put in his own inspectors across the manufacturing process or would recruit representatives from DNV, Lloyds etc . The state of affairs at Boeing appears to be such that United, Ryanair etc should have their own inspection teams on site 24-7 , sitting on the shoulder and following their individual planes through the build, and at a level of detail that they would automatically be aware of all deviations such as the plug /door opening and rework incident, that would be quite normal for other industrial sectors ( I would expect that the Customer Inspector would chose to witness re-work in person, and that there would have been be a third-party or Customer rep watching this plug opening and remounting - indeed , such activity should be "hold-point" not to go ahead without Inspector's approval) . Some of the events that apparently have occured in Boeing production are the sort of thing that the Customer should know and should have say-so on whether is is allowed. EG, the pressure shells with wrong size holes / extra holes in the wrong places : in other industries, I can't imagine that sort of condition being accepted by Customer's Inspector, and it doesn't really matter if the outcome is functional or not - my Employer is paying for a good plane and they'll have one according to the drawings and without the extra holes thank you very much.
Some of the events that apparently have occured in Boeing production are the sort of thing that the Customer should know and should have say-so on whether is is allowed. EG, the pressure shells with wrong size holes / extra holes in the wrong places : in other industries, I can't imagine that sort of condition being accepted by Customer's Inspector, and it doesn't really matter if the outcome is functional or not - my Employer is paying for a good plane and they'll have one according to the drawings and without the extra holes thank you very much.
I would hope the acceptance criteria are more bounded than "We, Boeing, say all those defects are ok so it's yours now".
Paxing All Over The World
Manchester South The airlines all grew up not needing to have thie own inspectors. Airlines could trust Boeing when they were an engineering company. Once they decided to put the C-suite and Wall Street first? It has taken the airlines 25 years to wake up.
Last edited by PAXboy; 25th Mar 2024 at 14:51. Reason: spelling
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Manchester South. Much appreciative for comments and perspective on earlier post (at 536).Two further points.
Airline company involvement. Upthread the forum had a discussion about how Boeing got utterly and completely overwhelmed after the second MAX accident, despite the causal factors which could have been and probably should have been pointed out as having been committed by the Ethiopian airline and related parties (the flight crew and (under MechEngr's views) the government as well). Looking back, it appears to have been the case that airlines did not want to see Boeing assess blame or fault onto the pilots. It appears that vocalizing the word "pilot" followed by another word starting with the letter "e" which also contains three of the letter "r" is very highly toxic to airline companies overall and especially to highly-paid senior-level and top management. So the type was grounded worldwide; as a non-aviator I view the grounding as having been necessary but the enormous, all-encompassing negative cloak thrown over Boeing - in retrospect - was not.
Now some airline companies are trying to engage beyond business as usual. It's a start at least. A good number here (and many uninterested in benefits of discussions on the forum) already have consigned Boeing to the trash bin of corporate history. We won't resolve this on any thread, though the discontent of airline companies arising at this time might, in turn, trigger an interesting question. Those who attack airline deregulation all the way back to Prof. Alfred Kahn, do they now claim that airline company detachment from the Boeing 737 MAX crisis until now is yet another symptom of the ill-advised concept and/or execution of deregulation? It's relevant to persistent calls to re-regulate.
Federal oversight. Models for state-enterprise governance might not be sufficiently comparable or similar from one national economic and government system to another. The main premise for my earlier post (536) was that the FAA's intensive scrutiny and intensified impositions on the company, combined with an NTSB inquiry which itself is constrained by the Justice Department's criminal investigation, suggests that the entire federal engagement with Boeing needs to be kicked up at least one organizational level. Who, pray tell, is quaterbacking all this? These federal government activities already approach something like receivership - not in the financial sense, but in constraints on management's and the Board's independent authority to make decisions and implement them. But Boeing doesn't seem to be getting well soon. So, and though I loathe this word, escalate the structure of the federal government engagement with the corporate entity to a higher form and a more intense level.
Left unaddressed here is how this supposedly possible federal engagement with Boeing would deal with defense contracting first, and space technology contracts second (and R&D for each) - but one could hazard the view that if the USFG could grab Boeing by its reworked rivets and make it "turn to" in commercial aircraft, the other sectors could be brought back to good working order sequentially also. ("Turn to" from Steelkilt's confrontation with Radney (perhaps also with the mate, Starbuck) in Melville's famous novel of the sea and complex workings of sailors and ships.)
Airline company involvement. Upthread the forum had a discussion about how Boeing got utterly and completely overwhelmed after the second MAX accident, despite the causal factors which could have been and probably should have been pointed out as having been committed by the Ethiopian airline and related parties (the flight crew and (under MechEngr's views) the government as well). Looking back, it appears to have been the case that airlines did not want to see Boeing assess blame or fault onto the pilots. It appears that vocalizing the word "pilot" followed by another word starting with the letter "e" which also contains three of the letter "r" is very highly toxic to airline companies overall and especially to highly-paid senior-level and top management. So the type was grounded worldwide; as a non-aviator I view the grounding as having been necessary but the enormous, all-encompassing negative cloak thrown over Boeing - in retrospect - was not.
Now some airline companies are trying to engage beyond business as usual. It's a start at least. A good number here (and many uninterested in benefits of discussions on the forum) already have consigned Boeing to the trash bin of corporate history. We won't resolve this on any thread, though the discontent of airline companies arising at this time might, in turn, trigger an interesting question. Those who attack airline deregulation all the way back to Prof. Alfred Kahn, do they now claim that airline company detachment from the Boeing 737 MAX crisis until now is yet another symptom of the ill-advised concept and/or execution of deregulation? It's relevant to persistent calls to re-regulate.
Federal oversight. Models for state-enterprise governance might not be sufficiently comparable or similar from one national economic and government system to another. The main premise for my earlier post (536) was that the FAA's intensive scrutiny and intensified impositions on the company, combined with an NTSB inquiry which itself is constrained by the Justice Department's criminal investigation, suggests that the entire federal engagement with Boeing needs to be kicked up at least one organizational level. Who, pray tell, is quaterbacking all this? These federal government activities already approach something like receivership - not in the financial sense, but in constraints on management's and the Board's independent authority to make decisions and implement them. But Boeing doesn't seem to be getting well soon. So, and though I loathe this word, escalate the structure of the federal government engagement with the corporate entity to a higher form and a more intense level.
Left unaddressed here is how this supposedly possible federal engagement with Boeing would deal with defense contracting first, and space technology contracts second (and R&D for each) - but one could hazard the view that if the USFG could grab Boeing by its reworked rivets and make it "turn to" in commercial aircraft, the other sectors could be brought back to good working order sequentially also. ("Turn to" from Steelkilt's confrontation with Radney (perhaps also with the mate, Starbuck) in Melville's famous novel of the sea and complex workings of sailors and ships.)
The belated involvement of the Airlines is interesting too. My impression is they have had a very hands-off attitude to the quality of the planes they buy, and have relied mainly on the official regulation not only to enure that the design is aceptable, but also to ensure quality control in manufacture.
Still a common practice everywhere. You can even rent other guys reps to inspect your aircraft being built.
Australopithicus and megan,
The airline I used to fly for certainly had company engineers on-site at the Boeing factory to watch over the build process. Whether that is still the case now, I don't know.
The airline I used to fly for certainly had company engineers on-site at the Boeing factory to watch over the build process. Whether that is still the case now, I don't know.
There used to be a poster here who had done exactly this for their airline having Lockheed Tristars built at Palmdale. It seemed a little group of them from different carriers inevitably built up on site, who of course came and went. It was a nice temporary assignment for an up-and-coming engineering manager. Only last week Ryanair announced they were increasing their on-site presence at Boeing, so it sounded like they had always been there. Of course, just inspecting is by-the-by, you really need (as here) to see what is being done by the hour by the teams.
The job is quite important, as accepting the production milestones means accepting to hand over the next payment.
"Now some airline companies are trying to engage beyond business as usual. It's a start at least. A good number here (and many uninterested in benefits of discussions on the forum) already have consigned Boeing to the trash bin of corporate history. We won't resolve this on any thread, though the discontent of airline companies arising at this time might, in turn, trigger an interesting question. Those who attack airline deregulation all the way back to Prof. Alfred Kahn, do they now claim that airline company detachment from the Boeing 737 MAX crisis until now is yet another symptom of the ill-advised concept and/or execution of deregulation? It's relevant to persistent calls to re-regulate."
Er, hang on a moment. The 737-MAX exists precisely because of airline involvement, bluntly stated as "must be cheap enough to compete with new Airbus offering" and "must be utterly pilot compatible with 737 with no material pilot retraining". At that point, whether they realised it or not, the airlines were dictating the engineering solution and the operational outcome.
Er, hang on a moment. The 737-MAX exists precisely because of airline involvement, bluntly stated as "must be cheap enough to compete with new Airbus offering" and "must be utterly pilot compatible with 737 with no material pilot retraining". At that point, whether they realised it or not, the airlines were dictating the engineering solution and the operational outcome.
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"Now some airline companies are trying to engage beyond business as usual. It's a start at least. A good number here (and many uninterested in benefits of discussions on the forum) already have consigned Boeing to the trash bin of corporate history. We won't resolve this on any thread, though the discontent of airline companies arising at this time might, in turn, trigger an interesting question. Those who attack airline deregulation all the way back to Prof. Alfred Kahn, do they now claim that airline company detachment from the Boeing 737 MAX crisis until now is yet another symptom of the ill-advised concept and/or execution of deregulation? It's relevant to persistent calls to re-regulate."
Er, hang on a moment. The 737-MAX exists precisely because of airline involvement, bluntly stated as "must be cheap enough to compete with new Airbus offering" and "must be utterly pilot compatible with 737 with no material pilot retraining". At that point, whether they realised it or not, the airlines were dictating the engineering solution and the operational outcome.
Er, hang on a moment. The 737-MAX exists precisely because of airline involvement, bluntly stated as "must be cheap enough to compete with new Airbus offering" and "must be utterly pilot compatible with 737 with no material pilot retraining". At that point, whether they realised it or not, the airlines were dictating the engineering solution and the operational outcome.
In other words, 737 MAX design and certification decisions were made in part due to certain airline pressures but those pressures matched up with the management and Board departures from engineering preeminence, without which the whole sad saga could not have evolved. So not "dictated" by the airline companies. And beyond that, the reported overtures to the Board are at a higher level of engagement and amidst a profound corporate and sector crisis.
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Boeing CEO & Other BoD members to resign
Calhoun Email
Boeing Press Release
In addition to these changes, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and Chief Executive Officer Stan Deal will retire from the company and Stephanie Pope will lead our BCA business, effective today. I want to thank Stan for his many contributions and dedication since first joining our ranks 38 years ago, and for his tireless service as our BCA leader during an uncommonly difficult period for our company and for our industry.
...
My decision to step down as CEO at the end of this year is one the board has been prepared for and will result in a number of changes at a management and governance level moving forward. My long-time partner in all things Boeing, our Chair Larry Kellner, has advised the board and me that he does not intend to stand for re-election at our upcoming Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The board has elected Steve Mollenkopf to succeed Larry as chair. Steve will lead the board process of selecting my successor as CEO. Larry, too, had been considering the appropriate moment to turn over the reins after more than four years as chair and 13 years on our board, and concluded that the CEO selection process should be led by a chair who will stay at the helm as a partner to the new CEO.
Edit: it should be noted that Pope is the presumed successor to Calhoun when named COO a few months ago
Boeing Press Release
In addition to these changes, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and Chief Executive Officer Stan Deal will retire from the company and Stephanie Pope will lead our BCA business, effective today. I want to thank Stan for his many contributions and dedication since first joining our ranks 38 years ago, and for his tireless service as our BCA leader during an uncommonly difficult period for our company and for our industry.
...
My decision to step down as CEO at the end of this year is one the board has been prepared for and will result in a number of changes at a management and governance level moving forward. My long-time partner in all things Boeing, our Chair Larry Kellner, has advised the board and me that he does not intend to stand for re-election at our upcoming Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The board has elected Steve Mollenkopf to succeed Larry as chair. Steve will lead the board process of selecting my successor as CEO. Larry, too, had been considering the appropriate moment to turn over the reins after more than four years as chair and 13 years on our board, and concluded that the CEO selection process should be led by a chair who will stay at the helm as a partner to the new CEO.
Edit: it should be noted that Pope is the presumed successor to Calhoun when named COO a few months ago
Last edited by Claybird; 25th Mar 2024 at 13:22.