Two notes: 1) This level of detail would never have been possible without our collaboration with the Air Current. To dive even deeper into the subject, be sure to read their years of reporting on it at theaircurrent.com 2) As many of you noticed, we had a sloppy error in the ad-read-the B-2 was actually built by Northrop Grumman. This was just a pure mix-up in a section that, honestly, doesn’t get as much attention as the video itself. Apologies for this.
You could’ve used the B-1B Lancer or the F/A-18, F-15 or V-22 Osprey but you went tor the B-2? (It’s funny because it shows you put as much attention into the ad-read as we, the audience, do.)
You should also apologize for continuing to push the narrative that the Ethiopian and Indonesian crashes were Boeing's fault. Oh and you should also apologize for buying fake engagement.
3) You forgot to mention the disastrous and racist policies of DEI contributing to a smaller hiring pool, thus lowering your chances of hiring employees with the best qualifications in the market.
I've worked in engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing. I can tell you that when you start to incessantly financially squeeze your Tier 2 systems suppliers, you create an intensely adversarial relationship. To appear to meet costs the most experienced/expensive engineers - the ones who know everything - are laid off. Eventually the supplier becomes indifferent which leads to quality issues.
I was a supply chain manager for a company that primarily supplied the airline industry. We strategically transitioned our business (over the course of 7-8 years) into other industries and quit working with airlines altogether. Profit margins were so low you couldn't make any money, and then add unethical behavior to extort not only money but design and engineering from us with no compensation...yeah, bye. Find another sucker, airline is a race to the bottom. When i left our sales were nearly half, but our profit was 3x.
@@OtisFlintI hear it’s the same with automotive OEMs like Ford and Chevy. They’ll bankrupt a supplier who thought they had a gravy contract with the Big 3.
Yeah@@OtisFlint I saw that too, the Tier 2 would be told they need to place engineers on-site to support their product. I learned fast that being an on-site engineer stalls your career - you're away from your employer & out of the loop.
Huh? More like communication failure I guess. Like the Biblical Babel in brief. They have the machines and no need for buying one. Manpower? Ask the land tax over the Hershey factories left idle back then as I remember a show for.
Yeah, they also put accountants at the top of Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies, and every single time they nearly crashed them. Put competent people at strategic posts, not fucking excel experts.
It wasn't that, they just added a piece of equipment and never told anybody about it because it would have required training and Boeing knew they'd loose the aircraft race, a race now lost due to there greed and incompetence
It all went downhill for Boeing after the McDonnell Douglas merger, really. Boeing went from an engineer run company to an investor run company after the merger, which ended up with Boeing being 'profit first safety second' sadly.
yea it’s kind of sad honestly. i can’t even say anything positive about boeing with being flooded with insults i seriously hope they can recover or atleast something comes up about boeing that will make the news, but in a positive way, rather than a negative
The McDonell Douglas merger is cited a lot as the beginning of the end of Boeing, but people miss the big picture of that merger: it turned Boeing into a monopoly. The merger didn't just alter Boeing's management structure and business practices by virtue of absorbing Douglas, it also meant that Boeing had no real competition anymore. They had rolled up their last competitor in civil aviation. Monopolies aren't subject to market discipline, so they do not have to perform or innovate. They can use their market dominance to simply extract more money out of people, often even as the monopoly becomes less efficient and degrades in quality over time. Before you try to say Airbus is a competitor, my answer to that is "not really." A few points: Number one: there are a gazillion different tax incentives, de facto subsidies, and loopholes for US airlines to use Boeing over Airbus. Boeing is a private company basically in name-only, and ever since becoming the US' "national champion" in civil aviation, Boeing basically just asks the feds for handouts, bailouts, exceptions, and special favors. And they get it. The DOJ dropped their criminal fraud charges against Boeing (related to the fraud Boeing perpetrated around the Max crashed) after CEO Dave Calhoun personally met wit Trump and his admin. The feds coddle Boeing becuase they're afraid, if you truly hurt Boeing, you're hurting the whole US Civil aviation industry. Airbus doesn't get anywhere close to this kind of special treatment from the feds. Boeing and Airbus spent like 20 years continually suing each other in international court over who was getting more "unfair" help from their respective governments. The court case basically ended in a draw, with a slight victory to Airbus, who proved Boeing was getting more help from taxpayers and the government than them. So US Airlines can't realistically switch to Airbus, if only for the loss in tax incentives, protectionism, and special treatment given to Boeing customers. The second point is that airlines would have to retrain workers, and radically alter their supply lines / maintenance programs, to switch to Airbus. They really, really don't want to do that, because it's such a pain. Operating hybrid fleets can be a pain, especially if you're used to a monopoly. The third point is that the waitlist for a new Airbus plane is like 8 or 10 years long. So airlines can't realistically switch over. They're stuck with Boeing. So the airlines (who are also highly consolidated, 4 companies make up over 85% of all flights) are Boeing's major customers, and they aren't really going to be able to discipline Boeing by going to another manufacturer. There is no other manufacturer, anymore. Boeing bought them. So the McDonnell Douglas merger is not just about McDonell's financialized approach and bad management. It's also about how Boeing became a monopoly. And as a monopoly, there is zero reason to waste time and energy innovating, or engineering a better product for less money. Your customers have to buy from you, and your suppliers have to sell to you, and there is no other option. People say McD culture is overly focused on profits, but I don't think that's true. If it was, how come Boeing is losing billions every year, and immolating before our eyes? If they truly were laser focused on profits... then wouldn't they fire all of the management, when they screw up and lose all this money? Rather, the culture at Boeing seems to be pretty relaxed about losing billions of dollars due to bad management. What I think the McD/Boeing culture is _really_ concerned with is _power_ . They want market power. If you're a monopoly, you want to maintain that position of power first, and ensure nothing rocks the boat to threaten your monopoly. Profits are kind of incidental to that. The last thing I'll say is that Boeing itself was created in the 1930s... when another monopoly was broken up. A company named United Aircraft was broken up into 3 smaller companies, and Boeing was one of them.
Guaranteed. Just before the major airline I worked for declared bankruptcy, a starry-eyed newhire explained she'd been told there were "two separate pots of money" - one for upper management, the other for workers in case of bankruptcy. 😂 We enlightened her as to how that was going to work.....exactly as it soon did.
Oh Def. The best C-suite has stem degrees and worked in the field of their industry. But instead they held onto a the C-suite of a failing company and copied their Hail Mary. This C suite is a failure and I wouldn't want more management consultants.
This is not just a Boeing problem. Its happening to nearly every major company because they put too high a value on shareholders and profit, at the cost of what fundamentally made their products possible.
Yes. And the consequences are always the same. Look at what happened to Apple and Microsoft. Kodak also took the same route, but failed to recover in-extremis.
The Boeing issue is blown completely out of proportion. Mainstream media and UA-cam personalities are using this subject for clout. Wendover Productions or whoever this is doesn't know anything about aviation; Fox News/Cnn/MSNBC know nothing about aviation. There have been MANY other aircraft with this kind of media perception after having multiple accidents in a row. The 737 NG is a spectacular aircraft. The 777 and 787 have immaculate safety records, and are just as good as any Airbus.
Boeing's decline started after CEO T. A. Wilson, an engineer, stepped down in 1986 and the board chose Frank Schrontz, an accountant, to take his place. The atmosphere quickly became toxic because the focus was now on the bottom line rather than the quality of the product. The synergistic environment I'd enjoyed since 1978 quickly disappeared. I left in 1991 and friends who had stayed would always tell me the work atmosphere on both the Aerospace and Aircraft side was "pissy". Even my father who had worked their since 1958 agreed the company had changed for the worse.
Listen : Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies at some point tried to put an accountant at the top of the chain. EVERY SINGLE TIME, they nearly drowned the company (which honestly requires a lot of work seeing how much inertia these have). If you want your tech company to be successful, you don’t need the spreadsheet guy taking decisions, you need the tech guy taking decisions based on what the client is looking for. Good tech sells itself. Just let the fucking competent people run the business.
Exactly. I also knew Wendover would get it wrong. Blaming projects or timing ... and not culture. Though your comment is the exception in this video's comments, in other aircraft oriented channels like Blanco Lirio ... it's the consensus of actual experts; people who previously worked at Boeing and left in sadness over the trajectory. The real tragedy is that Boeing is nearly an exact metaphor to the nation; our financialized economy that uses auto attendants to spare 3s interactions with a human as a cost-savings initiative. A gov that invites corruption via lobbying, constantly legislating interferences into our lives in the name of the environment, but allows Apple and others to deliberately make computers difficult to repair. In which the MSM flagrantly lies to us on behalf of one party of the gov. Implores us to _"TRUST THE SCIENCE"_ ... (an utterly anti-scientific phrase) likely bc Big Pharma or the Gov told them to, when many in the gov are invested IN Big Pharma. Science doesn't demand your faith; but invites skepticism. Anyone remotely ensconced in the philosophy of science (the greatest democratization of knowledge) should've recognized that as to be so wrong as to be deserving of a name brand title as a fallacy. A nation of "experts" that's livid bc they can't imprison or bankrupt Tucker Carlson, someone who may make mistakes but isn't controlled at least -- for interviewing someone?? Yet, it was in Ukraine (our client state) where the US citizen, Gonzalo Lira, died in custody for thought crime. Our culture promotes an hostility to new information and debate. The incentives are corrupted. And the pressures companies and gov used to face are manipulated for the worst reasons. What makes this all so scary ... is that Boeing is a symptom and metaphor for our entire culture. $34-Trillion debt ... a president whose DOJ says he lacks the cognitive faculties to face criminal culpability. And it's NOT EVEN NEWS! In the immortal words of Walter Sobcek: _HAS THE WHOLE DAMNED WORLD GONE CRAZY!?? Mark it zero!_
Not mentioned in this video but Boeing had been caught skipping required inspections across it's product lines, proving it's a systemic problem pushed from above but it's being entirely ignored by the media. For example, their space capsule gets two inspections from different people to verify the parachute is attached to the capsule. Neither inspection happened because it wasn't attached when they opened it after entry, it slammed into the ground. They have had cases of inspections not happening for years. If they cared they wouldn't still be skipping them. They skipped them for passenger planes from try different incidents, military cargo planes, and likely with that door plug given it was missing bolts. They have also made atrocious designs and software, made requiring them to scrap it and start over with direct NASA oversight. I don't get why anyone hires Boeing for anything anymore. I'd say is only a matter of time before they kill people but they have already done that.
All my Boeing engineer friends jumped over to airbus due to that. I guess this is what happens when you become TOO big to fail and able to skip mandatory inspections in order to meet your numbers. What’s funny is that this all happens to US companies far more often whereas with Japanese companies quality and control is prioritize over profits. Just because Japan can do it better and more efficient, doesn’t mean the US can do it. Boeings reputation is down the drain and they need to gain trust back which is difficult because a plane accident where people die is usually blown all over media vs let’s say car accidents due to manufacturing errors which happens way more
My dad worked assembly (mainly riveting) in the Wichita Boeing plant during some of their peak, through the plant being sold to Onex, and then to Spirit (or maybe it was that Onex owned Spirit, memory is foggy). It was wild to hear you talk about the problems with Spirit and remember back to my dad coming home from work, exhausted, complaining about how they had to scrap a fuselage skin because some idiot up the line screwed up drilling the holes so bad they were ovals and the rivets would slip right through. Then it turned into "Yea, we should have scrapped the skin, but then they just shoved out of spec washer shims behind the holes and told us to buck the rivets anyway." He retired right around the Dreamliner fiasco (don't remember if it was before or after) because of another massive issue on the line: Letting experienced workers go so they could higher inexperienced greenhorns at much lower salary. They kept trying to get him to keep crawling into the plane, despite his back problems and age, and then also train new hires (Many of which were super unqualified even for manual labor. Lots of weed/meth smoking on lunch breaks in trucks, according to my dad).
@@leefrancis007 So... I used to work at the North Carolina Spirit factory that makes parts for Airbus... Maybe look into trains for domestic travel...
A man who had worked at Rolls-Royce told me that they used a shim if something didn't fit. My skin crawled, but I don't think he worked on aero engines. Maybe he was telling the truth.
Cooper Lund put it best on Bluesky- "Boeing's problems really started when they went from a company that primarily makes airplanes to a company that primarily makes shareholder value," which kind of summarizes the current state of the global economy as a whole.
@@zacharyewell3835 Regan and Nixon's market reforms, they altered the laws and obligations around how companies and the markets functioned. It eventually shifted business culture in the US and things cascaded from there.
@@JohnDundas Nixon was far from a "free market" type; he actually imposed wage and price controls. But the sickness did start around that time, with Milton Friedman's 1970 essay in the _New York Times,_ ""A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits." (Or perhaps earlier; Friedman said in 1962, "...there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.") If the line of business happens to kill people or destroy the environment, apparently it's up to the shareholders to mitigate that, not the company.
I've been an aerospace machinist for about 8 years now. I work at a third party supplier, its a family owned company with about 100 people working there. We're AS9100 certified and make parts for commercial and military aircraft, including flight safety components. We are given a blueprint from a "middle man" supply company, sometimes given a vague description of what the component is used for, and tasked with machining it to the exact print requirements. We can do that just fine, but having such a compartmentalized manufacturing system seems so much more prone to mistakes and misunderstanding when you have no clue what the next level of component assembly looks like. From a machinist prospective, if you want to make a precise, well designed, and quickly manufactured aircraft, something like SkunkWorks in the 50's-90's seems to make the most sense. Where you have everyone from the design team to the machinists working in close proximity in the same facility.
Yes. You want as much colocation as is practical. These are tightly coupled engineering problems that demand short, bidirectional flows of information throughout a right-sized organization.
Same on the software engineering side: the company I’ve seen that did the best work the fastest worked in close proximity like you describe. Designers, regulation experts, technical writers, programmers and customer support collaborated constantly. Most of the companies I’ve worked for try to create assembly lines for software to increase efficiency. They run into the same problem you describe where not seeing the big picture causes a slew of mistakes and misunderstandings. That one company with phenomenal collaboration built way better software and did it faster than anywhere else I’ve worked. Not by a little, either! We could launch new features in days instead of weeks and they wowed customers instead of confusing them.
All of the engineering work is just pretty CAD files if you cheap out on the manufacturing. Fracturing from their own suppliers for cheaper parts was really dumb
@@ericwillis7127 Yes, that way companies can leverage the synergies of various stake holders by empowering them in their core competencies. This key take away is a game changer that moves the needle on projects and should be a core value of these types of organizations.
This was absolutely fascinating! My 87-year-old father summed it up like this: "Boeing let the MBAs and the shareholders take over the company, and they ran it into the ground." I will definitely share this video with him.
This video and these comments hurt my heart. I was an engineer at Boeing for 25 years until they union-busted us and moved our plant to OKC. I was so proud to say I worked there for almost all of them. To see their standard for excellence be so far in the rear view mirror just tears at my ❤
@Feather-yk8su Proof? Just because you would like something to be the explanation does not make it so. It instead boring old finances and economics that is the answer.
I grew up in Seattle, and had to watch Boeing move parts away slowly while also changing from a place friends were proud of their parents for working at to the place no one wanted to intern for during college.
@Feather-yk8su This is the management issues if you watched the goddamn video. Don't blame it on the lowest ranks or DEI like any goddamn conservatives.
@@captainmcsplash682contrary to popular belief, the united states didn’t ally with either the USSR or the United States during the cold war, making it indeed third world!
A “clean sheet” design instead of the 737MAX series would suffer the same sort of catastrophic failures because the problem isn't engineering, it's management.
Same with large trucking companies. Self train, self certify. If you want to drive for yourself or a small outfit, you have to get schooling and then past driving tests at a state license place. But if the company is big enough, you can just do it in house.
Well, Boeing owns the FAA so even if they did regulate, it would effectively be self regulation. FAA fails a Boeing inspection? Boeing just calls their senator or sends the CEO to the white house for a chat.
So does Transport Canada with Bombardier and EASA with Airbus. The key difference I think is more to the fact that the FAA did not make sure the authorized approvers inside Boeing were able to work and take decisions based solely on their competencies and not under management pressure. If one of the authorized approvers in Canada or Europe is under pressure to approve something he doesn't think should be, rest assured that TC or EASA will get involved.
Double whammy. Doublecross. Catch 22. It's like "The sadder you are, the more you drink. The more you drink, the sadder you become." Cheers & mabuhay, from my end--the Philippines!
@@SenorBigDong69you put engineers in charge otherwise you get technical issues like Douglas/Boeing have now. But you make sure that the CFO, corporate legal, and at least one shareholder-rep director are business-finance focused.
Someone did a good video on this. Boeing bought McDonald Douglas, and then moved the Boeing HQ to the Chicago HQ of McDonald Douglas and fired redundant Boeing management and kept the MD management that was known for the cost cutting the killed MD. Essential a more detailed breakdown of what this wendover video was talking about.
As a former Boeing Employee, the saying around the watercooler is that "MD bought Boeing with Boeing money". After the "merger" MD leadership took over and they are running the company into the ground like they did MD.
Great job reporting this story. I worked there for 18 years where I saw the decline of Boeing from the inside. Then, I started my second career piloting 737s and the A320 on the outside of the manufacturing realm. The contrasts are telling, as you have pointed out. From the king of commercial aircraft makers, to what still exists of a 100 year legacy of success, it has been both incredible and devastating to watch Boeing fall from grace in the aerospace manufacturing business. It is not just the 737 and 787 that have been troubling. The company that designed and built key parts of the B-2 and F-22 stealth aircraft, major parts of the Saturn 5 Apollo moon rocket and have most recently suffered problems with the CST-100 Starliner space capsule also. These problems highlight systemic problems with program management that Boeing was once infamous as the class of the whole world for always building the best possible aerospace products. All of which made everyone very proud to be a part of a family of employees. By focusing first on the customers and then on providing employees everything they needed to build the best products, not only was success possible, it was inevitable. Profitability was all but guaranteed and backed up by thousands of orders for first class products. Boeing though, has been gravely injured by two major market changes that I would describe as failures to properly manage its business to build on its legacy of excellence in aerospace manufacturing. The first is the response to what should have been recognized as the inevitable growth a strong competitor building clean sheet of paper airplanes. And second, the aerospace consolidation that eventually culminated in the merger with the nearly bankrupt McDonnell/Douglas. While arrogance caused Boeing to lose focus on what the customer wanted, corporate greed led to the mismanagement of the industry consolidation when the notion that managing a near industry monopoly resulted in surplusing way too much of the expertise both within the original company and at the acquired businesses. The notion of “too big to fail” has resulted in the drive to cater to Wall Street demands for perpetual profitability instead of attention to its customers. Accountants took over a company where design engineers once guided the business. Cost cutting became the order of the day, in place of how best to manage the critical assets needed to build and sell the world’s best commercial, military and space products. The original Boeing once separated the commercial aircraft business from the military business purposely because the two types of customers functioned in often diametrically opposed ways. Cost-plus contracts are very different from civilian customer contracts where Boeing had to pay directly for delays, cost overruns and for the consequences of accidents. McDonnell/Douglas (McD), in its heyday, was a majority-military contractor beholden to the government for most of its profits. While Boeing was the exact opposite, with its commercial business overwhelming its military business. Most of the other companies acquired over the years were also military focused. Merging the disparate cultures of Boeing and McD has been troubling ever since the 1997 merger, with the first decade afterwards resulting in a number of notable corporate management shakeups. I would argue that losing one of its key up and coming managers to Ford Motor Company is emblematic of the brain drain that began with the merger with McD. Change is always difficult to deal with. But, losing the mentors of the corporate culture that guided Boeing through its “If it ain’t Boeing, I’m not going” days into whatever is chosen to describe the company today has resulted in a crisis management culture, and is largely what has caused the crisis of confidence and competence that is in full display today.
In the six odd months since the video came out, it seems like we have reached the culmination of the process you've described with the Starliner fiasco. Even if it comes down in one piece (no guarantees about that!), it will still be an empty capsule and extremely expensive failure for Boeing. If things go seriously wrong on the return attempt, Boeing is doomed. And even if it doesn't, Boeing's reputation is now damaged beyond repair in my opinion...
When any business shifts its focus to be strictly profit driven, it loses its core values and the final product suffers. When an engineering company does the same, we get MAX failures. Well crafted video Wendover.
The goofy thing is, no one's gonna buy your airplanes once your cheap practices create lethal flaws like cabins that pop open mid-flight. It's profits-chasing only for the shortest term.
@@nafnaf0 Airbus doesn't seem to suffer from safety issues. I'm not aware of recent Airbus accidents. I'm sure Airbus would be more than happy to turn duopoly into a monopoly
Its always a travesty when the engineering majors in an engineering company take second priority over the business majors. And usually, it leads to deaths. Business majors do not know how to cut corners without making things dangerous.
I was at a mariners game with my uncle, who worked for Boeing when I was a kid. He was making small talk to a guy sitting next him and the guy asked my uncle, How many people work at Boeing? My uncle quickly responded “About half of them” 😂
@@Unb3arablePaingenuinely what are you talking about? Is this a dogwhistle for rightwing DEI fearmongering? If so, this video makes it explicitly clear that the failure was in management, which is stuffed with white men, not in engineering or pilots.
@@Unb3arablePaindon’t be afraid to say it, it’s the DEI action at play, they’re hiring a bunch of ppl who have zero knowledge on engineering simply to meet a stupid agenda. And they bragged about it too
Boeing's mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Now it should be “To profit, cut, fire, and kill through sheer mismanagement"
I live near their Charleston factory, so many of my friends were laid off from there only to be re-hired by the companies that were contracted to do the same job for twice the salary for Boeing
@@janremoto4849 it's quite simple in a way. Those people were the only people that knew how a certain job works. When they where inhouse Boeing who already has it's own back office (HR, and what not) Dit not have to cover that cost above the initial hire. If said people are spun off to there own company. they still are the only peope that know how to do that job. they now can turn to Boeing and demand a better pay. (plus Boeing as a customer also needs to pay for there back office) Boeing can refuse but then has no people to do that vital part. and those people could then walk over to Airbus and offer there expertise. If they are vital enough Airbus might just cover there exclusivity fee to Boeing. spinning of divisions in to there own companies only really works if for both parties there are enough others to pick and choose. Airspace does not have that.
I grew up in Auburn, Washington, near a Boeing plant. I was the first kid in their Tech Prep program 30 years ago. Boeing had a huge impact on my life. Its sad to see them stumble so hard. I hope and pray they recover like a champ. I've always been so proud of Boeing, and proud of their role in history. I once got to help restore a B-17 bomber!!
So every single company that's ever been for sale has been put up for sale because of poor management? It's also stupid to assume because a company is up for sale it's a sinking ship, but why should anyone expect better from bubbly dick cheese?
You're assuming that who gets fired is a matter of competency and effectiveness. Corporate management is office politics. Nothing more, nothing less. You can be completely incompetent at your job, but if you're good at playing office politics, you still succeed.
@@BobBobson Your missing the point of the original comment I think his intent was to state that if you purchase a company that was previously very profitable and has now been run into the ground fire those in charge because they caused the decline.
Ok I work in M&A and this is just an insane take. Vast majority of transactions like this, the business is perfectly healthy. Going scorched earth is risky for all kinds of reasons and you should only do it if you know for sure there are huge issues to navigate. Saying you should do it on every single deal, in all caps, is just wild.
This is exactly how many companies go. Xerox is famous for it. Because they made good copiers, designed by their engineering department, that in turn creates demand for ink. But a really stupid accountant would think that the sales force for ink and copiers are what makes money..when really, it's the engineers making a good product. A company that is focussed on selling a good product who suddenly starts promotion of sales and MBA people is on the road to ruin. But the last ten years will be profitable...until it implodes.
It’s painful to see companies lose sight of this. If a company can provide a valuable product or service then there’s room to figure out a business model to support it. If a company is unable to provide value then there’s no business model that can fix it (in the long-run, imperfect competition can sustain such companies in the short-run).
No. Not at all. Boeing still makes top-of the-line aircraft. The 737 NG is perfectly safe, and the 777 and 787 have immaculate safety records. Tell me you don't know about aviation without telling me.
@@graysonwilliams4826 Just because they've build good planes doesn't excuse the sh*tshow that are the 737max and 777x programs. It must be hard, but it's OK to admit that a company isn't perfect.
When I was growing up in Seattle, my family rode the Boeing roller coaster. Long time residents know what that is: the constant cycle of hirings and layoffs by the company. My father was always trying to get employed there, but it was always temporary as Boeing constantly expanded and contracted its workforce. So one year, we’d move into some nice new tract house in the suburbs, live well, and take advantage of all the benefits: vaccinations, regular check-ups, and lots and lots of dental appointments. The next year, Dad would get laid off, have to take jobs pumping gas, or reading water meters, or doing custodial work (or multiple combinations of the above to make ends meet), we’d move again into some shabby rathole, and no more visits to the dentist or doctor. It really sucked being at their mercy for the basics.
There is a trick to staying employed but the only people that benefited from it were favored or good workers. What happens is Boeing would lay off by department. They send the employees they like to departments that have a shorter layoff list. This is how they weed out employees they'd rather not keep.
Its kinda sad that the "cushy life" is a reasonable place to live and healthcare. That being said, Boeing definitely could've and should've been more stable..
@@mihirgohel2820you must be a fake avgeek because Boeing has other successful planes WAY after the 747 like the 757, 767, 777, 787. You are only saying the 747-400 was the last best Boeing plane because of your bias due to having no aviation knowledge. In fact, the 777, 767 and 757 are WAY safer than the 747
@@UnitedAirlinesDC10 correct I’m not a avgeek, BUT you’ve never been on a PanAm 747-200 I came to America on that plane it was my first look at the “American Dream” But no plane can beat the feeling of going a 747 especially the upper deck hence why I think it was the last great Boeing plane now airlines just cram seats in so each of those planes feel the same
I find it interesting that you can have a 20 minute video about the struggles of Boeing, yet not conclude with the simple fact that Boeing went from an engineering company run by engineers to a company run by the MBAs. The move of its corporate headquarters was perhaps the most symbolic indication of that change.
It would have worked out had the MBAs listened to the engineers and strengthened the Supplier Management organization. After working at Boeing for 35 years and being on 5 new airplane programs, I can attest that the biggest problem lies in the Supplier Management & Procurement organizations. Too focused on cost, not focused on technical capability. Isolated from engineering. Unwilling to solve problems when a change in plan is required. For example, when I worked with Fuji Heavy Industry engineers they said that they knew the exact cost of every bracket and clip that they designed in Subaru automobiles, but had no idea of the cost when designing parts for Boeing. The 787 Partner business model would have worked had Boeing made one change--Boeing should have paid for the engineering and released all drawings/datasets on Boeing paper. Boeing lost track of how partners were doing in meeting their scheduled releases.
@@shikharagrawal59 That's not what I was trying to say. Boeing was an engineering company, that was it's sole reason for existing. Once there were no more engineers in the top management layers they lost sight of this fact. That's when things started going downhill for them. You see this with many other engineering focused companies, they almost always end up worse off in the long run if their CEO doesn't come from an engineering background. For companies that aren't as engineering focused, having the company be run by MBAs can be perfectly fine, like McDonald's for example.
The locations of the Boeing headquarter are quite telling in my opinion: in 2001 the HQ moved to Chicago, far away from its manufacturing center in Seattle. Things started to went south a few years later. Then in 2022, after the MCAS debacle, the HQ moved again, even further away, to Arlington, close the Pentagon & Defense decision centers. The signal is clear: Boeing is giving-up on being an innovating civil aviation company, instead trying to be a rent seeking military contractor company. Ironically, even on that front, things are far from rosy (ex: KC 46 being a $5B to $7B loss).
For decades Boeing has been one of the largest defense contractors, in a huge array of areas. Ironically that has become less profitable as DOD is essentially doing to that industry what Boeing was doing to its contractors.
Boeing was already a military company since the beginning (P-26 peashooter,B-17,B-29,B-52, and now with the merging of McDonnell Douglas it also produces F-15,F/A-18 and together with Lockheed Martin they make the F22)
I remember the first move well because I used to drive by Boeing's corporate office whenever I went to Seatac. They claimed it was because they're a worldwide company and they needed a central and diverse corporate location.
Modern Boeing shafted Chicago after all the $$$ invested to support the move. Sure makes the Boeing lobbyists commute easier from Arlington, VA. If they keep this up, Boeing might move HQ to a tax-sheltered, non-extradition location.
as a native Seattleite, I grew up with Boeing as a point of pride in where I lived, and there was the whole some of the cool kids dads working as engineers for it thing. It's so sad to see how it's slowly going downhill and loosing a lot of respect. I really hope they can turn it around
I appreciate you covering the subject. This is an issue that didn't start with the MAX, but it very well could be the end. McDonnell Douglas is wholly to blame, and the Boeing CEO/Directors at the time - who let them buy them out with their own money - are the key reason why Boeing fell apart.
Those MBA bean counters from McDonnell Douglas are actually the SMART ONES to convince Boeing engineers to buy them with their own money. They're so powerful with their lips 👀
The merger happened 27 years ago. When a literal generation has grown up to adulthood in the timespan it is time to put something like the McDonnell Douglas-excuse to sleep.
As a procurement and supply chain professional, I found this video really fascinating. It depicts at its best WHY you should have sustainable and fair relationships with your suppliers, and not just blindly exploit bargaining power. Collaboration is key, and this is even more crucial when you are producing a product like an airplane, where even the screws and bolts suppliers MUST be on the same page. Thank you for this quality content!
@@djinn666 But having more union labor on the books is about the last thing they want, and on paper it looks like a terrible idea. Personally I would be more like Tesla and just try to vertically and horizontally integrate everything, but do it better than anyone else. Suppliers are always a fundamental disadvantage. The reluctance to use to do things in house, shows a lack of faith in the company's ability itself. That is an indicator that internal processes need reform.
It is simple. You pay for what you get. If Boeing can’t make the part profitably, the supplier is unlikely to able to do it. Cut the price, the supplier will cut corners to meet the price to survive. Low quality part will be most expensive part for Boeing.
// "As a procurement and supply chain professional, I found this video really fascinating. It depicts at its best WHY you should have sustainable and fair relationships with your suppliers, and not just blindly exploit bargaining power." In our current model of capitalism, the rules of the road incentivize companies to look for ANYWHERE they can cut corners and ANYONE they can exploit to theoretically have higher rates of profit every quarter. That inevitably leads to behavior that is self-defeating and a complete failure of the prisoner's dilemma. So, yeah...... logically companies shouldn't just blindly exploit bargaining power, but the rules of the game dictate that this is exactly what the c-suite MUST do in order to keep their jobs. They must act short-sightedly even though they know it's bad in the long term. Our systems are broken. Our economy incentivizes some messed up shit and people keep acting like it's a few bad apples. 1.) Game companies to release monetization schemes called games that consumers increasingly don't own, but rather purchase a license that lasts as long as the current incarnation of the company. Games are released as incomplete buggy messes because of all the corners cut during production. 2.) Food companies put non-food ingredients into food, like cardboard and the like, to save money and cut costs on production. 3.) Movie/TV studios cut corners on production, slashing production costs by refusing to pay for good talent or give them enough time to do their jobs properly. (Mini-writers' rooms and SFX grindset, anyone?) So we get shitty special effects and increasingly poorly written stories. They try and patch the problem with marketing campaigns that portray angry fans as racist or sexist, etc. We don't call it a few bad apples if baseball players try to score runs. Sooner or later we have to acknowledge that the game of capitalism has changed. It's no longer an efficient way of organizing an economy. It brought us to the modern age but holy hell it needs a makeover.
“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkey” - Boeing Employee This was the funniest sh*t I’ve heard to ever come out publicly in corporate America 😂
To be clear that statement was made by the Boeing Technical Pilots responsible for checking out the 737MAX simulators who disagreed with how to implement a function on the autopilot.
I worked for them in Seattle for 14 years and watched it go from a company that rewarded workers, who in turn rewarded the company with record profits and the best airplanes in the world to a company where a greedy CEO changed the corporate model to that of GE. Everything became outsourced, safety standards were lowered to save the shareholders money, humiliating workers, busting unions, mass and repeated layoffs and here they are. The greedy CEOs of the last 20 years have resulted in this. Funny how their greed has destroyed them from within. I fly Airbus now.
Practically every public company is like it. The results are just most visible for those that crash planes. It's a cultural issue of greedy capitalists run amok.
@@vcool It is, more accurately, a case of SPECIFIC greedy, inconsiderate individuals running amok. Not the system itself. There are certainly examples of companies that are still profitable but NOT a public safety hazard.
Companies are required by law to act solely in the interest of their shareholders, even when doing so can cause injury, death, or other horrific mishaps to their customers and the world. Henry Ford v Dodge Brothers
@@HelloNotMe9999 And yet these specific greedy inconsiderate individuals seem to keep getting into these positions of power, no matter what the industry is. Bumping into a friend at the supermarket is a coincidence, consistent and repeated mismanagement from the C-Suite in the name of maximizing profits at the cost of quality is not.
Well, don't put the people in charge of a company that just failed in charge of your working company. McDonald did succeed at making investors temporarily happy, so I guess breaking Boeing can be considered a success by that metric too
@@lomiification i think the original sentiment is correct. i have yet to see an MBA improve an engineering company for anyone but maybe shareholders. not the customers, not the talent.
Dennis, the previous CEO of Boeing, had a bachelors and masters in engineering. He started of at the company as an engineering intern. Didn’t seem to help did it?
You could do the same video and same script for the US healthcare system (have managers trained to cost cut a McDonalds try the same thing with medicine, and find out that all those intangibles like “institutional memory” and “experience” and “customer/supply chain trust and goodwill” are, in fact, necessary, and that despite not having their own budget line, are fundamental to the entire enterprise.
Man... the worst part is that you can feel Sam's voice. He is not angry. He is not annoyed. He is not sad from seeing that fall. He is just... *worried* .
@@FrozenDung yeah that's the point. American industry is doing this to itself en masse. It's not just Boeing. Sam is concerned because as wall street has only grown in power, they have driven all these publicly owned corporations to chase the high of quarterly results over all else. And it shows in the failure of virtually all major American industrial products to keep the same reputation over the past half century. Combine that with offshoring production of all else, cheaper labor and better educated people over seas as a result of needing to do better as their lives depend on it... And we have a US that is decaying on all levels. We need to reform ourselves or we will become as sad and irrelevant as Russia is today.
@@FrozenDung the problem is, the US government will not let Boeing stop making aircraft. They will do everything in their power to keep Boeing afloat if only just to avoid buying European built airliners. Boeing matters to much to the US economy. Airbus is not going to safe the day. They can't.
I frequently come across old electronic components that are marked as “Approved for Boeing” and that meant they held up to the most rigorous specifications. They were the gold standard for high quality manufacturing.
0:40 I remember the Nisqually quake very well. I was in my 2nd grade math class at the time. We heard what sounded like an approaching truck, then the ground started vibrating under us. We dove under our desks and held on, then filed outside to the soccer field once the shaking stopped. Later that week, the school gave everyone popsicles because we had "done a good job during the earthquake."
I also think the move of Boeing's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago and now DC a part of the issue. The executives are too far from the factory to understand what's happening in the factory.
I was part of the 5k layoffs at Tmobile. I could have stayed if I moved but I couldn’t with family. Anyways: laying off 5k people and then posting record profits and a new stock dividend for investors. For companies nowadays, the customers are now the products, and the investors are now the customers.
Its wealth inequality, thats whats doing it. There simply isnt enough money in the working classes anymore to sustain their growth, so they stopped looking to us as customers and started looking to their rich shareholders instead. What they are finding out, is that SHAREHOLDERS DONT BUY 777s. This is common in every industry every company out there. Theyve sucked us all dry, so the new vogue is selling hats to the headless. I am in this industry. This affects me. But i will be laughing my face off as these ***************** get their just desserts.
Genuinely not sure how you can something like that so insanely wrong. Also find it insane how he can say he’s a fan of the B-2 and then say the cost per airframe being 2 billion was due to research costs and not mentioning that the research costs had to be distributed over only 21 planes instead of the original intended procurement amount leading to the insane cost per unit prices.
I worked at boeing and retired in the late 90s. It was an incredible company back then. We were building beautiful machines. Very proud. I'm still friends with lots of guys and gals who still work there. Most of them hate working there. The moral is gone.
@@vcool bean counters, cost cutters, accountants running the show and pinching pennies. throw some diversity and equity in the mix and your company is done
@@vcoolBoeing and McDonald Douglas merged. Through a bunch of boardroom shenanigans with the executives, McDonald Douglas, even though they were the smaller company, was able to wrestle control of the company away from Boeing. The merger happened in the first place because MDD at the time was operating how Boeing currently operates and basically drove themselves into the ground; hence the merger. This is a very broad-strokes explanation but it still gets the main points across.
One of the crucial factor is probably that Airbus has always been a joint venture of different European planemakers and not a monolith company like Boeing. They have much more experience in managing that kind of supply chain and all the deals with critical subcontractors across the continent, and can make that work.
Airbus isn't a actually a joint venture. It is one Company which had most european Aircraftmanufacturers merged into it. It basicaly functions as boeing did before they devested in 2005, with Branches all over europe.
@@robinmorgenstern9927 Airbus was born as a JV though, since the founding companies existed as separate entities that owns Airbus shares. They were only merged under Airbus banner in the 2000s after the merger of parent companies, which also bought out the rest of the shares.
on a side note, I feel like it's been a really long time since we've had an airplane-related Wendover video when it was ironically a meme that that's all you made before
A good analogy. I don't really go to Walmart anymore because I can't trust the products, making it more trouble than it's worth. They prioritize _cost_ over _value._
@@sophiaherschel56760 years ago there were a dozen companies that sold commercial aircraft. They all got eaten up by Boeing or decided to stop selling commercial aircraft.
@@sophiaherschel567 That’s not true market competition though. Having 2 massive conglomerates battling it out is still considered a monopoly. You need like 10-12 different companies battling for market share to truly fix all these problems. Saying “there’s Airbus” is like saying “there’s Apple” when your three choices of computer operating systems are Microsoft, Linux, and Apple. That’s not really good competition.
Reminds me of Gibson guitars. Formerly world class and universally respected, to now being greedy and third world, universally mocked by modern guitarists. Boing is in the same boat there, albeit crappy guitars don’t kill people Edit: I just realized I misspelled “Boeing”, I’m leaving it in. 😂
And also similar in that a lot of the former Gibson factories, like their legendary Kalamazoo plant, have gone independent and are still making top quality instruments. It's arguable as to whether or not Fender still makes the best Stratocaster or Jaguar, but it's undeniable at this point that Gibson does not make even one of the top 10 best Les Pauls or SGs you can buy. Not really my circus though; I'm a bassist who prefers Ibanez. None of Gibson's basses have ever had much penetration into the market, at least not the point of becoming industry standards like the Fender Precision and Jazz, the Music Man Stingray, or the super high end brands like Fodera and Alembic.
It's mind blowing how far Gibson has fallen. For most of their instruments, the level of quality is below Squier, but the price is often several times over. I personally own an Epiphone, and having handled & played both the "nicer" Gibson equivalent, and the competition, it's not even close. Gibson is shit, but for half the price, Epiphone is also just as shit. There's zero innovation, zero QC, and zero desire to put out anything that at all improves on what came before. Again, it's not a preference thing. If you don't care about having the most modern materials and technology, just buy an old Gibson, or an old Epiphone. Don't pay more for the same old thing built worse. Otherwise? Get a Fender. Or an Ibanez. Or a Yamaha. Or an Eastwood. Or a Music Man. Or literally anything else.
@@Croz89 Ah, no, the voltage & current that goes back up the cord is negligible unless it is faulty amplifier. A guitar lead is just a microphone input into the amplifier...
@@level10peonin the long run, yes. In the short term, Boeing did better... Only to fall out of the sky right after. Which is what the current stock market wants, because the objective is "line go up fast and forever", which is impossible, and thus it fails every time. Just look at tech companies: forced to fire massive amounts of people just to return the right sized profit (if you fire someone, the money you would have paid that someone goes into the company bank account instead -not really but simplified yes). One would say "capitalism", but I'd rather say "stock market, Reagan capitalism".
Procter and Gamble must have used the same consulting firm ; basically screw your suppliers to up the share price without investing a dime 😂. Short term gain , long term loses . Who cares .? I got my consultant fees and flew away ( but not on new Boeing)
Yet still doing better than Boeing at the same time. It's not the type of Boeing win it sounds like that they can create a huge loss of an aircraft and still keep up with competition. Imagine if they HADN'T wasted that time and money on the A380.@@TheBooban
i used to work as a cnc operator at a company that made some parts for boeing Record profits. They told us that 3 months before they fired us at the christmass party hahaha Then suddenly the whole workfloor gets called to the lunchroom. Yo listen up. We about to send a email, everybody who gets the email is fired... turned out half the 3/4 of the floor was fired. I was not bad at my job. I even asked them because i was devastated. I liked that job man, damn
I know a cnc operator that the company he worked for did boeing contracts. That sounds like the same thing. Record profits and let most of them go. They did call and tried to hire him back... at fast food wages. He does welding now for a lot more than their offer.
As an IT engineer, it is known that even a single character can lead to a fairly risky situation. As a financial programmer, I once left out an equal sign, using > instead of >=, and this trapped ninety thousand of my dollars. Fortunately, I saw it, immediately patched my code, and got a lifeline. Cryptocurrencies have lost many millions due to similar one-character bugs.
Boeing didn’t suddenly decide to become greedy in 2024 after being in business for 100+ years. Standards were lowered so that more Africans could be hired and the Jews over at BlackRock would refrain from withholding investment funds. The Jews want diversity because diversity kills nationalism and nationalism disenfranchises Jews.
Don't underestimate the results of 20 years of diversity initiatives. Many of those engineers left for companies like SpaceX. Then came the diversity initiatives all the way down to the smaller suppliers. Matt Walsh has documented this. He's received hundreds of insider emails and plans to consolidate those into a single piece of investigative journalism after the credentials can be verified. They've verified dozens of stories already from engineers to maintainers to pilots. DEI is forcing the best people out or they get passed over for promotions. What's going on in the American airline industry is all part of the plan of the activists at the FAA.
This video is university level educational case study, edited/crafted to keep the attention of an everyday viewer. I have been watching so many of your videos but you have just lifted the bar higher with this one.
I think the lesson here is about the dangers of having a purely transactional outlook. Had they stuck to the core concept of making a great product they wouldn't be in this situation. Truly a lesson for the times I say.
I love how at 17:22 when flying in 120° temperatures you cut to a shot of Sky Harbor, a few miles from me which 100% accurate. It's that level of detail that makes me love your channel!
Cost (reduce as much as possible),profit (maximise at all costs) then safety (minimum amount to satisfy the FAA)! Boeing’s core business mantra, now coming back to haunt them!
Maybe Boeing needs to take a page from the Toyota playbook and invest in their suppliers' ability to develop the culture of quality. I guarantee that the real reason behind the failures is leadership and not that the workers are lazy or unskilled.
@@pollosasadosalcarbonThat's one of the fallacies that you learn about when you study "cost of quality". It ends up costing less to do it right. That's one of the tragedies of most of this: it's not like the bolts on the plug doors are too expensive and the supplier just left them out to save a few bucks. They have the money for the bolts. The bolts probably didn't take long to install. What failed was leadership's ability to support the process and the culture of doing things right, improving processes, using and making the right tools, etc...
another advantage for toyota is that they are far more dominant and powerful in their respective country, meaning they can bend rules and workers rights even more easily
Humans are broadly speaking all the same when you're operating at this scale. At Boeing's size, it's impossible for these issues to be the direct result of workers being lazy or unskilled. Instead it's a result of management decisions and policies either encouraging that behaviour, or some other systemic problem. When you're talking about dozens or hundreds, or thousands of workers, if they all seemingly share a similar undesirable trait, that's absolutely a management/company culture issue. It's like if you have a class where one kid is failing, that's the kid, but if almost everyone is failing, that's the teacher.
It wasn't mentioned, but a total of 346 people were killed in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes on Oct. 29th 2018, and March 10, 2019, respectively.
Engineering has always been the ART of applying science to real world issues Not the profession of cutting corners. I am a more on the scientist sides by training but I have always thought of engineering as artists who paint with science.
In 2017, long before a crash, NPR (KCUR) ran a story about the Max 8 sensor issue and it was not being addressed. A pilot even described a workaround and was frustrated that he couldn't inform other pilots well enough that they needed to disable the MCAS flight-control system. The day before the 2018 crash a pilot onboard that plane in the jump seat was aware of this and informed the piloting crew. The information was not passed on well enough. I can't find the article or audio from before the crash, and not for a lack of trying. Despite every other audio and transcript being there. I just can't remember what show it was..I feel like 5pm news long form segment.
The pilot in the jumpseat did pass along his knowledge to the crew he physical helped the crew recover the aircraft cause it tried to crash but didn't. Had he not been there that aircraft would have crashed 1 day earlier. It was said he held the trim wheel while the crew used their combined strength to recover the aircraft while also shutting done MCAS. The worst issue with MCAS is it was a good system, but the systems that fed into it were poor. It was offered to airlines with a single point of failure when it should have had 2 redundancies.
The town I live in had one of these satellite Boeing plants that used to employ up to 800 people. In the early 2000's it got spun off into Arnprior Aerospace, which has just recently announced that they're going to close their doors.
people are flying in a piece of machinery made of parts and components sourced from the cheapest bidders in the world, quality controlled to the absolute minimum requirements (or even less than that), assembled in the cheapest possible way and maintained by airlines to the bare minimum requirements to avoid additional costs and downtime. So don't worry people everyone's PR department will assure you that all have your safety as number one priority in mind!
"Boeing is trying to be a Michelin-starred kitchen with a fast-food mindset, and it's just not working" ... wouldn't find a better analogy to describe why Boeing's lost its way! Wendover , one of your best and most interesting video. Thank you
Everytime there is a new Share Buy Back program, remember that those are millions of dollars sent to Wall Street instead of to workers, production lines or Quality Control.
@@robroilen4441 Is it just emotion (polemical). The Big Short movie has that for the 2008 Recession. Any difference you ask. Unbelievable!, and most asked or implied. How then does that program and trust social contract work? (Great. Research than do it on chat.)
I would like to thank Boeing from the deepest part of my heart for making excellent Airbus advertisements, We Europeans really needed a boost because of our economy being a bit more sluggish, Now thanks to the cock ups of Boeing, Im sure their customers will start lining up at our front door.
You should also thank the US government for not putting Boeing Executives and Board members in prison. Absolutely zero accountability from them as well.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Two notes:
1) This level of detail would never have been possible without our collaboration with the Air Current. To dive even deeper into the subject, be sure to read their years of reporting on it at theaircurrent.com
2) As many of you noticed, we had a sloppy error in the ad-read-the B-2 was actually built by Northrop Grumman. This was just a pure mix-up in a section that, honestly, doesn’t get as much attention as the video itself. Apologies for this.
You could’ve used the B-1B Lancer or the F/A-18, F-15 or V-22 Osprey but you went tor the B-2?
(It’s funny because it shows you put as much attention into the ad-read as we, the audience, do.)
**Boeing fanboys still saying sh!t about how great Boeing aircraft is**
Wendover Productions mic-drops this video
hahaha man I swear after seeing jetlag, sams voice keeps popping up in all of my recommended informational videos! keep up the work!
You should also apologize for continuing to push the narrative that the Ethiopian and Indonesian crashes were Boeing's fault. Oh and you should also apologize for buying fake engagement.
3) You forgot to mention the disastrous and racist policies of DEI contributing to a smaller hiring pool, thus lowering your chances of hiring employees with the best qualifications in the market.
I've worked in engineering, sourcing, and manufacturing. I can tell you that when you start to incessantly financially squeeze your Tier 2 systems suppliers, you create an intensely adversarial relationship. To appear to meet costs the most experienced/expensive engineers - the ones who know everything - are laid off. Eventually the supplier becomes indifferent which leads to quality issues.
"Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain"
I was a supply chain manager for a company that primarily supplied the airline industry. We strategically transitioned our business (over the course of 7-8 years) into other industries and quit working with airlines altogether. Profit margins were so low you couldn't make any money, and then add unethical behavior to extort not only money but design and engineering from us with no compensation...yeah, bye. Find another sucker, airline is a race to the bottom. When i left our sales were nearly half, but our profit was 3x.
@@screw_it_why_notWhen Congress will not let your company die, you can act unbelievably recklessly
@@OtisFlintI hear it’s the same with automotive OEMs like Ford and Chevy. They’ll bankrupt a supplier who thought they had a gravy contract with the Big 3.
Yeah@@OtisFlint I saw that too, the Tier 2 would be told they need to place engineers on-site to support their product. I learned fast that being an on-site engineer stalls your career - you're away from your employer & out of the loop.
Who knew replacing Engineers with people that know nothing but cutting costs would make things go badly?
Huh? More like communication failure I guess. Like the Biblical Babel in brief. They have the machines and no need for buying one. Manpower? Ask the land tax over the Hershey factories left idle back then as I remember a show for.
They'll tell you DEI is the "real" problem.
Former McKinsey & Company consultants who care nothing for the art of standards and the finesse of reliable engineering.
Yeah, they also put accountants at the top of Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies, and every single time they nearly crashed them. Put competent people at strategic posts, not fucking excel experts.
It wasn't that, they just added a piece of equipment and never told anybody about it because it would have required training and Boeing knew they'd loose the aircraft race, a race now lost due to there greed and incompetence
It all went downhill for Boeing after the McDonnell Douglas merger, really. Boeing went from an engineer run company to an investor run company after the merger, which ended up with Boeing being 'profit first safety second' sadly.
Protogen spitting fax
In fact, in the past, Boeing was described as "an association of engineers".
@@ohyeahbaby768
Modulo "Bill Boeinig was a bird watcher" which had a good influence on the whole show.
yea it’s kind of sad honestly. i can’t even say anything positive about boeing with being flooded with insults
i seriously hope they can recover or atleast something comes up about boeing that will make the news, but in a positive way, rather than a negative
The McDonell Douglas merger is cited a lot as the beginning of the end of Boeing, but people miss the big picture of that merger: it turned Boeing into a monopoly. The merger didn't just alter Boeing's management structure and business practices by virtue of absorbing Douglas, it also meant that Boeing had no real competition anymore. They had rolled up their last competitor in civil aviation.
Monopolies aren't subject to market discipline, so they do not have to perform or innovate. They can use their market dominance to simply extract more money out of people, often even as the monopoly becomes less efficient and degrades in quality over time.
Before you try to say Airbus is a competitor, my answer to that is "not really." A few points:
Number one: there are a gazillion different tax incentives, de facto subsidies, and loopholes for US airlines to use Boeing over Airbus. Boeing is a private company basically in name-only, and ever since becoming the US' "national champion" in civil aviation, Boeing basically just asks the feds for handouts, bailouts, exceptions, and special favors.
And they get it. The DOJ dropped their criminal fraud charges against Boeing (related to the fraud Boeing perpetrated around the Max crashed) after CEO Dave Calhoun personally met wit Trump and his admin. The feds coddle Boeing becuase they're afraid, if you truly hurt Boeing, you're hurting the whole US Civil aviation industry.
Airbus doesn't get anywhere close to this kind of special treatment from the feds. Boeing and Airbus spent like 20 years continually suing each other in international court over who was getting more "unfair" help from their respective governments. The court case basically ended in a draw, with a slight victory to Airbus, who proved Boeing was getting more help from taxpayers and the government than them.
So US Airlines can't realistically switch to Airbus, if only for the loss in tax incentives, protectionism, and special treatment given to Boeing customers.
The second point is that airlines would have to retrain workers, and radically alter their supply lines / maintenance programs, to switch to Airbus. They really, really don't want to do that, because it's such a pain. Operating hybrid fleets can be a pain, especially if you're used to a monopoly.
The third point is that the waitlist for a new Airbus plane is like 8 or 10 years long. So airlines can't realistically switch over. They're stuck with Boeing.
So the airlines (who are also highly consolidated, 4 companies make up over 85% of all flights) are Boeing's major customers, and they aren't really going to be able to discipline Boeing by going to another manufacturer. There is no other manufacturer, anymore. Boeing bought them.
So the McDonnell Douglas merger is not just about McDonell's financialized approach and bad management. It's also about how Boeing became a monopoly. And as a monopoly, there is zero reason to waste time and energy innovating, or engineering a better product for less money. Your customers have to buy from you, and your suppliers have to sell to you, and there is no other option.
People say McD culture is overly focused on profits, but I don't think that's true. If it was, how come Boeing is losing billions every year, and immolating before our eyes? If they truly were laser focused on profits... then wouldn't they fire all of the management, when they screw up and lose all this money? Rather, the culture at Boeing seems to be pretty relaxed about losing billions of dollars due to bad management.
What I think the McD/Boeing culture is _really_ concerned with is _power_ . They want market power. If you're a monopoly, you want to maintain that position of power first, and ensure nothing rocks the boat to threaten your monopoly. Profits are kind of incidental to that.
The last thing I'll say is that Boeing itself was created in the 1930s... when another monopoly was broken up. A company named United Aircraft was broken up into 3 smaller companies, and Boeing was one of them.
I’ll wager my non-existent pension that the C suite execs who orchestrated this nosedive all had happy landings thanks to their golden parachutes.
Guaranteed. Just before the major airline I worked for declared bankruptcy, a starry-eyed newhire explained she'd been told there were "two separate pots of money" - one for upper management, the other for workers in case of bankruptcy. 😂 We enlightened her as to how that was going to work.....exactly as it soon did.
its stupid how we would be willingly kill each other like this so we can run in an endless rat-race of materialisim to nowhere
Worse still, I'm pretty sure they got sweet bonuses for the whole debacle. Those people can only fall up.
Oh Def. The best C-suite has stem degrees and worked in the field of their industry. But instead they held onto a the C-suite of a failing company and copied their Hail Mary. This C suite is a failure and I wouldn't want more management consultants.
@@666Tomato666they actually fall down mentally but thinks they are falling up through the concept of money
This is not just a Boeing problem. Its happening to nearly every major company because they put too high a value on shareholders and profit, at the cost of what fundamentally made their products possible.
What's there not to love in late-stage capitalism?
Yes. And the consequences are always the same. Look at what happened to Apple and Microsoft. Kodak also took the same route, but failed to recover in-extremis.
The Boeing issue is blown completely out of proportion. Mainstream media and UA-cam personalities are using this subject for clout. Wendover Productions or whoever this is doesn't know anything about aviation; Fox News/Cnn/MSNBC know nothing about aviation. There have been MANY other aircraft with this kind of media perception after having multiple accidents in a row.
The 737 NG is a spectacular aircraft. The 777 and 787 have immaculate safety records, and are just as good as any Airbus.
Endemic to manufacturing and society in general .
Endemic to manufacturing and society in general .
"Boeing or I'm not going" has turned into "Boeing? I'm not going."
If it’s a Boeing, I’m not going!
Lol literally two weeks ago didn't want cancelled flights so we booked airbus
Instead of Max 9 I call it the Boeing Crash 9
@@TheLordDraculawell done.
I though tit used it used to be "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going"
Boeing's decline started after CEO T. A. Wilson, an engineer, stepped down in 1986 and the board chose Frank Schrontz, an accountant, to take his place. The atmosphere quickly became toxic because the focus was now on the bottom line rather than the quality of the product. The synergistic environment I'd enjoyed since 1978 quickly disappeared. I left in 1991 and friends who had stayed would always tell me the work atmosphere on both the Aerospace and Aircraft side was "pissy". Even my father who had worked their since 1958 agreed the company had changed for the worse.
Listen : Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies at some point tried to put an accountant at the top of the chain. EVERY SINGLE TIME, they nearly drowned the company (which honestly requires a lot of work seeing how much inertia these have). If you want your tech company to be successful, you don’t need the spreadsheet guy taking decisions, you need the tech guy taking decisions based on what the client is looking for. Good tech sells itself. Just let the fucking competent people run the business.
Exactly. I also knew Wendover would get it wrong. Blaming projects or timing ... and not culture.
Though your comment is the exception in this video's comments, in other aircraft oriented channels like Blanco Lirio ... it's the consensus of actual experts; people who previously worked at Boeing and left in sadness over the trajectory. The real tragedy is that Boeing is nearly an exact metaphor to the nation; our financialized economy that uses auto attendants to spare 3s interactions with a human as a cost-savings initiative. A gov that invites corruption via lobbying, constantly legislating interferences into our lives in the name of the environment, but allows Apple and others to deliberately make computers difficult to repair. In which the MSM flagrantly lies to us on behalf of one party of the gov. Implores us to _"TRUST THE SCIENCE"_ ... (an utterly anti-scientific phrase) likely bc Big Pharma or the Gov told them to, when many in the gov are invested IN Big Pharma. Science doesn't demand your faith; but invites skepticism. Anyone remotely ensconced in the philosophy of science (the greatest democratization of knowledge) should've recognized that as to be so wrong as to be deserving of a name brand title as a fallacy. A nation of "experts" that's livid bc they can't imprison or bankrupt Tucker Carlson, someone who may make mistakes but isn't controlled at least -- for interviewing someone?? Yet, it was in Ukraine (our client state) where the US citizen, Gonzalo Lira, died in custody for thought crime. Our culture promotes an hostility to new information and debate. The incentives are corrupted. And the pressures companies and gov used to face are manipulated for the worst reasons. What makes this all so scary ... is that Boeing is a symptom and metaphor for our entire culture. $34-Trillion debt ... a president whose DOJ says he lacks the cognitive faculties to face criminal culpability. And it's NOT EVEN NEWS! In the immortal words of Walter Sobcek: _HAS THE WHOLE DAMNED WORLD GONE CRAZY!?? Mark it zero!_
Not mentioned in this video but Boeing had been caught skipping required inspections across it's product lines, proving it's a systemic problem pushed from above but it's being entirely ignored by the media.
For example, their space capsule gets two inspections from different people to verify the parachute is attached to the capsule. Neither inspection happened because it wasn't attached when they opened it after entry, it slammed into the ground.
They have had cases of inspections not happening for years. If they cared they wouldn't still be skipping them.
They skipped them for passenger planes from try different incidents, military cargo planes, and likely with that door plug given it was missing bolts.
They have also made atrocious designs and software, made requiring them to scrap it and start over with direct NASA oversight.
I don't get why anyone hires Boeing for anything anymore. I'd say is only a matter of time before they kill people but they have already done that.
All my Boeing engineer friends jumped over to airbus due to that. I guess this is what happens when you become TOO big to fail and able to skip mandatory inspections in order to meet your numbers. What’s funny is that this all happens to US companies far more often whereas with Japanese companies quality and control is prioritize over profits. Just because Japan can do it better and more efficient, doesn’t mean the US can do it. Boeings reputation is down the drain and they need to gain trust back which is difficult because a plane accident where people die is usually blown all over media vs let’s say car accidents due to manufacturing errors which happens way more
When an airplane engineering focused company becomes a financial focused company planes start falling from the sky.
My dad worked assembly (mainly riveting) in the Wichita Boeing plant during some of their peak, through the plant being sold to Onex, and then to Spirit (or maybe it was that Onex owned Spirit, memory is foggy). It was wild to hear you talk about the problems with Spirit and remember back to my dad coming home from work, exhausted, complaining about how they had to scrap a fuselage skin because some idiot up the line screwed up drilling the holes so bad they were ovals and the rivets would slip right through. Then it turned into "Yea, we should have scrapped the skin, but then they just shoved out of spec washer shims behind the holes and told us to buck the rivets anyway." He retired right around the Dreamliner fiasco (don't remember if it was before or after) because of another massive issue on the line: Letting experienced workers go so they could higher inexperienced greenhorns at much lower salary. They kept trying to get him to keep crawling into the plane, despite his back problems and age, and then also train new hires (Many of which were super unqualified even for manual labor. Lots of weed/meth smoking on lunch breaks in trucks, according to my dad).
I'm never ever getting on a boeing again. Never
@@leefrancis007 So... I used to work at the North Carolina Spirit factory that makes parts for Airbus... Maybe look into trains for domestic travel...
A man who had worked at Rolls-Royce told me that they used a shim if something didn't fit.
My skin crawled, but I don't think he worked on aero engines.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
Cooper Lund put it best on Bluesky- "Boeing's problems really started when they went from a company that primarily makes airplanes to a company that primarily makes shareholder value," which kind of summarizes the current state of the global economy as a whole.
It seems everything goes to crap once it becomes all about shareholder value, regardless of what industry it is.
What was the turning point when shareholder value became more important than anything else in a company?
@@zacharyewell3835 Regan and Nixon's market reforms, they altered the laws and obligations around how companies and the markets functioned. It eventually shifted business culture in the US and things cascaded from there.
Exactly 👏
@@JohnDundas Nixon was far from a "free market" type; he actually imposed wage and price controls. But the sickness did start around that time, with Milton Friedman's 1970 essay in the _New York Times,_ ""A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits." (Or perhaps earlier; Friedman said in 1962, "...there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.")
If the line of business happens to kill people or destroy the environment, apparently it's up to the shareholders to mitigate that, not the company.
I've been an aerospace machinist for about 8 years now. I work at a third party supplier, its a family owned company with about 100 people working there. We're AS9100 certified and make parts for commercial and military aircraft, including flight safety components. We are given a blueprint from a "middle man" supply company, sometimes given a vague description of what the component is used for, and tasked with machining it to the exact print requirements.
We can do that just fine, but having such a compartmentalized manufacturing system seems so much more prone to mistakes and misunderstanding when you have no clue what the next level of component assembly looks like.
From a machinist prospective, if you want to make a precise, well designed, and quickly manufactured aircraft, something like SkunkWorks in the 50's-90's seems to make the most sense. Where you have everyone from the design team to the machinists working in close proximity in the same facility.
Same from a hydraulics side of it
Yes. You want as much colocation as is practical. These are tightly coupled engineering problems that demand short, bidirectional flows of information throughout a right-sized organization.
Same on the software engineering side: the company I’ve seen that did the best work the fastest worked in close proximity like you describe. Designers, regulation experts, technical writers, programmers and customer support collaborated constantly.
Most of the companies I’ve worked for try to create assembly lines for software to increase efficiency. They run into the same problem you describe where not seeing the big picture causes a slew of mistakes and misunderstandings.
That one company with phenomenal collaboration built way better software and did it faster than anywhere else I’ve worked. Not by a little, either! We could launch new features in days instead of weeks and they wowed customers instead of confusing them.
All of the engineering work is just pretty CAD files if you cheap out on the manufacturing. Fracturing from their own suppliers for cheaper parts was really dumb
@@ericwillis7127 Yes, that way companies can leverage the synergies of various stake holders by empowering them in their core competencies. This key take away is a game changer that moves the needle on projects and should be a core value of these types of organizations.
This was absolutely fascinating! My 87-year-old father summed it up like this: "Boeing let the MBAs and the shareholders take over the company, and they ran it into the ground." I will definitely share this video with him.
Oh wait, you mean like KMart/Sears?
Live near alot of Boeing employees in the Seattle area, they usually blame the "Bean counters" brought in due to the McDonald Douglas merger.
Most corporate issues come from an over abundance of white collar well to do managers. It’s infuriating and it’s going to get people killed.
What did he think of the video?
So, has he finally watched it?
This video and these comments hurt my heart. I was an engineer at Boeing for 25 years until they union-busted us and moved our plant to OKC. I was so proud to say I worked there for almost all of them. To see their standard for excellence be so far in the rear view mirror just tears at my ❤
Sir, did you watch on the same topic by Real Engineering?
@Feather-yk8su Proof? Just because you would like something to be the explanation does not make it so. It instead boring old finances and economics that is the answer.
I grew up in Seattle, and had to watch Boeing move parts away slowly while also changing from a place friends were proud of their parents for working at to the place no one wanted to intern for during college.
@Feather-yk8su This is the management issues if you watched the goddamn video. Don't blame it on the lowest ranks or DEI like any goddamn conservatives.
@@tbraghavendran are you asking me? because i'm not a sir. hippie kansas GIRL ?? LOL
“Boeing is trying to be a Michelin Star kitchen with a fast food mindset.” -Wendover Productions 2024
Like how the U.S is a third world country with a Gucci belt.
This represents the United States in one sentence too
@@AwesomeHairo richest country in the world is third world, great take there.
@@captainmcsplash682contrary to popular belief, the united states didn’t ally with either the USSR or the United States during the cold war, making it indeed third world!
@@npenplzdo you live in The United States or the united states? Which one is Boeing in?
Really appreciate Wendover partnering with and crediting journalists on this video. It was a banger!
The Air Current is amazing and I'm glad they're getting their deserved recognition.
A “clean sheet” design instead of the 737MAX series would suffer the same sort of catastrophic failures because the problem isn't engineering, it's management.
👍👏
False. The 737 is ancient and the only reason they stuck to the platform was pure for "cost savings".
@@ChrisParayno On the other hand, the 737 platform is also... well proven. It's possible a new design would have been even more of a disaster...
Also a lot of companies don't want a new airplane so they need to train their pilots. If this wasn't an issue MCAS wouldn't exist.
yea thats crazy to think - but its probable the accountants would have overlooked some other fundamental, single point of failure mode, as well.
Boeing went as far as to kill the Whistleblower
Learning from drug cartels sure is a winning move
You’d better hope Boeing doesn’t read that, a significant lawsuit might result.
@@jamesgregory2918they won't pay attention to him lol 😂
@@jamesgregory2918or worse 😂
this video is a 23 minute word salad that was afraid to criticize boeing harder
The FAA allowing Boeing to self-regulate is such an absurd concept, I almost didn't believe it.
Only in America
That is very common in aviation. From large manufacturing to airlines to pilot medicals.
Same with large trucking companies. Self train, self certify. If you want to drive for yourself or a small outfit, you have to get schooling and then past driving tests at a state license place. But if the company is big enough, you can just do it in house.
Well, Boeing owns the FAA so even if they did regulate, it would effectively be self regulation. FAA fails a Boeing inspection? Boeing just calls their senator or sends the CEO to the white house for a chat.
So does Transport Canada with Bombardier and EASA with Airbus. The key difference I think is more to the fact that the FAA did not make sure the authorized approvers inside Boeing were able to work and take decisions based solely on their competencies and not under management pressure. If one of the authorized approvers in Canada or Europe is under pressure to approve something he doesn't think should be, rest assured that TC or EASA will get involved.
The McDonnel Douglas merge has accuratedly described as "Douglas buying Boeing with Boeing's own money"
That’s why you don’t put engineers in charge, they get fleeced
Double whammy. Doublecross. Catch 22. It's like "The sadder you are, the more you drink. The more you drink, the sadder you become."
Cheers & mabuhay, from my end--the Philippines!
Yep. Allowing unsafe new planes to fly. DC-10 to 737 Max
@@someperson3883 Ironically, at this point the 737 max has had more design incidents than the dc-10
@@SenorBigDong69you put engineers in charge otherwise you get technical issues like Douglas/Boeing have now. But you make sure that the CFO, corporate legal, and at least one shareholder-rep director are business-finance focused.
"You know that company that we bought because they were going under? Yeah, lets do exactly what they did because it worked out so well the first time"
Ding. Boeing risks people reacting to the word "Max" the way they did the words "DC-10" in the Late 1970s.
Someone did a good video on this. Boeing bought McDonald Douglas, and then moved the Boeing HQ to the Chicago HQ of McDonald Douglas and fired redundant Boeing management and kept the MD management that was known for the cost cutting the killed MD. Essential a more detailed breakdown of what this wendover video was talking about.
@@kpetro1675 Yep, Boeing bought MD out and MD ate Boeing from the inside. Talk about idiotic.
"But just THINK of all the MONEY we'll save!"
Speaking of money: it's been said that "McD bought Boeing with Boeing's money"...
As a former Boeing Employee, the saying around the watercooler is that "MD bought Boeing with Boeing money". After the "merger" MD leadership took over and they are running the company into the ground like they did MD.
Great job reporting this story. I worked there for 18 years where I saw the decline of Boeing from the inside. Then, I started my second career piloting 737s and the A320 on the outside of the manufacturing realm. The contrasts are telling, as you have pointed out. From the king of commercial aircraft makers, to what still exists of a 100 year legacy of success, it has been both incredible and devastating to watch Boeing fall from grace in the aerospace manufacturing business.
It is not just the 737 and 787 that have been troubling. The company that designed and built key parts of the B-2 and F-22 stealth aircraft, major parts of the Saturn 5 Apollo moon rocket and have most recently suffered problems with the CST-100 Starliner space capsule also. These problems highlight systemic problems with program management that Boeing was once infamous as the class of the whole world for always building the best possible aerospace products. All of which made everyone very proud to be a part of a family of employees. By focusing first on the customers and then on providing employees everything they needed to build the best products, not only was success possible, it was inevitable. Profitability was all but guaranteed and backed up by thousands of orders for first class products. Boeing though, has been gravely injured by two major market changes that I would describe as failures to properly manage its business to build on its legacy of excellence in aerospace manufacturing. The first is the response to what should have been recognized as the inevitable growth a strong competitor building clean sheet of paper airplanes. And second, the aerospace consolidation that eventually culminated in the merger with the nearly bankrupt McDonnell/Douglas. While arrogance caused Boeing to lose focus on what the customer wanted, corporate greed led to the mismanagement of the industry consolidation when the notion that managing a near industry monopoly resulted in surplusing way too much of the expertise both within the original company and at the acquired businesses. The notion of “too big to fail” has resulted in the drive to cater to Wall Street demands for perpetual profitability instead of attention to its customers. Accountants took over a company where design engineers once guided the business. Cost cutting became the order of the day, in place of how best to manage the critical assets needed to build and sell the world’s best commercial, military and space products. The original Boeing once separated the commercial aircraft business from the military business purposely because the two types of customers functioned in often diametrically opposed ways. Cost-plus contracts are very different from civilian customer contracts where Boeing had to pay directly for delays, cost overruns and for the consequences of accidents. McDonnell/Douglas (McD), in its heyday, was a majority-military contractor beholden to the government for most of its profits. While Boeing was the exact opposite, with its commercial business overwhelming its military business. Most of the other companies acquired over the years were also military focused. Merging the disparate cultures of Boeing and McD has been troubling ever since the 1997 merger, with the first decade afterwards resulting in a number of notable corporate management shakeups. I would argue that losing one of its key up and coming managers to Ford Motor Company is emblematic of the brain drain that began with the merger with McD. Change is always difficult to deal with. But, losing the mentors of the corporate culture that guided Boeing through its “If it ain’t Boeing, I’m not going” days into whatever is chosen to describe the company today has resulted in a crisis management culture, and is largely what has caused the crisis of confidence and competence that is in full display today.
In the six odd months since the video came out, it seems like we have reached the culmination of the process you've described with the Starliner fiasco.
Even if it comes down in one piece (no guarantees about that!), it will still be an empty capsule and extremely expensive failure for Boeing. If things go seriously wrong on the return attempt, Boeing is doomed. And even if it doesn't, Boeing's reputation is now damaged beyond repair in my opinion...
When any business shifts its focus to be strictly profit driven, it loses its core values and the final product suffers. When an engineering company does the same, we get MAX failures. Well crafted video Wendover.
The goofy thing is, no one's gonna buy your airplanes once your cheap practices create lethal flaws like cabins that pop open mid-flight. It's profits-chasing only for the shortest term.
With the Boeing / Airbus duopoly, they really don't have to improve
@@nafnaf0 Airbus doesn't seem to suffer from safety issues. I'm not aware of recent Airbus accidents. I'm sure Airbus would be more than happy to turn duopoly into a monopoly
@@nafnaf0Though they're nowhere near as big, Embraer have been picking up sales from all this too.
Its always a travesty when the engineering majors in an engineering company take second priority over the business majors.
And usually, it leads to deaths. Business majors do not know how to cut corners without making things dangerous.
I was at a mariners game with my uncle, who worked for Boeing when I was a kid. He was making small talk to a guy sitting next him and the guy asked my uncle, How many people work at Boeing? My uncle quickly responded “About half of them” 😂
That took me a while
I’d be surprised if as many as half actually work on their products… most probably manage… manage managers, manage processes… manage not adding value!
Buuuuuuurn!
In Flying Blind by Peter Robison that quote is attributed to former CEO T. Wilson
The "Lazy B'.
they fired the engineers and put genius mba bean counters in charge
As an engineer and an mba, I agree with this message. You can definitely optimize for the wrong thing if you don't know what you're doing.
That and the HR people. They changed their hiring practices from the most qualified to the most "equitable".
The previous CEO (Muilenburg) literally only had degrees in engineering, but that certainly didn't seem to be particularly helpful.
@@Unb3arablePaingenuinely what are you talking about? Is this a dogwhistle for rightwing DEI fearmongering? If so, this video makes it explicitly clear that the failure was in management, which is stuffed with white men, not in engineering or pilots.
@@Unb3arablePaindon’t be afraid to say it, it’s the DEI action at play, they’re hiring a bunch of ppl who have zero knowledge on engineering simply to meet a stupid agenda. And they bragged about it too
“Boeing is trying to be a Michelin Star kitchen with a fast food mindset.” - 10/10 quote
Boeing's mission statement is: “To connect, protect, explore, and inspire the world through aerospace innovation.” Now it should be “To profit, cut, fire, and kill through sheer mismanagement"
"That's a BINGO!"
"Naaa it's just 'Bingo'..."
...and greed
And to go woke
And otherwise be forced to make a clean sheet plane that leads airlines into bankruptcy and monopolizes some markets?
@@kencarp57BINGO!! Oooohohohoho!! So much fun!!
I live near their Charleston factory, so many of my friends were laid off from there only to be re-hired by the companies that were contracted to do the same job for twice the salary for Boeing
Very interesting, have no idea how belief works here, what's the surplus money involved or tucked away. Was it worker confidential to ask.
@@janremoto4849
it's quite simple in a way.
Those people were the only people that knew how a certain job works.
When they where inhouse Boeing who already has it's own back office (HR, and what not)
Dit not have to cover that cost above the initial hire.
If said people are spun off to there own company. they still are the only peope that know how to do that job.
they now can turn to Boeing and demand a better pay. (plus Boeing as a customer also needs to pay for there back office)
Boeing can refuse but then has no people to do that vital part. and those people could then walk over to Airbus and offer there expertise.
If they are vital enough Airbus might just cover there exclusivity fee to Boeing.
spinning of divisions in to there own companies only really works if for both parties there are enough others to pick and choose. Airspace does not have that.
almost like vertical integration was good!
Were they white people?
I grew up in Auburn, Washington, near a Boeing plant. I was the first kid in their Tech Prep program 30 years ago. Boeing had a huge impact on my life. Its sad to see them stumble so hard. I hope and pray they recover like a champ. I've always been so proud of Boeing, and proud of their role in history. I once got to help restore a B-17 bomber!!
They can recover if they decide to. Calhoun needs to go.
When buying another company; ALWAYS FIRE THE PREVIOUS MANAGEMENT. There's a reason why that sinking ship was for sale.
So every single company that's ever been for sale has been put up for sale because of poor management? It's also stupid to assume because a company is up for sale it's a sinking ship, but why should anyone expect better from bubbly dick cheese?
You're assuming that who gets fired is a matter of competency and effectiveness.
Corporate management is office politics. Nothing more, nothing less. You can be completely incompetent at your job, but if you're good at playing office politics, you still succeed.
@@FNLNFNLNyou still succed until the company kills hundreds of people
@@BobBobson Your missing the point of the original comment I think his intent was to state that if you purchase a company that was previously very profitable and has now been run into the ground fire those in charge because they caused the decline.
Ok I work in M&A and this is just an insane take. Vast majority of transactions like this, the business is perfectly healthy. Going scorched earth is risky for all kinds of reasons and you should only do it if you know for sure there are huge issues to navigate. Saying you should do it on every single deal, in all caps, is just wild.
Boeing had at one point the attitude "build good airplanes and the business will take care of itself" and now they don't.
This is exactly how many companies go. Xerox is famous for it. Because they made good copiers, designed by their engineering department, that in turn creates demand for ink. But a really stupid accountant would think that the sales force for ink and copiers are what makes money..when really, it's the engineers making a good product.
A company that is focussed on selling a good product who suddenly starts promotion of sales and MBA people is on the road to ruin. But the last ten years will be profitable...until it implodes.
It’s painful to see companies lose sight of this.
If a company can provide a valuable product or service then there’s room to figure out a business model to support it.
If a company is unable to provide value then there’s no business model that can fix it (in the long-run, imperfect competition can sustain such companies in the short-run).
No. Not at all. Boeing still makes top-of the-line aircraft. The 737 NG is perfectly safe, and the 777 and 787 have immaculate safety records. Tell me you don't know about aviation without telling me.
Line must always go up
@@graysonwilliams4826 Just because they've build good planes doesn't excuse the sh*tshow that are the 737max and 777x programs. It must be hard, but it's OK to admit that a company isn't perfect.
When I was growing up in Seattle, my family rode the Boeing roller coaster. Long time residents know what that is: the constant cycle of hirings and layoffs by the company. My father was always trying to get employed there, but it was always temporary as Boeing constantly expanded and contracted its workforce. So one year, we’d move into some nice new tract house in the suburbs, live well, and take advantage of all the benefits: vaccinations, regular check-ups, and lots and lots of dental appointments. The next year, Dad would get laid off, have to take jobs pumping gas, or reading water meters, or doing custodial work (or multiple combinations of the above to make ends meet), we’d move again into some shabby rathole, and no more visits to the dentist or doctor. It really sucked being at their mercy for the basics.
There is a trick to staying employed but the only people that benefited from it were favored or good workers. What happens is Boeing would lay off by department. They send the employees they like to departments that have a shorter layoff list. This is how they weed out employees they'd rather not keep.
This is exactly why I never went to work for Boeing. I didn't want to get used to a cushy life, only to be laid off.
Its kinda sad that the "cushy life" is a reasonable place to live and healthcare.
That being said, Boeing definitely could've and should've been more stable..
Do you think that comment is non-fiction?
@@bunk95 Can you be more specific?
21:33 Just a small correction: the B-2 is made by Northrop-Grumman, not Lockheed
Boeing: * does a thing *
Narrator: This went poorly
The 747-400 was the last great Boeing aircraft sad to see what happened to this company
@@mihirgohel2820you mean 777?
@@mihirgohel2820you must be a fake avgeek because Boeing has other successful planes WAY after the 747 like the 757, 767, 777, 787. You are only saying the 747-400 was the last best Boeing plane because of your bias due to having no aviation knowledge. In fact, the 777, 767 and 757 are WAY safer than the 747
@@UnitedAirlinesDC10 correct I’m not a avgeek, BUT you’ve never been on a PanAm 747-200 I came to America on that plane it was my first look at the “American Dream” But no plane can beat the feeling of going a 747 especially the upper deck hence why I think it was the last great Boeing plane now airlines just cram seats in so each of those planes feel the same
@@UnitedAirlinesDC10okay budd, I thought it was pretty obvious that it was his opinion. no need to do all that
That 787 story blew me away. I never knew that it had outsourced everything including the design.
they ended up doing a lot of the work internally because everything was so screwed up. they had to re-baseline the program 6-7 times (at least).
And nothing fit together
@@tango_uniformthat should have been so obvious to Boeing
nothing new....same in airbus. it is just the way to make these planes.
Almost all manufacturing is done this way.
The video below this video was "boeing whistleblower found dead" .. interesting
I find it interesting that you can have a 20 minute video about the struggles of Boeing, yet not conclude with the simple fact that Boeing went from an engineering company run by engineers to a company run by the MBAs. The move of its corporate headquarters was perhaps the most symbolic indication of that change.
17:15
And when Boeing is being sold off for parts those same MBA's will be on the other side buying them. They don't care, it's just numbers to them.
It would have worked out had the MBAs listened to the engineers and strengthened the Supplier Management organization. After working at Boeing for 35 years and being on 5 new airplane programs, I can attest that the biggest problem lies in the Supplier Management & Procurement organizations. Too focused on cost, not focused on technical capability. Isolated from engineering. Unwilling to solve problems when a change in plan is required. For example, when I worked with Fuji Heavy Industry engineers they said that they knew the exact cost of every bracket and clip that they designed in Subaru automobiles, but had no idea of the cost when designing parts for Boeing. The 787 Partner business model would have worked had Boeing made one change--Boeing should have paid for the engineering and released all drawings/datasets on Boeing paper. Boeing lost track of how partners were doing in meeting their scheduled releases.
@@shikharagrawal59 That's not what I was trying to say. Boeing was an engineering company, that was it's sole reason for existing. Once there were no more engineers in the top management layers they lost sight of this fact. That's when things started going downhill for them. You see this with many other engineering focused companies, they almost always end up worse off in the long run if their CEO doesn't come from an engineering background. For companies that aren't as engineering focused, having the company be run by MBAs can be perfectly fine, like McDonald's for example.
@@Helyanweh Okay, I understand now.
The locations of the Boeing headquarter are quite telling in my opinion: in 2001 the HQ moved to Chicago, far away from its manufacturing center in Seattle. Things started to went south a few years later. Then in 2022, after the MCAS debacle, the HQ moved again, even further away, to Arlington, close the Pentagon & Defense decision centers. The signal is clear: Boeing is giving-up on being an innovating civil aviation company, instead trying to be a rent seeking military contractor company. Ironically, even on that front, things are far from rosy (ex: KC 46 being a $5B to $7B loss).
For decades Boeing has been one of the largest defense contractors, in a huge array of areas. Ironically that has become less profitable as DOD is essentially doing to that industry what Boeing was doing to its contractors.
Boeing was already a military company since the beginning (P-26 peashooter,B-17,B-29,B-52, and now with the merging of McDonnell Douglas it also produces F-15,F/A-18 and together with Lockheed Martin they make the F22)
I remember the first move well because I used to drive by Boeing's corporate office whenever I went to Seatac. They claimed it was because they're a worldwide company and they needed a central and diverse corporate location.
NPR did a story on this with a Boeing whistleblower who was a high ranking manager and this was his conclusion as well
Modern Boeing shafted Chicago after all the $$$ invested to support the move. Sure makes the Boeing lobbyists commute easier from Arlington, VA. If they keep this up, Boeing might move HQ to a tax-sheltered, non-extradition location.
21:25 uncharacteristic blunder, the b-2 (and b-21) are made by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed made the f22 and f35
Interaction bait?
@@linecraftman3907 I don't think so, Sam doesn't seem like the guy to intentionally insert an error like that
@@linecraftman3907probably just a slight mistake
@@linecraftman3907 Dammit, you're probably right, and I fell for it.
@@phytonso9877mistakes happen
as a native Seattleite, I grew up with Boeing as a point of pride in where I lived, and there was the whole some of the cool kids dads working as engineers for it thing. It's so sad to see how it's slowly going downhill and loosing a lot of respect. I really hope they can turn it around
I appreciate you covering the subject. This is an issue that didn't start with the MAX, but it very well could be the end. McDonnell Douglas is wholly to blame, and the Boeing CEO/Directors at the time - who let them buy them out with their own money - are the key reason why Boeing fell apart.
Those MBA bean counters from McDonnell Douglas are actually the SMART ONES to convince Boeing engineers to buy them with their own money. They're so powerful with their lips 👀
The merger happened 27 years ago. When a literal generation has grown up to adulthood in the timespan it is time to put something like the McDonnell Douglas-excuse to sleep.
As a procurement and supply chain professional, I found this video really fascinating. It depicts at its best WHY you should have sustainable and fair relationships with your suppliers, and not just blindly exploit bargaining power.
Collaboration is key, and this is even more crucial when you are producing a product like an airplane, where even the screws and bolts suppliers MUST be on the same page.
Thank you for this quality content!
At some point, it would be easier to just bring those people in-house.
We could have used your expertise on 787 Program.
@@djinn666 But having more union labor on the books is about the last thing they want, and on paper it looks like a terrible idea. Personally I would be more like Tesla and just try to vertically and horizontally integrate everything, but do it better than anyone else. Suppliers are always a fundamental disadvantage. The reluctance to use to do things in house, shows a lack of faith in the company's ability itself. That is an indicator that internal processes need reform.
It is simple. You pay for what you get. If Boeing can’t make the part profitably, the supplier is unlikely to able to do it. Cut the price, the supplier will cut corners to meet the price to survive. Low quality part will be most expensive part for Boeing.
// "As a procurement and supply chain professional, I found this video really fascinating. It depicts at its best WHY you should have sustainable and fair relationships with your suppliers, and not just blindly exploit bargaining power."
In our current model of capitalism, the rules of the road incentivize companies to look for ANYWHERE they can cut corners and ANYONE they can exploit to theoretically have higher rates of profit every quarter. That inevitably leads to behavior that is self-defeating and a complete failure of the prisoner's dilemma.
So, yeah...... logically companies shouldn't just blindly exploit bargaining power, but the rules of the game dictate that this is exactly what the c-suite MUST do in order to keep their jobs. They must act short-sightedly even though they know it's bad in the long term.
Our systems are broken. Our economy incentivizes some messed up shit and people keep acting like it's a few bad apples.
1.) Game companies to release monetization schemes called games that consumers increasingly don't own, but rather purchase a license that lasts as long as the current incarnation of the company. Games are released as incomplete buggy messes because of all the corners cut during production.
2.) Food companies put non-food ingredients into food, like cardboard and the like, to save money and cut costs on production.
3.) Movie/TV studios cut corners on production, slashing production costs by refusing to pay for good talent or give them enough time to do their jobs properly. (Mini-writers' rooms and SFX grindset, anyone?) So we get shitty special effects and increasingly poorly written stories. They try and patch the problem with marketing campaigns that portray angry fans as racist or sexist, etc.
We don't call it a few bad apples if baseball players try to score runs. Sooner or later we have to acknowledge that the game of capitalism has changed. It's no longer an efficient way of organizing an economy. It brought us to the modern age but holy hell it needs a makeover.
“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkey” - Boeing Employee
This was the funniest sh*t I’ve heard to ever come out publicly in corporate America 😂
To be clear that statement was made by the Boeing Technical Pilots responsible for checking out the 737MAX simulators who disagreed with how to implement a function on the autopilot.
Peaceful Monke would never crash a plane.
@@I_SuperHiro_IOr fly one either.
It's almost like monopolies create a toxic environment for competition and quality huh?
Monkey. Exactly
I worked for them in Seattle for 14 years and watched it go from a company that rewarded workers, who in turn rewarded the company with record profits and the best airplanes in the world to a company where a greedy CEO changed the corporate model to that of GE. Everything became outsourced, safety standards were lowered to save the shareholders money, humiliating workers, busting unions, mass and repeated layoffs and here they are. The greedy CEOs of the last 20 years have resulted in this. Funny how their greed has destroyed them from within. I fly Airbus now.
Here’s the nutshell version: “Greedy C-suite people who care more about their own paycheck than doing things right.”
Practically every public company is like it. The results are just most visible for those that crash planes. It's a cultural issue of greedy capitalists run amok.
@@vcool It is, more accurately, a case of SPECIFIC greedy, inconsiderate individuals running amok. Not the system itself. There are certainly examples of companies that are still profitable but NOT a public safety hazard.
But papa elon the billionnaire told me to blame minorities!
Companies are required by law to act solely in the interest of their shareholders, even when doing so can cause injury, death, or other horrific mishaps to their customers and the world.
Henry Ford v Dodge Brothers
@@HelloNotMe9999 And yet these specific greedy inconsiderate individuals seem to keep getting into these positions of power, no matter what the industry is. Bumping into a friend at the supermarket is a coincidence, consistent and repeated mismanagement from the C-Suite in the name of maximizing profits at the cost of quality is not.
Remember, never appoint a MBA guy to be the CEO of an engineering company.
Well, don't put the people in charge of a company that just failed in charge of your working company.
McDonald did succeed at making investors temporarily happy, so I guess breaking Boeing can be considered a success by that metric too
And don’t pay them $62M after failing at their job, too. Take money from such folks as their lobbying and industry ties are income enough for them.
@@lomiification i think the original sentiment is correct. i have yet to see an MBA improve an engineering company for anyone but maybe shareholders. not the customers, not the talent.
Dennis, the previous CEO of Boeing, had a bachelors and masters in engineering. He started of at the company as an engineering intern. Didn’t seem to help did it?
But that's the American way now
You could do the same video and same script for the US healthcare system (have managers trained to cost cut a McDonalds try the same thing with medicine, and find out that all those intangibles like “institutional memory” and “experience” and “customer/supply chain trust and goodwill” are, in fact, necessary, and that despite not having their own budget line, are fundamental to the entire enterprise.
People who only think about money are always surprised that they aren't the only people on earth.
Someone check if this guy is still alive.
Jon Ostrower is the best aviation journalist in the biz. Really glad you partnered with him and his teammates.
Man... the worst part is that you can feel Sam's voice.
He is not angry.
He is not annoyed.
He is not sad from seeing that fall.
He is just... *worried* .
No problem there is Airbus planes to fly in.
Won't crash and doors won't fall off when you're at 38000ft
@@FrozenDung yeah that's the point. American industry is doing this to itself en masse. It's not just Boeing. Sam is concerned because as wall street has only grown in power, they have driven all these publicly owned corporations to chase the high of quarterly results over all else. And it shows in the failure of virtually all major American industrial products to keep the same reputation over the past half century. Combine that with offshoring production of all else, cheaper labor and better educated people over seas as a result of needing to do better as their lives depend on it... And we have a US that is decaying on all levels. We need to reform ourselves or we will become as sad and irrelevant as Russia is today.
@@FrozenDung the problem is, the US government will not let Boeing stop making aircraft. They will do everything in their power to keep Boeing afloat if only just to avoid buying European built airliners. Boeing matters to much to the US economy. Airbus is not going to safe the day. They can't.
His voice is shrilly, like usual.
@@FrozenDung i know you probably dont fucking care, but american airlines buying american planes is pretty important for american industry
The B-2 was built by Northrup Grumman, not Lockheed Martin.
Came here to say this
Guess I won’t be going to nebula lol :v
I caught that mistake too
As bad as Boeings QA issues 😅
Oh thank God someone already said it
Crazy that this pops up the day I learn that they had a dude assassinated
Same.
If Wendover is making a video about your aircraft company in any negative light, you know you’ve stepped in it
Now I want to watch a Wendover video on the logistics of high-end kitchens.
I first read the above as "...high-end kittens," and wow was I excited. Still, Wendover could totally do a high-end kitten video.
First you have to let go of the illusion of fine dining cooks learning a lot of money. It could not be further from the truth.
You know what "Boeing" means? it's the sound the doors make when they go away midflight
Boeing is also what their fuselages do when MCAS has a flashback to its past life as a WWII kamikaze pilot.
Lol
🤣🤣🤣
@Julian-qt6xj"Esperantistoj Kontraŭfaŝismo"... so yes, but also speaks Esperanto.
I frequently come across old electronic components that are marked as “Approved for Boeing” and that meant they held up to the most rigorous specifications. They were the gold standard for high quality manufacturing.
Boeing sees itself like a Michellin-starred restaurant but with a McDonald's mindset. Could not have said better.
0:40 I remember the Nisqually quake very well. I was in my 2nd grade math class at the time. We heard what sounded like an approaching truck, then the ground started vibrating under us. We dove under our desks and held on, then filed outside to the soccer field once the shaking stopped. Later that week, the school gave everyone popsicles because we had "done a good job during the earthquake."
I also think the move of Boeing's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago and now DC a part of the issue. The executives are too far from the factory to understand what's happening in the factory.
I fear for Wendover because of their failure to even mention the physical and metaphysical disadvantages of this foolish move.
Teil that Airbus...
"This went... poorly" is a fabulous understatement
It's becoming what most publicly traded companies are, short-term profits above all.
This! Investor capital is the powder keg of economics, turning growth and value fundamentals into gambling.
I was part of the 5k layoffs at Tmobile. I could have stayed if I moved but I couldn’t with family.
Anyways: laying off 5k people and then posting record profits and a new stock dividend for investors.
For companies nowadays, the customers are now the products, and the investors are now the customers.
@thepebblesexplore83 bro if they fired you and made record profits I've got bad news for you 😂.
@@chazzbranigaan9354yeah money is worth more than safety.
Its wealth inequality, thats whats doing it. There simply isnt enough money in the working classes anymore to sustain their growth, so they stopped looking to us as customers and started looking to their rich shareholders instead.
What they are finding out, is that SHAREHOLDERS DONT BUY 777s. This is common in every industry every company out there. Theyve sucked us all dry, so the new vogue is selling hats to the headless. I am in this industry. This affects me. But i will be laughing my face off as these ***************** get their just desserts.
Great video, only one issue - THE B-2 WAS BUILT BY NORTHROP GRUMMAN, NOT LOCKHEED MARTIN
Nothing says you love the design of the plane better than getting the designer wrong
I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT
Thank you! I had to go “wtf” and rewind when he said that. Thought I missed something.
Genuinely not sure how you can something like that so insanely wrong. Also find it insane how he can say he’s a fan of the B-2 and then say the cost per airframe being 2 billion was due to research costs and not mentioning that the research costs had to be distributed over only 21 planes instead of the original intended procurement amount leading to the insane cost per unit prices.
I worked at boeing and retired in the late 90s.
It was an incredible company back then.
We were building beautiful machines.
Very proud.
I'm still friends with lots of guys and gals who still work there.
Most of them hate working there.
The moral is gone.
What went wrong?
@@vcool bean counters, cost cutters, accountants running the show and pinching pennies. throw some diversity and equity in the mix and your company is done
^^exactly this...@@tektkite7255
@@vcoolBoeing and McDonald Douglas merged. Through a bunch of boardroom shenanigans with the executives, McDonald Douglas, even though they were the smaller company, was able to wrestle control of the company away from Boeing. The merger happened in the first place because MDD at the time was operating how Boeing currently operates and basically drove themselves into the ground; hence the merger.
This is a very broad-strokes explanation but it still gets the main points across.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but simply moving on with dignity despite that fear.
One of the crucial factor is probably that Airbus has always been a joint venture of different European planemakers and not a monolith company like Boeing. They have much more experience in managing that kind of supply chain and all the deals with critical subcontractors across the continent, and can make that work.
Yeah, it seems like Boeing could have done this but unrealistic expectations on profit (and those executive bonuses) meant something has to give.
It's much easier to relax and wait for those juicy government contracts.
Airbus isn't a actually a joint venture. It is one Company which had most european Aircraftmanufacturers merged into it. It basicaly functions as boeing did before they devested in 2005, with Branches all over europe.
@@robinmorgenstern9927 Airbus was born as a JV though, since the founding companies existed as separate entities that owns Airbus shares.
They were only merged under Airbus banner in the 2000s after the merger of parent companies, which also bought out the rest of the shares.
on a side note, I feel like it's been a really long time since we've had an airplane-related Wendover video when it was ironically a meme that that's all you made before
Boeing became the Walmart of the airline industry. Strongarming suppliers to get the best deal for themselves.
A good analogy. I don't really go to Walmart anymore because I can't trust the products, making it more trouble than it's worth. They prioritize _cost_ over _value._
Great Video really great. A little NOTE: Lockheead Martin is not the Original Equipment Manufacturer or (OEM) of the B2 Spirit it is Notrthrop Grummen
As someone who lives in Utah, I see Northrup Grumman all over the place, it was just up the road from my highschool. Too bad I'm a pacifist.
Pretty sad how juggernaut companies are able to routinely screw up without meaningful consequence simply because there's not enough competition.
Don't forget all the Government bailouts.
There is Airbus.
@@sophiaherschel56760 years ago there were a dozen companies that sold commercial aircraft. They all got eaten up by Boeing or decided to stop selling commercial aircraft.
@@sophiaherschel567 That’s not true market competition though. Having 2 massive conglomerates battling it out is still considered a monopoly. You need like 10-12 different companies battling for market share to truly fix all these problems.
Saying “there’s Airbus” is like saying “there’s Apple” when your three choices of computer operating systems are Microsoft, Linux, and Apple. That’s not really good competition.
There's no competition because their money has BOUGHT out the competition, also any federal oversight.
Reminds me of Gibson guitars. Formerly world class and universally respected, to now being greedy and third world, universally mocked by modern guitarists. Boing is in the same boat there, albeit crappy guitars don’t kill people
Edit: I just realized I misspelled “Boeing”, I’m leaving it in. 😂
And also similar in that a lot of the former Gibson factories, like their legendary Kalamazoo plant, have gone independent and are still making top quality instruments. It's arguable as to whether or not Fender still makes the best Stratocaster or Jaguar, but it's undeniable at this point that Gibson does not make even one of the top 10 best Les Pauls or SGs you can buy.
Not really my circus though; I'm a bassist who prefers Ibanez. None of Gibson's basses have ever had much penetration into the market, at least not the point of becoming industry standards like the Fender Precision and Jazz, the Music Man Stingray, or the super high end brands like Fodera and Alembic.
It's mind blowing how far Gibson has fallen. For most of their instruments, the level of quality is below Squier, but the price is often several times over. I personally own an Epiphone, and having handled & played both the "nicer" Gibson equivalent, and the competition, it's not even close. Gibson is shit, but for half the price, Epiphone is also just as shit. There's zero innovation, zero QC, and zero desire to put out anything that at all improves on what came before. Again, it's not a preference thing. If you don't care about having the most modern materials and technology, just buy an old Gibson, or an old Epiphone. Don't pay more for the same old thing built worse. Otherwise? Get a Fender. Or an Ibanez. Or a Yamaha. Or an Eastwood. Or a Music Man. Or literally anything else.
Lol. You mention aviation and Gibson guitars, and I can't stop thinking about one specific case are the two intersected
A crappy electric guitar could kill someone if it electrocuted them.
@@Croz89 Ah, no, the voltage & current that goes back up the cord is negligible unless it is faulty amplifier. A guitar lead is just a microphone input into the amplifier...
It hurts to see how almost all business have taken this road, being tied to share price success over anything else is a recipe for disaster
The funny thing is Airbus’ stock price has done better than Boeing’s
It’s called enshittification
@@lionofistanmusic7311dankpods enjoyer spotted
Short term stock value an bonusses versus long term financial viability i guess.
@@level10peonin the long run, yes. In the short term, Boeing did better... Only to fall out of the sky right after. Which is what the current stock market wants, because the objective is "line go up fast and forever", which is impossible, and thus it fails every time.
Just look at tech companies: forced to fire massive amounts of people just to return the right sized profit (if you fire someone, the money you would have paid that someone goes into the company bank account instead -not really but simplified yes).
One would say "capitalism", but I'd rather say "stock market, Reagan capitalism".
South Carolina assembly problems are legendary. Many airlines will NOT accept southern built planes.
"Partnering for Success" was named by some suppliers as "Partnering for Poverty"
Procter and Gamble must have used the same consulting firm ; basically screw your suppliers to up the share price without investing a dime 😂. Short term gain , long term loses . Who cares .? I got my consultant fees and flew away ( but not on new Boeing)
Or "Partnering for Survival".
Either reject the contract and close your business, or take the horrible deal and hope for the best.
I would love it if you'd do a 2nd video telling the story of Airbus and how they experienced this same time period.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there was nothing unusual or weird going on with Airbus at the time.
@@ΣτελιοςΠεππαςwhat are you talking about? Airbus was making the A380 jumbo flop.
Yet still doing better than Boeing at the same time. It's not the type of Boeing win it sounds like that they can create a huge loss of an aircraft and still keep up with
competition. Imagine if they HADN'T wasted that time and money on the A380.@@TheBooban
@@OfficialSamuelC they can keep up with the competition because Boeing is so incompetent.
@TheBooban That was a mistake on where the market was heading. There wasn't that much drama in the actual design of the plane.
i used to work as a cnc operator at a company that made some parts for boeing
Record profits. They told us that 3 months before they fired us at the christmass party hahaha
Then suddenly the whole workfloor gets called to the lunchroom. Yo listen up. We about to send a email, everybody who gets the email is fired...
turned out half the 3/4 of the floor was fired. I was not bad at my job. I even asked them because i was devastated.
I liked that job man, damn
Just be glad you’re not part of the shit show they made
I know a cnc operator that the company he worked for did boeing contracts. That sounds like the same thing. Record profits and let most of them go. They did call and tried to hire him back... at fast food wages. He does welding now for a lot more than their offer.
I knew a project manager at Boeing, was fired as a cost cutting measure after giving them 35 years of his life
@@mikederucki man i used to be positive and all. But we are just a number. 5 years 10 years, 30 years.
It does not matter, its all about the money
I just learned about a Boeing whistleblower who committed suicide during an investigation and UA-cam's algorithm decides to be funny 👀
Boeing almost deffinatley had him assassinated
Whistleblower??
"It's the small things that matter"
I am an IT engineer and I approve this sentence 100%
Small (Half-assed) errors in manufacturing lead to fatal crashes
@@someperson3883 Or massive data leaks
As an IT engineer, it is known that even a single character can lead to a fairly risky situation. As a financial programmer, I once left out an equal sign, using > instead of >=, and this trapped ninety thousand of my dollars. Fortunately, I saw it, immediately patched my code, and got a lifeline. Cryptocurrencies have lost many millions due to similar one-character bugs.
who would have thought greed and consolidated capital power would lead to horrific tragedy?
🙋♂️
Boeing didn’t suddenly decide to become greedy in 2024 after being in business for 100+ years. Standards were lowered so that more Africans could be hired and the Jews over at BlackRock would refrain from withholding investment funds. The Jews want diversity because diversity kills nationalism and nationalism disenfranchises Jews.
Oh, the horror!! Perish the thought!
Not so much greed and more like trying to not go bankrupt.
Don't underestimate the results of 20 years of diversity initiatives. Many of those engineers left for companies like SpaceX. Then came the diversity initiatives all the way down to the smaller suppliers. Matt Walsh has documented this. He's received hundreds of insider emails and plans to consolidate those into a single piece of investigative journalism after the credentials can be verified. They've verified dozens of stories already from engineers to maintainers to pilots. DEI is forcing the best people out or they get passed over for promotions. What's going on in the American airline industry is all part of the plan of the activists at the FAA.
This video is university level educational case study, edited/crafted to keep the attention of an everyday viewer. I have been watching so many of your videos but you have just lifted the bar higher with this one.
It's like that old engineer saying, "You can do it fast, cheap, or good, pick two."
21:20 Northrop makes the B2. But as normal. These vids are amazing
Yup. Should probably fix that before he gets sued lol. Videos are great as always sir. Thanks for the content!
I think the lesson here is about the dangers of having a purely transactional outlook. Had they stuck to the core concept of making a great product they wouldn't be in this situation. Truly a lesson for the times I say.
I love how at 17:22 when flying in 120° temperatures you cut to a shot of Sky Harbor, a few miles from me which 100% accurate. It's that level of detail that makes me love your channel!
I noticed that too. Appreciate the detail!
Cost (reduce as much as possible),profit (maximise at all costs) then safety (minimum amount to satisfy the FAA)! Boeing’s core business mantra, now coming back to haunt them!
Maybe Boeing needs to take a page from the Toyota playbook and invest in their suppliers' ability to develop the culture of quality. I guarantee that the real reason behind the failures is leadership and not that the workers are lazy or unskilled.
fair but cars take less time to produce and sell meaning more short term profit
"Toyota - moving forward" followed by their brakes failing. Still remember that to this day
@@pollosasadosalcarbonThat's one of the fallacies that you learn about when you study "cost of quality". It ends up costing less to do it right. That's one of the tragedies of most of this: it's not like the bolts on the plug doors are too expensive and the supplier just left them out to save a few bucks. They have the money for the bolts. The bolts probably didn't take long to install. What failed was leadership's ability to support the process and the culture of doing things right, improving processes, using and making the right tools, etc...
another advantage for toyota is that they are far more dominant and powerful in their respective country, meaning they can bend rules and workers rights even more easily
Humans are broadly speaking all the same when you're operating at this scale. At Boeing's size, it's impossible for these issues to be the direct result of workers being lazy or unskilled. Instead it's a result of management decisions and policies either encouraging that behaviour, or some other systemic problem. When you're talking about dozens or hundreds, or thousands of workers, if they all seemingly share a similar undesirable trait, that's absolutely a management/company culture issue.
It's like if you have a class where one kid is failing, that's the kid, but if almost everyone is failing, that's the teacher.
17:13 BRAVO 👏👏👏👏👏 Best run-on sentence I've heard in a long time!!
It wasn't mentioned, but a total of 346 people were killed in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes on Oct. 29th 2018, and March 10, 2019, respectively.
The parallel between high end cuisine and plane engineering philosophy just felt genius to me great video as always!
Engineering has always been the ART of applying science to real world issues Not the profession of cutting corners. I am a more on the scientist sides by training but I have always thought of engineering as artists who paint with science.
In 2017, long before a crash, NPR (KCUR) ran a story about the Max 8 sensor issue and it was not being addressed. A pilot even described a workaround and was frustrated that he couldn't inform other pilots well enough that they needed to disable the MCAS flight-control system. The day before the 2018 crash a pilot onboard that plane in the jump seat was aware of this and informed the piloting crew. The information was not passed on well enough.
I can't find the article or audio from before the crash, and not for a lack of trying. Despite every other audio and transcript being there. I just can't remember what show it was..I feel like 5pm news long form segment.
The pilot in the jumpseat did pass along his knowledge to the crew he physical helped the crew recover the aircraft cause it tried to crash but didn't. Had he not been there that aircraft would have crashed 1 day earlier. It was said he held the trim wheel while the crew used their combined strength to recover the aircraft while also shutting done MCAS. The worst issue with MCAS is it was a good system, but the systems that fed into it were poor. It was offered to airlines with a single point of failure when it should have had 2 redundancies.
The town I live in had one of these satellite Boeing plants that used to employ up to 800 people. In the early 2000's it got spun off into Arnprior Aerospace, which has just recently announced that they're going to close their doors.
Nothing inspires confidence like, "Welcome aboard this aircraft. 90% of the parts suppliers for this plane don't make any money."
The B-2 was made by Northrop, later Northrop Grumman, not Lockheed Martin or any of its constituent companies.
This is a Michelin starred level video about Boeing . Well done .
people are flying in a piece of machinery made of parts and components sourced from the cheapest bidders in the world, quality controlled to the absolute minimum requirements (or even less than that), assembled in the cheapest possible way and maintained by airlines to the bare minimum requirements to avoid additional costs and downtime. So don't worry people everyone's PR department will assure you that all have your safety as number one priority in mind!
There have never been fewer fatalities in aviation than today... What you are saying is completely exaggerated. The latest crash in the US was 2009.
@@bipolar7853in the "US? You do realize if they didn't ground the new 737s, there would have been tons of crashes
@@bipolar7853The record remained bevause the FAA stepped in otherwise there would hsve been Max crashes eventually.
Don’t forget that the assembly and qualities control are now done by diversity hires
@@heart_break1exactly
Here after the whistleblower "committed suicide". Damn.
I guess you could say Boeing really took a nosedive.
'I don't think that joke landed'..... I will see myself out.
They could have planned ahead but instead decided to wing it.
Boeing installed MCAS on its operating board, surely.
DANGER! DANGER! Accountants in the cockpit! Accountants in the cockpit!
@@salkoharper2908or did it go over everyone's head? 🤔
"Boeing is trying to be a Michelin-starred kitchen with a fast-food mindset, and it's just not working" ... wouldn't find a better analogy to describe why Boeing's lost its way! Wendover , one of your best and most interesting video. Thank you
"This went ... poorly."
Yup, that about sums it up.
The fact that Boeing IGNORED Lion Air request for training pilots for MAX is tragic.
Everytime there is a new Share Buy Back program, remember that those are millions of dollars sent to Wall Street instead of to workers, production lines or Quality Control.
So you just don't understand how a buyback works huh
@@robroilen4441it's literally spending money just to make the stock price go up. Primary beneficiary: C-suite and Wall Street.
@@robroilen4441Found the MBA.
@@robroilen4441 Is it just emotion (polemical). The Big Short movie has that for the 2008 Recession. Any difference you ask. Unbelievable!, and most asked or implied.
How then does that program and trust social contract work? (Great. Research than do it on chat.)
@@robroilen4441 great brief snippet research say it's a company decision and not an incentive. Power play against shareholders.
I would like to thank Boeing from the deepest part of my heart for making excellent Airbus advertisements, We Europeans really needed a boost because of our economy being a bit more sluggish, Now thanks to the cock ups of Boeing, Im sure their customers will start lining up at our front door.
Right?! These days I just look at the maker of the plane. I don’t even even care if the European airline has bad service
You should also thank the US government for not putting Boeing Executives and Board members in prison. Absolutely zero accountability from them as well.
also while you europeans are done warming your hearts from our failure, you can demand why we aren’t protecting you from Putin.
Does concern me that if Airbus gets too comfortable, they may start this suicidal cost cutting procedure too
@@Scythl airbus hasn’t had a history of this. Their regulations are pretty stringent.
The company most to benefit might be a Chinese manufacturer