Thread: Boeing CEO steps down, 737 may never fly again

It seems the change was the result of the merger with McDonnell-Douglas.

Found this link and story - on a Country Doctor's blog, of all places ! I suspect he has more than a smattering of aeronautical interest, as he was aligning the (US) Naval training philosophy of encouraging learner pilots to indulge in developing 'Airmanship' - and his desire for Doctors to nurture the Healing parallel quality.

Anyway, there's some valuable background here, and as always, 'Devil lives in the detail'. (rarely revealed)

What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max? - The New York Times

Originally Posted by JDNSW

outsourcing a lot of engineering, putting MBAs in charge.

This has been the ruin of many, many organisations globally.

The process of increasing efficiency happens at the expense of expertise. Companies cease being about product, quality and family and start worshiping at the grail of shareholder returns.

Originally Posted by superquag

Found this link and story - on a Country Doctor's blog, of all places ! I suspect he has more than a smattering of aeronautical interest, as he was aligning the (US) Naval training philosophy of encouraging learner pilots to indulge in developing 'Airmanship' - and his desire for Doctors to nurture the Healing parallel quality.

Anyway, there's some valuable background here, and as always, 'Devil lives in the detail'. (rarely revealed)

What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max? - The New York Times

This article falls into the same trap as the assumption that the fault is entirely Boeing's, or the FAA's - accidents do not have a single "cause".

While it is quite clear that one of the major factors is the culture of the airlines involved, it is also quite clear that a major factor is the culture of the aircraft manufacturer.

This article is another attempt to put all the blame on the "foreigners" for not being more like the Americans, the same as the Indonesian and Ethiopian authorities are trying to put all the blame on Boeing. As with all accidents, there is plenty of blame to go round.

Originally Posted by BradC

This has been the ruin of many, many organisations globally.

The process of increasing efficiency happens at the expense of expertise. Companies cease being about product, quality and family and start worshiping at the grail of shareholder returns.

To a large extent it is a matter of time scale - and with MBAs it is all the next quarter's bottom line. Whether this is really to the benefit of shareholders is another matter!

As I have repeatedly pointed out to previous employees, if you outsource any of your organisation's key functions, you will probably save money, at least initially, but you are also effectively giving the supplier the experience that would previously be given to your employees, so that special expertise derived from this expertise will also be available to your competitors. And if you keep this up, in a relatively short time, you will not even have enough in house expertise to know whether your supplier knows what they are doing, or whether they are taking you for a ride!

Yes, I was thinking something similar recently when I read the NSW Government is still planning to privatise its forestry operations for short term gain. All those foresters with their expertise and fire fighting skills lost to some private profit maker. Have they learnt nothing from the disaster of electricity privatisation?

That privatisations and/or 'Public-Private Partnership debacles are so predominantly Epic Failures, one could be forgiven for imagining an underlying Conspiracy.. driven by faceless overseas bankers business or even governments.

Airbus is driven more by "Designing Engineers" with MBA's than Boeing used to be. until recently. Yes, Boeing is indeed a victim of it's recent 'culture change', but when national / racial / religious culture impacts the cockpit, it needs to be illuminated.

IMHO, at worst, that article illustrated how the Swiss Cheese slices came together.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Yes, I was thinking something similar recently when I read the NSW Government is still planning to privatise its forestry operations for short term gain. All those foresters with their expertise and fire fighting skills lost to some private profit maker. Have they learnt nothing from the disaster of electricity privatisation?

No.


They are just stupid, lazy, treasonous, True Believers or worse. Chuck a dart.