Finally got to watch the documentary and to be honest I thought it was quite damning. Very little trust in Boeing's internal procedures and quality control. The language used in the internal memos is unbelievable. In most civilized countries, people would have been thrown in jail. And the FAA comes across as a bunch of fools that swallow anything Boeing throws at them.
If the decision is ever marginal, I'll go with flying an Airbus over a Boeing airplane from now on.
Boeing delays 777X another year and writes off $1.2B as future costs pile up Seattle Times
Boeing really is in deep trouble. Even Ukraine related military contracts are probably off-set by losses in sales to Russia.
The 777X is in very big trouble. It was delayed originally because Boeing thought it would be cheaper to focus on the 737MAX for longer haul medium capacity flights. But now the A330 and A350 are eating Boeings lunch in what seems to be a shrinking market and its hard to see why anyone would buy it when there is the proven A350 available.
There also has to be a suspicion that Boeing is covering up short term problems by signing contracts on very unfavorable terms (Trump, typically, was the first to do this). The T7 trainer looks like it might be a loss maker for them as they bid so low to get the USAF contract, and its hardly a secret that they are selling 737’s on big discounts. No doubt the big Gulf airlines are driving a very hard bargain for any aircraft they need.
Pretty good write up in Engineering News Record on Boeings move intertwined with discussion on Chicago real estate (new towers get built and filled while Chicago has an ever increasing vacancy rate in larger older buildings). I think a couple of things worth noting, Boeing supposedly has 700 employees in IL and intends to keep most them there but you wonder if they would be better suited to move them to St Louis region/metro east and the comments on the end of the article forgets about the huge defence presence in St. Louis. So in my mind, it does make a lot of sense for Boeing to consolidate Corporate HQ around DC as they pretty much have built an industrial base in three locations - Seattle, St Louis (MD acquisition), and now Charleston. Where as the Chicago maybe appeases one commercial Legacy Air Carrier
New York (CNN Business)The CEO of Ryanair let loose a scathing, obscenity-laden attack on Boeing management Monday, saying company executives need either an immediate "reboot, or a boot up the a**."
"At the moment we think Boeing management is running around like headless chickens, not able to sell aircraft, and then even the aircraft they deliver, they're not able to deliver them on time," said Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, Europe's largest discount carrier, which has ordered nearly 400 jets from Boeing since 2010.
O'Leary and Boeing had an unusually public dispute last fall about negotiations on a possible order for the next generation of the 737 Max, with Ireland-based Ryanair breaking off talks because of a pricing squabble.
The CEO's unusually blunt comments Monday were focused on Boeing's delayed deliveries of planes. O'Leary said Ryanair had to scale back its spring and summer schedules because planes it had expected the aircraft maker to deliver by the end of April probably won't arrive until the end of June.
He was livid about the delays, especially because Ryanair is purchasing planes known as white tails, which Boeing had built for other airlines. The original purchaser of those planes canceled the order during a prolonged 20-month grounding of the 737 Max that followed two fatal crashes.
"I can understand why there may be various challenges manufacturing new aircraft, but aircraft that you built and made two years ago that all you had ... to do was put petrol in them and f***ing fly them to Dublin, really I don't understand why you're taking two to three month delays on that," he said on a conference call with investors about the airline's financial results. "It is redolent of very poor management performance in Seattle."
Boeing did not respond to a request for comment on O'Leary's remarks.
Criticizing management
O'Leary said Boeing makes great planes, but it might be time to change management.
"Either the existing management needs to up its game, or they need to change the existing management, would be our view of life," he said. "We're very happy to work with existing management but they need to bloody well improve on what they've been doing delivering to us over the last 12 months. ... We're a willing customer, but we're struggling with slow deliveries and an inability to do a deal on new aircraft despite the number of white tails they have sitting on the f***ing ground in Seattle."
Boeing has faced numerous problems in recent years, including the 737 Max crisis that cost it more than $20 billion. The company also was hit with an FAA-ordered halt of deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner last June due to quality control problems. And it faced delays winning approval for its next-generation widebody jet, the 777X, that forced Boeing to push back the first deliveries of the plane by two years to at least 2025.
Boeing also took substantial losses in its military and space businesses, including a recent $660 million charge on the two planes it is completing that will be used as the new Air Force Ones. It's also combating delays in building a spacecraft to carry US astronauts to the International Space Station.
"If they get their s*** together, we'd be willing to take more aircraft for summer '23 and summer '24," O'Leary said. "There's growth there to be won."
He also said the airline is willing to restart negotiations on an order for the new generation of the 737 Max, although he pointed out that has yet to win FAA approval, making it risky to depend upon. So Ryanair is also looking at possibly purchasing 50 jets on the second hand market instead. And he had choice words for Boeing's sales staff.
"You wonder what the hell their sales team has done in the last two years," O'Leary said. "Frankly most of them seem to sitting at home in their f***ing jimjams working from home instead of being out there selling planes to customers."
O'Leary also criticized Boeing's recently announced plan to move its corporate headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington.
"Moving the headquarters to Virginia from Chicago, while it may be good for the defense side of the business, doesn't fix the fundamental underlying problems on the civilian aircraft side in Seattle," he said.
In addition to O'Leary, several other airlines have complained on recent conference calls — although in far less colorful language — about the problems they face from the 787 or 777X delays.
Domhnal Slattery, the CEO of Avolon, one of the world's leading aircraft leasing companies, suggested earlier this month that Boeing needs a change in culture — and maybe leadership.
"I think it's fair to say that Boeing has lost its way," Slattery said at the Airfinance Journal conference, in comments first reported by Reuters and confirmed by Avolon. "Boeing has a storied history ... They build great airplanes. But it's said that culture eats strategy for breakfast and that is what has happened at Boeing."
^Well, they need to get their s*** together. I'm tired of everyone acting like they're evil when they're just a company like any other and they have some good people working for them, but management has made some spectacular blunders. I honestly think they will pull this off. There's too much riding on it and nobody wants Airbus to have a monopoly.
^It all reminds me that, less than 10 years ago, the popular consensus was that Airbus had lost its position to Boeing. It was understood that the Europeans over-relied on the hub/spoke model, which led to the A380's deep-in-the-red cancellation, while the Americans made bank focusing on direct long-distance. I'm reasonably confident that Boeing will get their act together soon enough. Meanwhile, I'm just glad that their Defense business (STL) is still going reasonably quite strong.
^Well, they need to get their s*** together. I'm tired of everyone acting like they're evil when they're just a company like any other and they have some good people working for them, but management has made some spectacular blunders. I honestly think they will pull this off. There's too much riding on it and nobody wants Airbus to have a monopoly.
They build war machines that have killed countless innocents. Not to mention their dubious activities surrounding the 737 Max debacle. They are most certainly NOT “just a company like any other”.
^Airbus makes the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Tiger attack helicopter, and a variety of military transport aircraft. They're making sub-launched nuclear capable ballistic missiles for the French navy. They make military drones. Basically all the same stuff as Boeing. (Just Euro style.) All told their military and space division accounts for about a fifth of their revenue right now, and their helicopter division another tenth. (Though that's not strictly military.) Dassault makes both business jets and fighters. Saab hasn't built a civilian aircraft in over twenty years but they're still selling the Viggen and Grippen, plus a number of missiles and drones. Lockheed likewise more or less got out of the civilian market, but they started there. Basically, any company that can make things militaries want to buy will make things militaries want to buy. And any public company in the west is darn near legally obliged to give its major stockholders the best possible return. (You fail to do that and you find yourself replaced pretty quickly. And I think very possibly fined.)
I genuinely believe they're pretty much the same as their competition. Management made some decisions that turned out to be patently unwise. But the economic pressure to make more or less each and every one of them was pretty intense. This isn't the first time someone has suggested Airbus would put Boeing out of business. And Airbus certainly helped to drive McDonnel Douglas out of the civilian market and into the hands of Boeing. It's not an unreasonable fear. Every company in aviation works pretty hard to keep its costs down as low as possible while not compromising safety. And the decisions are remarkably complicated, so it's no wonder sometimes people screw up. Maybe the best we can hope is that the problems are corrected as quickly as possible and similar mistakes aren't repeated in the future.
It seems odd to me to condemn a company like Boeing who by and large supplies the US government with means to defend its self and project its values throughout the world when there are very clear examples of the devastation that can be wrought by despicable and in-discriminant despotic regimes. "Countless innocents" is IMHO a stretch given that Boeing's products are generally speaking very reliable precise & accurate. Do innocent people get mixed up in war, most certainly, but the ratio of innocent bystanders to enemy combatants is almost certainly unprecedented historically and easily contrasted with the tactics of our adversaries attacking Ukraine.
Whether the wars that are prosecuted with them are truly just is a valid concern but as long as the US is a representative democracy, the focus should largely be directed at electing the right leaders to choose how to justly project force.
As for the 737MAX debacle, i think it demonstrates how vulnerable a company can be when they allow 1 product to account for 3/4 of their profits but I really think the most egregious failures should to be attributed more to hubris than to greed. That said case studies of the 737MAX will be almost certainly required reading by every MBA school student for the next 100 years.
It seems odd to me to condemn a company like Boeing who by and large supplies the US government with means to defend its self and project its values throughout the world when there are very clear examples of the devastation that can be wrought by despicable and in-discriminant despotic regimes.
Installing and supporting despicable and indiscriminate despot regimes is one of the US government's favorite way to project its values throughout the world. Pinochet, Batista, Armas, Suharto, Hussein, Somosa, Noriega...
On the other hand, people gotta work somewhere to live, so it's impossible to say if war is good or bad.
It seems odd to me to condemn a company like Boeing who by and large supplies the US government with means to defend its self and project its values throughout the world when there are very clear examples of the devastation that can be wrought by despicable and in-discriminant despotic regimes. "Countless innocents" is IMHO a stretch given that Boeing's products are generally speaking very reliable precise & accurate. Do innocent people get mixed up in war, most certainly, but the ratio of innocent bystanders to enemy combatants is almost certainly unprecedented historically and easily contrasted with the tactics of our adversaries attacking Ukraine.
Whether the wars that are prosecuted with them are truly just is a valid concern but as long as the US is a representative democracy, the focus should largely be directed at electing the right leaders to choose how to justly project force.
As for the 737MAX debacle, i think it demonstrates how vulnerable a company can be when they allow 1 product to account for 3/4 of their profits but I really think the most egregious failures should to be attributed more to hubris than to greed. That said case studies of the 737MAX will be almost certainly required reading by every MBA school student for the next 100 years.
Yeah, so these are not the actions of your typical company lol.
Also, way to white wash the 737MAX situation. You realize they admitted to committing fraud and deceiving the FAA which directly caused the deaths of almost 350 people?
Boeing announced 2,000 layoffs nationwide today. They also announced they will be opening "financial hubs" in St. Louis and Mesa.
Boeing to cut 2,000 jobs nationwide, set to open 'finance hub' in St. Louis
A local spokesperson for the aviation giant said it’s unclear yet how operations in the St. Louis area will be affected by the reduction of 2,000 non-union jobs natonwide, but noted that the Boeing operation in the St. Louis area grew by nearly 1,000 employees last year. "...We don’t have an exact breakdown of how much each specific site” around the nation will be impacted by the planned drop in headcount, the spokesperson said.
The Seattle Times reported Feb. 6 that Boeing will set up two “finance hubs” in St. Louis and Mesa, Arizona. The publication quoted Mike Friedman, a senior director of communications at Boeing, as saying those U.S. hubs are “where we’ll centralize support to government business.”
The local Boeing spokesperson said in an email: “So there is an expectation that the site employment numbers will continue to grow in (the) near future as well.” The spokesperson said Wednesday that details were not available about the "finance hub" planned for St. Louis.
airforceguy1 wrote:Boeing announced 2,000 layoffs nationwide today. They also announced they will be opening "financial hubs" in St. Louis and Mesa.
Boeing to cut 2,000 jobs nationwide, set to open 'finance hub' in St. Louis
A local spokesperson for the aviation giant said it’s unclear yet how operations in the St. Louis area will be affected by the reduction of 2,000 non-union jobs natonwide, but noted that the Boeing operation in the St. Louis area grew by nearly 1,000 employees last year. "...We don’t have an exact breakdown of how much each specific site” around the nation will be impacted by the planned drop in headcount, the spokesperson said.
The Seattle Times reported Feb. 6 that Boeing will set up two “finance hubs” in St. Louis and Mesa, Arizona. The publication quoted Mike Friedman, a senior director of communications at Boeing, as saying those U.S. hubs are “where we’ll centralize support to government business.”
The local Boeing spokesperson said in an email: “So there is an expectation that the site employment numbers will continue to grow in (the) near future as well.” The spokesperson said Wednesday that details were not available about the "finance hub" planned for St. Louis.
This finance hub, the workforce development grant awarded by the EDA, and airfield development plans near Mid-America/SAFB indicate that St. Louis remains a priority to Boeing.
Friedman said those U.S. finance hubs are “where we’ll centralize support to government business.”
^An acquaintance in sales for them was in Vietnam a while back. I'd figured he was trying to sell more 787s to Vietnam Airlines, but in retrospect I wonder if he was maybe pushing F-15s, 18s, or even T-7s or drones to the government. They've long been a Russian customer, but Russia can barely get parts to keep their own planes flying. Even if demand for their planes remains strong in the face of their recent failures the supply simply won't be there for a while and they had a lot of customers. Right now US equipment is looking pretty good, and we've been trying to court some places like Hanoi. Saw what I think was a Su-22 at Da Nang. Hanoi is nervous about their northern neighbor. Maybe they're in the market. And even if they aren't . . . lots of other people really are. Would be nice to update that Mercury/Phantom building and get it going again with a nice bright new sign advertising to all comers.
^An acquaintance in sales for them was in Vietnam a while back. I'd figured he was trying to sell more 787s to Vietnam Airlines, but in retrospect I wonder if he was maybe pushing F-15s, 18s, or even T-7s or drones to the government. They've long been a Russian customer, but Russia can barely get parts to keep their own planes flying. Even if demand for their planes remains strong in the face of their recent failures the supply simply won't be there for a while and they had a lot of customers. Right now US equipment is looking pretty good, and we've been trying to court some places like Hanoi. Saw what I think was a Su-22 at Da Nang. Hanoi is nervous about their northern neighbor. Maybe they're in the market. And even if they aren't . . . lots of other people really are. Would be nice to update that Mercury/Phantom building and get it going again with a nice bright new sign advertising to all comers.
IIRC most of our lines have a significant backlog as well.
^An acquaintance in sales for them was in Vietnam a while back. I'd figured he was trying to sell more 787s to Vietnam Airlines, but in retrospect I wonder if he was maybe pushing F-15s, 18s, or even T-7s or drones to the government. They've long been a Russian customer, but Russia can barely get parts to keep their own planes flying. Even if demand for their planes remains strong in the face of their recent failures the supply simply won't be there for a while and they had a lot of customers. Right now US equipment is looking pretty good, and we've been trying to court some places like Hanoi. Saw what I think was a Su-22 at Da Nang. Hanoi is nervous about their northern neighbor. Maybe they're in the market. And even if they aren't . . . lots of other people really are. Would be nice to update that Mercury/Phantom building and get it going again with a nice bright new sign advertising to all comers.
I think you were right with your initial assumption that it was for commercial sales.
Not saying its impossible but fighter aircraft to Vietnam, even an old one, would be a pretty shocking move. Threat of China not-withstanding they are still on paper a autocratic communist country. It would have to be explicitly sanctioned by the US gov before it would even be worth a conversation.
I also don't think they have a chance to be an early recipient of T7s after the airfare either. They might be ok with the tech going to Vietnam, but they will push sales to 20 other countries before Vietnam even enters into consideration.
I could see military sales of things like HIMARS, Stingers, Javelins being on the table similar to what was sent early on to Ukraine but those are not Boeing products.
"U.S. defence firms have discussed supplying military gear, including helicopters and drones, to Vietnam in talks with top government officials, two sources with knowledge of the dialogue told Reuters, a new sign the country may reduce its reliance on Russian arms.
Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), Boeing (BA.N), Raytheon (RTX.N), Textron (TXT.N) and IM Systems Group met with the officials on the sidelines of the country's first large-scale arms fair last week, according to the US-ASEAN Business Council, the industry body that arranged the meetings.
A source who was present at the weapons discussions said they involved the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of National Defence.
The preliminary talks, which may not lead to any deals, come as the Southeast Asian nation seeks new suppliers and the Ukraine conflict strains the capabilities of Russia, for decades Vietnam's main military partner. The war, which Moscow calls a "special operation", has also led to strict sanctions against Russia."
In the end, I'm just using Vietnam as one potential example of a customer that has previously been all Russia all the time, but might now be interested in buying American. (Especially given their unique and none too pleasant history with St. Louis made products. It's . . . educational . . . going to the history museums. I recommend it to everyone. Be prepared to be uncomfortable, but you will learn something, even if you don't agree with all of it.) Anyway . . . my basic point was mostly that Boeing is well positioned right now. And deep as their backlog might be, they are still selling abroad. Not sure Mikoyan and Sukhoi are doing that at all right now. A five year waiting list on a line that's open probably beats a giant question mark on one tied up with sanctions and an ugly and not terribly successful war.
I saw Boeing has a presence at Cortex Commons, any chance their finance hub lands in Cortex? I'm sure there is more space in their Hazelwood building but it's fun to speculate alongside the Emerson announcement.
Two big employment wins in quick succession, I'll take it.
^Isn't it mostly engineering over in Cortex? I expect if they've already got finance jobs in the area they'll probably concentrate them wherever they already are. But with hiring more engineers that Cortex space is likely to be hopping anyway. They really need a big shiny new fighter contract, and they should have a good shot at either or both a new fighter for the USAF or USN. (Particularly the USN. The Navy doesn't seem to much like the Lightning II and Lockheed really has no prior experience making Navy aircraft that I'm aware of.)
I saw Boeing has a presence at Cortex Commons, any chance their finance hub lands in Cortex? I'm sure there is more space in their Hazelwood building but it's fun to speculate alongside the Emerson announcement.
Two big employment wins in quick succession, I'll take it.
What's the other employment win? Or was that Emerson's announcement?
