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The Tragedy of the Flying Blind 737 Max and the Decline of Boeing by Peter Robison
In October, a federal grand jury sued Mark Forkner, a former Boeing test pilot, accusing him of deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration during the development of the 737 Max and planning to deceive airlines. It crashed one after another within a month, causing deaths. 346 people.
It may be tempting to view the indictment as a solution to the 737 Max test. There is a way to determine the main villain to simplify the complex narrative, and here, someone should finally be blamed. However, although Forkner does seem to deceive regulators and mislead customers, he is not the person most responsible for the two 737 Max crashes that occurred in 2018 and 2019.
As Peter Robison demonstrated in "Flying Blindly: The Tragedy of the 737 Max and the Downfall of Boeing," the ultimate responsibility for the crash lies with high-paying executives who have launched a decades-long campaign to remove Boeing from A "company once ruled by engineers" turned into a sniff on Wall Street" became "one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures on the market". The company "cheered for cost-cutting managers and used a lot of money to win over regulators," And use Wal-Mart's strategy to put pressure on suppliers. "
Bloomberg's investigative reporter Robison only occasionally wrote about Boeing after the second crash. This did not put him at any disadvantage. Through archival research, extensive coverage of the collapse and its aftermath, and interviews with many key participants, Robison produced an authoritative, gripping, and detailed narrative depicting the decline of a great American company.
The importance of Boeing to the country’s economic and industrial story cannot be overstated. Robinson wrote that during World War II, his factory outside of Seattle "produced more than a dozen B-17 Flying Fortress bombers in one day." After the war, Boeing turned its attention to the growing commercial aviation market and began to produce a series of aircraft, including the 707, 727, 737, and 747, which would revolutionize air travel. Boeing engineers helped NASA send personnel to the moon, and the company remains a major military contractor and manufacturer of Air Force One.
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Of course, most of Boeing’s success comes from its ability to produce reliable aircraft. But a key part of making a company great in the 20th century is its excellent corporate culture. The power within Boeing lies with the aeronautical engineer, not the treasurer. If the person designing a new aircraft sees an opportunity for improvement, they will make a change, even if it means costly delays. The most important thing is to handle it correctly and to ensure that the Boeing aircraft is as safe as possible.
According to Robison, when Boeing designed the long-distance 777 in the early 1990s, the company invested in "a $100,000 IBM workstation for each engineer testing software." Around the same time, Boeing completed "a training center for pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants using the 777 and other Boeing aircraft at a cost of $70 million near Seattle." Until the 1990s, this proud engineering culture still existed.
Then, at the turn of the millennium, Boeing lost its way. Robinson accurately traced the beginning of Boeing’s downfall to the 1997 acquisition of rival aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas (McDonnell Douglas). At the time, McDonnell Douglas was run by Harry Stonecipher. He was an unpleasant CEO. He liked cutting costs and had little patience with prudent engineers. This is an attitude that Stonecipher developed during General Electric (General Electric), where he worked with Jack Welch, the most influential CEO of his generation, and A pioneer of a new type of cruel capitalism that puts shareholder value first.
Stonesever became the CEO of Boeing and quickly shifted the company's attention from producing beautifully designed aircraft to the issue of creating profits for shareholders. Wages have been cut. Union workers were evaded. Technical work is outsourced to cheap contractors. Boeing’s next CEO, Jim McNerney, is another GE veteran who succeeded Welch and won the runner-up.
Robinson’s history is complete, but sometimes excessive. The small business drama that happened decades ago has received too much attention. After the introduction, more than 100 pages, "Blind Flying" directly described Max's destiny and development. However, once this happens, the narrative speeds up and moves toward the inevitable ending.
In the eight years of designing, certifying and producing the 737 Max, Robinson has seized the key moments and revealed how every turning point and obsession with profit led Boeing employees to make a series of disastrous choices.
The decision to redesign the 737 instead of designing a new jet plane forced the company to update the aircraft introduced in the 1960s. A new poorly designed software, MCAS, was introduced, which eventually seized control of the aircraft from the pilot. In many cases, Boeing employees including Faulkner downplayed the importance of MCAS to federal regulators and airlines, making pilots not aware of the new software until after the first crash. All along, as Boeing executives have been stingy in the design and development of the Max, they have returned billions of dollars to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends.
As the collision drew closer, people felt a sense of grim inevitableness. One of the most ominous warning signs Robison found was Boeing employees desperate for their company. Many people say they will not set foot on Boeing planes. Others belittle their colleagues, customers, and regulators. During Max’s design process, a manager told an engineer: “Before Boeing changes things, people must die.”
After the first crash, Robinson revealed how Boeing executives, including the company’s then CEO Dennis Muilenburg (Dennis Muilenburg), attributed the disaster to foreign pilots, and the company How the leaders of the country proved unable to grasp the severity of the crisis. He also described how the FAA lost its teeth as an effective regulatory agency, making it complacent and unable to recognize that another plane might crash. After the second crash, Robinson tracked down the families of the victims and their painful efforts to ask Boeing to take responsibility, and detailed Boeing's clumsy response.
Finding a glimmer of hope after a tragedy is an understandable temptation. We can’t help but hope that 346 lives will not be lost in vain. The lessons learned will enable Boeing to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. When the cause of the crash is so clear, Boeing's internal culture is so clearly broken, and the regulators are so obviously inadequate, how can there be no fundamental changes?
However, Robinson has no reason to be optimistic. Although Boeing has now accepted responsibility for one of the crashes as part of the settlement, no one in the company has been charged with a crime except Faulkner. Muilenberg was removed from the post of chief executive, but still received a golden parachute worth 60 million US dollars. After being grounded for more than a year, the 737 Max was put back into service. Today, Boeing is led by Dave Calhoun, another Jack Welch protégé who served on Boeing’s board of directors for many years, and was closely involved in the company’s botched crash. reaction. Even with hundreds of families in pain, Boeing’s reputation has been tarnished, and the FAA’s credibility is at stake. Any price. "