What the heck happened at once-great Boeing — the history-making innovator in air and space travel? Bill Whittle says it’s a snapshot of what happened to America.
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Video below hosted at Rumble.
41 replies on “Troubles at Once-Great Boeing: A Snapshot of What Happened to America”
I have read all the comments below. What strikes me is that none of them are from a PILOT who has actually flown many different models of Boeing aircraft as well as those manufactured by Douglas and Lockheed. I was a pilot for TWA for nearly 36 years. I started in 1964 on the Lockheed Constellation and retired in 1999 on the Boeing 757/767, the only large aircraft TWA had left in its fleet. Bill alluded to several things which have caused Boeing, and many other large companies which produce complex products, to run into serious difficulties. The first of those is the introduction of the “Bean Counters” into management positions whose only focus was on the bottom line, not the reputation of the company or the quality of the products they manufacture.
The second is the introduction of artificial “quotas” in the hiring process. In the case of Boeings Charleston, SC facility, the requirements for allowing the tax breaks which made it attractive to build the state of the art manufacturing plant there were basically that Boeing must hire and train a certain portion of minority workers. No problem there, except that instead of hiring only those with the requisite skills and background to be trained to manufacture the B-787 Dreamliner, a whole new concept, using carbon graphite composite material in place of the traditional aluminum skin, they just followed the “send me so many (fill in the blank) and we will bring them up to speed”. It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out how that plan worked out.
As to the B-737 Max problems. Bill correctly noted in this post as well as the one about the NTSB, the problem was not so much that the “Stick Pusher” anti-stall programing could end up in an out of control situation if not handled correctly, but that it was WHO was flying the airplane. The MAX was flown by many different airlines around the world, but only the Third World pilots, who had very little experience HAND FLYING the aircraft, or any other for that matter, got into trouble. Again, the Bean Counters thought they should be able to compete with Airbus Industries for the Third World Airline market. They couldn’t, without following the Airbus concept of making their airplanes “Pilot Proof”, designed to be operated almost exclusively on autopilot. Even when in the “manual mode” the auto flight system can override the pilots manual inputs. That’s a whole different story. All of the pilots of the major airlines which flew the MAX were able to deal with the problems without difficulty. All that was required when the stabilizer trim ran away was to disconnect it with the paddle switches on the center console and then manually fly the aircraft to a safe landing. In the case of Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air, they simply didn’t have the skills to do that, so hundreds died.
It was politically incorrect (read racist) to point that out, so the entire fleet was grounded instead, costing Boeing, and the airlines who had them in their fleet, billions of dollars of revenue. Unbelievable!
Err, do you actually blame the PILOT of the plane for thing like Boeing
The whole issue could have been avoided if the plane is correctly names 7A7. Certainly it would not enjoy the marketing pitch that you can just reuse all your existing pilots without a fuss. And look for way less orders.
I agree that grounding the fleet was an odd measure, as it does not address the root cause directly. I suspect it went on the principle that if the company lied bigtime and caught on it, maybe it lied on other matters, so we should re-examine a lot of details that passed certification based on issuer claim, and till then no flying even for retrained pilots.
I hope the industry learns something from these stories, the VW(+others) dieselgate is another example, that you may get away with big lies for a time, but once caught you will be in really deep shit, so maybe try to play honest.
First, Pal, are you a pilot? If so, what type of aircraft have you flown? From everything I have read about the 737-Max situation, because the larger engine wouldn’t fit on the existing pylon, they moved it forward on a shorter pylon for ground clearance. The 737 series has VERY short landing gear struts compared to other commercial aircraft. Apparently this created more pitch up when power was applied. That’s called “Pendulum Effect” and exists on all aircraft which have engines mounted on pylons below the wing. If you increase power, the nose pitches up, if you reduce power, the nose pitches down.
All airline and military pilots are trained to compensate for this characteristic in their initial training. You don’t find this in “Inline” engine mounts on the tail, such as 727s or DC-9s. However, again, the 737-Max was completely flyable, even with the software glitch and runaway stabilizer, if the pilots were properly trained, and had “Stick and Rudder” manual flying skills. The Lion Air and Ethiopian pilots did not, So yes, I DO place the blame on the pilots, but also on the airlines for not properly training their aircrews in basic flying skills, rather than relying on auto-flight systems to keep them safe. That’s the Airbus theory of design.
Did you read the ieee article I linked a dozen posts before this? Do you argue any conclusions it has? Elaborate.
Also, did you read what I wrote? Every plain allowed into the air is “flyable”. With your decades of being a pilot are you allowed to fly ANY commercial plane? Guess not. Is there a good reason for that?
“if the pilots were properly trained” — for MAX or just in general?
You didn’t answer my question, so I can reasonably assume that you aren’t a pilot. By the way, I flew “planes” not “plains”. To answer your question. No, when I was an active pilot, I was legal to fly as Pilot in Command on those aircraft which I had an ATP Type Rating on, and was current, annual recurrent training completed and a minimum of 3 takeoffs and landings in the previous 90 days. Don’t engage in debates with individuals who actually know what they are talking about. You will lose every time.
Lose? LOL, you started with ad hominem and dick measuring nonsense without any argument or answering the technical questions. Feel free to crown yourself king if it makes you tick.
Do people buy that only pilots have the ability to read final committee reports that are made after crashes?
Or you know everything so much better than the folks writing them? Go ahead and show some cards. Until you do, I keep believing what is written here:
https://transportation.house.gov/download/20200915-final-737-max-report-for-public-release&download=1 (*) and its numerous references instead of fancy titled internet randos who visit forums to win rather than inform.
(*) those who look for just the most relevant parts of the discussion, start at section 7 on page 139.
You’re arguing with an idiot of the sort that subscribes to “I know it works in practice but will it work in theory?” Pal Balrog talks out his anal sphincter a lot.
I’m not a pilot, I’m a computer geek, now. If I tell you that if you don’t do xyz you’re going to have a crash, you’d do well to listen to me. They might not have taught you about xyz in computer school but I’ve been “flying” IT systems at some level for 40 years .
I’m also a shooter, well credentialed in that field both in military and civilian life. If I tell you you’re jerking the trigger, you’re jerking the trigger. I don’t care what the book says, I know the symptoms when I see them.
I’m not a pilot, but my son is. He’s a Naval aviator about to retire from active service. Where he will continue his aviation career in the civilian market. If he tells me something pertinent about flying, like you and Bill I’ll believe what he has to say despite what reports generated by political committees might say.
I do not read reports and ignore the advice and opinions of people with actual field experience. It is my actual field experience that is a good way to meet a bad end. I am not an armchair expert who knows all the theory so well that I would care to disregard the advice and experience of people who have the actual real-world experience.
It takes a degree of skill to design, deploy and maintain Information Technology systems. It takes a degree of skill to hit a target when hitting the target really counts. It takes a degree of skill to fly an airplane. It’s when things are not going well that that degree of skill becomes vital. I’m aware of the skill required to do a complex thing the right way. I would not presume to argue that such skills are not vital to a desirable, successful outcome.
My point here is that I have read what both of you said, I have considered what I know about both of you from what you have said. I don’t know as much about you as I do about our buddy Pal Balog here, who won’t even tell us what Central European country he lives in and …
Don’t let this dickwagon get under your skin. Thanks for sharing the insight of a real pilot.
First may I tell you that your son will shortly be coming into what is undoubtably the best time to be hired by the airlines since the early 1960s. Because of different factors (that was when the airlines began an enormous expansion program, and now it is due to a great many pilots reaching the age of mandatory retirement which can’t practically be pushed back any farther). Please advise him to not waste any time applying. Unlike his military flying, everything in an airline career depends on your seniority number. Even a few numbers can drastically affect not only your earning potential, but your lifestyle for your entire career.
As to Mr. Balog. I would advise him to read the NTSB “Probable Cause” report on the crash of TWA 800 in 1996. I was intimately involved in that for reasons I won’t list here. If anyone would like to learn more about that, I invite them to view my YouTube video about the subject at:
https://youtu.be/4gEoyRLLb_Y
what I can tell you is that the conclusion stated in the NTSB report is absolutely wrong in my opinion. The video explains why. It’s an hour long, and must be viewed in it’s entirety to fully comprehend. I wrote it to be completely understandable to a layman with no flying experience whatever.
I was not only a line pilot for TWA, but also a long time flight instructor and check pilot for the airline over the years. One of my greatest concerns about commercial aviation these days is an over reliance on auto flight systems (read autopilots) to the exclusion of so-called “Stick and Rudder” piloting skills. If the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines pilots had those, there would have been no fatalities. Unfortunately, they didn’t.
Mr. Balog is certainly entitled to his opinion as I am to mine. You can all judge which is more worthy. Regards.
AA.
FLYING Fortress. I’m so disspointed in you Bill. 8^P
As a software engineer, when the failures were first blamed on software I started to do some digging into what went wrong. The ieee article linked before has some of the details, but my own conclusion was broader, and dovetails much more with Bill’s main point: right before all of these errors started happening, Boeing re-organized their entire software department, offshoring a lot of it. Now, there’s nothing wrong with offshore developers – I’ve worked with a lot of them – but the point is that Boeing made large, structural changes to an engineering department that was working, and broke it in the process. Fixing it will require structural changes, which they will probably be unwilling to make.
The 737Max story explained for good:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer
I joined Boeing in 2006 and left in 2016. Sadly it was obvious this was inevitable.
The day Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago I realized that it would fade as a technology leader. MBAs do not design good aerospace products. Their goal is making money, not making great airplanes.
This is often the failure point in businesses. When the bean counters take over and start tweaking bean piling instead of remembering what it was the was bringing in the beans in the first place.
Another really good example of this was Gateway Computers. They were serious major competition to Dell, Compaq and HP until the bean counters got hold of the company. Now they’re defunct and nearly forgotten because corporate leadership devolved from making decent computers that kept the company afloat and growing to making crappy computers attempting to gather more money for the company.
If you’re in manufacturing, doesn’t matter if it’s aircraft or infotech or anything else — The first principle is your product because if that one falls down everything else implodes behind it.
I worked between Douglas Aircraft (MDC) and Boeing, 30 years, sad to see their troubles.
Engineers still in charge at Boeing? I’m guessing there are more MBAs than PEs in charge overall.
How about H1Bs doing the grunt work? Cheaper, but as good as American engineers? I’m reminded of a story. A fellow happens by where the various craftsmen are working on constructing Notre Dame. He asks one fellow, what are you doing? To which the fellow responds “cutting stone.” He asks another the same question and receives the response “building a cathedral.”
Are they cutting stone or are they building a cathedral?
The pictures of the air planes were wonderful…beyond my ability to describe them. Thanks! I had to go back and watch them again!
I’m going to hold off watching this, until I find out if you’re going to air the “week in review” episode only on BlueTube. 80 million plus on Rumble, and most of us will not watch anything on BlueTube. I understand why you do it with R/A backstage, but not MB2A…I don’t understand the logic of airing it only on BlueTube.
Look on Rumble!!
I know this is on Rumble…it’s the “Week in Review” that isn’t. Except I think one episode when Scott was away.
Maybe it will be there tomorrow.
I doubt it…this has been the case for awhile. Except maybe once or twice while Scott was away.
week in review is on rumble as i post.
No, only Sept. 11th, and Aug. 31st. Which was when Scott was away. They haven’t posted a Week in Review for some time before that.
You can do what you like. There’s no reason any of the rest of us really need to care about what you do. I don’t care if you watch this or not. It’s hosted on Rumble.
YouTube has a larger audience of greater numbers of people that need to hear and see discussion on the things Bill and Company stand for and promote. Preaching to the choir keeps the choir fired up but it does not create any converts.
I can understand if you do not want to support YouTube in any way with anything including viewing a hosted video stream — But that’s for YOU. The rest of the world is not you and whatever strategy Bill and Company devise to get the word out to the most people over the broadest demographic isn’t really your call. Nor should it be.
When you become CEO of this enterprise you can make that kind of call and if that sinks the whole ship then be damned.
You can refuse to support YouTube in any way but you cannot hurt YouTube in any significant way either. Those two things are not the same.
YouTube would just as soon people like Bill Whittle didn’t post videos on their platform and are doing everything they can to minimize and marginalize such content. YouTube will gladly live without Bill Whittle content and your support.
Posting on YouTube isn’t supporting YouTube, it’s spitting in YouTube’s eye. You should be happy that Bill and Company post selected videos to YouTube, those are rounds impacting in enemy territory.
No one gives a flying rat if you are a “Rumble only” type and no one is going to change their strategy or practices just because you claim you’re not going to watch something. That’s the online equivalent of holding your breath until you turn blue while banging your head and heels on the floor in a puerile temper tantrum. You have no more effect thereby here than you do on YouTube and you don’t get to make these decisions for anyone but yourself.
You can watch everything in here no matter if it’s streaming from YouTube or Rumble. Or not. I watch it all and I don’t care where it’s streaming from. I’m not trying to bend Bill Whittle and Company to my will either. So …
In the meanwhile if your egocentricity and megalomania demand that you cut off your nose to spite your face and toss the baby out with the bathwater — That’s your prerogative.
Oh…joy…ACTS is here to save the day. First off all, apparently you cared enough to go into a rambling diatribe over it. When you very well could have kept scrolling. And from our last encounter, and what others here have told me about you…It’s clear you must be a very lonely person.
Second, as I said, the “Week in Review” episode does not get uploaded to Rumble. And I never said anything about NOT uploading to BlueTube. You make assumptions a lot it seems.
Third…well…you bore me too much to read on. Sure…I could have just asked Scott personally…but here, I had wondered if maybe some of the 80 million Rumble users would just happen to be here, and speak up about it too. Here’s the thing…I can say what I want to here, since I pay to be here. All I wanted to know is, why Scott would upload all the other episodes of MB2A on Rumble, but not the “Week in Review”…I don’t get the logic.
Maybe you could learn some communication skills from Barbara…see how short and respectful here replies were? Try that some time…you might find you’ll make friends instead of all these enemies you’ve made here. And you have made a lot. In fact it’s people like you that give people the inclination to either not comment here, or completely stop financing Bill’s page.
In conclusion…you need Jesus. Good day.
(Shrug) Those exposed nerves sting when I hit them, huh Sport?
I didn’t say you can’t say what you want to. In fact I said you could do as you please in the first sentence of my reply. If your attention span didn’t even make it past the first sentence then it’s no wonder you didn’t actually address what I said to you and chose instead to fling ad hominem invectives like a little kid.
As long as you’re drawing inferences about what I am and what I need, it seems fair to return the favor. You sound like a child crying “You’re a big meanie and none of the other kids want to play with you!”
Do you even hear yourself? That’s pathetic.
That number can change but right now your original post above has a -3 rating. I didn’t down-check your comment so clearly at least three people agree with me. I don’t appear to be nearly so alone as you’d like to make out.
If — “All I wanted to know is, why Scott would upload all the other episodes of MB2A on Rumble, but not the “Week in Review”…”
Then what does not watching this video have to do with that? Why didn’t you just say that in the first place instead of stamping your lil’ feet and pouting?
Ramble on…no one is listening.
YYSSW … Someone is, I didn’t down check you these last two times either.
3 times now.
Kleenex? Cry more, I’ll send you the whole box.
heh heh
You’re just having way, way too much fun.
😉
Bill Whittle…
If Entropy IS a Physics/Thermodynamics problem, then it remains an Engineering problem by design!
You are correct: Human Entropy is the problem, but there is a Human Engineering solution to the problem — but it requires ruthless discipline to the Standards.
In the case of the United States Government, the Solution already exists within the Declaration and the Constitution. The problem is that we have — for the past 110 years — not ruthlessly enforced the clear cut standards written within the bylaws that make up the Constitution. We allowed “progressive” ideologues to ignore and/or redefine the Charter and the Bylaws and enabled a mutinous, bloated administrative state that can see $10 billion as a “rounding error.” Now the cancerous tumor must be ruthlessly cut from the Body Politic if we are to survive.
We CAN fix the problem, but we have to recognize and embrace what will become necessary to do it.
NASA sent our astronauts to the moon because once upon a time, they attracted and hired only the very best engineers and scientists. Once political correctness entered the equation and NASA became subject to Affirmative Action, they no longer hired the best and the brightest. And those Affirmative Action engineers couldn’t do what the best and brightest engineers did. NASA sent astronauts to the moon using slide rules (I realize a lot of youngsters won’t know what a slide rule is, but you can look up what it was/is), and the Affirmative Action engineers couldn’t keep the Space Shuttle in orbit using Cray Supercomputers. Politics is what sunk NASA. And politics is what is sinking Boeing and Microsoft and General Motors.
and OUR COUNTRY too!!
I too love Boeing, and know a lot about the engineering development programs for the 707 and 747 (my favourite planes). But Bill’s otherwise excellent analysis here has two flaws: (1) Boeing having kept shtum about the 737 Max nose drop software “fix” has nothing to do with it being a big, heavy, rigid, ossified beast. Boeing would have survived the PR hit which would have resulted, but would have been hurt by it (including via loss of govt contracts), but if a smaller, more agile company had developed the same software fix, the PR hit could very well kill them. So they would have kept quiet too; and (2) yes, Boeing had lots of competition when it did amazing things, but the govt has no competition and never will. Govts have media and political accountability, and today neither is working in the US or the UK or Australia or Western Europe. So no Western govt is being reined in by anyone.
Mexico is doing nothing to stop people from traversing through Mexico to the US because the Biden administration does not want Mexico to do anything to stop the invasion of America. The political correctness of demeaning Mexico has nothing to do with it,.
“Too big to SUCCEED”
Another example of the Boeing effect;
This ossification, infinite layering and compartmentalization Bill mentions is what made us vulnerable to the 9/11 terrorist attack too.
For a decade American and other Western intelligence agencies knew something like 9/11 was coming and were trying to warn the political leadership.
The American leadership ignored that warning because there was no coherent, discernable thread leading back to the source of such an attack.
The information was there but it didn’t get put together in a manner that could convince civilian leadership to take a decisive course of action.
This was because one agency, say the CIA for instance, being in possession of a crucial bit of information, a piece of the puzzle to use an analogy, couldn’t share that information with another agency. Like the DIA*, who had another crucial piece of the puzzle, or the NSA, FBI, or … Etc.
That situation occurred because each agency hoarded and guarded significant bits of information like those bits were precious gems and nuggets personally possessed by that agency. They didn’t do this out of spite or contempt, they did this because the system that funds those agencies encouraged this behavior. They hoarded their informational gems so they could trot them out at budget time and say “See what clever people we are? Give us more money to operate on so we can save you.” And in doing so failed to save us from the worst terrorist attack in human history.
So the puzzle never got put together into a comprehensive comprehendible picture. Civilian leadership then did not act because there was no clearly defined target to act against.
That’s the job of intelligence, to give those civilian leadership people actionable information. Instead they were being given dribbles and drops meant to keep the agencies funded.
What’s ironic about this, in a horrifying sort of way, is that now conspiracy nuts claim the U.S. Government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on our own people for their own nefarious reasons.
What makes that peculiar is that conspiracy nuts are unknowingly half correct. While the U.S. Government did not actually do that directly and intentionally, the U.S. Government was responsible indirectly for that attack. Not through some convoluted, contortionist, Machiavellian-grade planned conspiracy but simply by garden variety, every day, old fashioned incompetence.
The thing we were spending tax dollars on failed because of the way we were spending those tax dollars.
This situation has since been addressed. There are laws, policies and other steps that have been implemented to encourage and require sharing of information across agency boundaries. This carries its own peril also. It’s great when applied to foreign entities wishing to do us ill. Not so great when that system is abused to keep tabs on American citizens doing no wrong. Like anything done by the government it is both useful tool and a failure point for abuse.
Still, despite the labor, blood and treasure being expended by our enemies attempting to bring even greater horrors down on our heads, we have not experienced something on the scale of the 9/11 attacks in the intervening 20 years.
It’s not just that this ossification, infinite layering and hidebound compartmentalization is bad for industry. It’s very, very dangerous to the public also.
(*DIA = Defense Intelligence Agency. It’s a military counterpart to the CIA and most Americans aren’t even aware of its existence. Not that its existence is a secret, just that it doesn’t make headlines like the CIA does. The CIA is good at PR, the DIA doesn’t waste much effort or expense on PR, they don’t have budget dollars to waste patting their own backs. You decide which is the better attitude.)