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Posted on 12/09/2025 4:04:17 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
In 2003, former McDonnell Douglas executive Harry Stonecipher became the CEO of Boeing and described the company as "run like a business rather than a great engineering firm."
Stonecipher made the fateful decision to reject proposals to design a clean-sheet airplane to replace the aging Boeing 727, 737, and 757.
By 2011, Boeing's aging 737 was losing to rival Airbus's A320neo, but instead of a new aircraft, the decision was made to upgrade the 737 NG to the 737 MAX. This would allow it to stay within the FAA's original type certification and operate with the same flying characteristics. It was also designed to avoid retraining pilots and upgrading training manuals.
But the forward and high placement of engines resulted in the 737 MAX encountering stall problems in 2015. To safeguard the original type certification, Boeing installed the now-infamous Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software without informing the FAA or describing it in the pilot's manual.
Unfortunately, it took not one, but two crashes for the faulty MCAS issues to be identified. Even after the first crash, Boeing was in denial, saying "our assurance that the 737 MAX is as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies." Today, that may be true now that issues with the Boeing MAX have been ironed out. But it was not true then.
(Excerpt) Read more at simpleflying.com ...
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Article: “But the forward and high placement of engines resulted in the 737 MAX encountering stall problems in 2015.”
The 737 did not have a stall problem. The problem it had was under certain conditions control backpressure was reduced tending to allow the pilot to input too much control.
“but when it IS Boeing’s fault, there needs to be less gaslighting.”
Boing offered the plane with redundant inputs. Some countries were too cheap to pay for it.
They were also too cheap to provide qualified pilots.
Relationships between major airlines & Airbus (with their actual new model of a plane) were going too smoothly for Boeing’s taste. That was the crux of the matter.
How Boeing Tried to Kill a Great Airplane—and Got Outplayed
https://businessalabama.com/the-daily-beast-how-boeing-tried-to-kill-a-great-airplane-and-got-outplayed/
Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus With the 737 Max
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html
Please compare A220 sales to 737Max sales ...
In dollar terms, the calculation favors tens of billions in stock buybacks and vs billions in losses from the crashes. But savings accrued to management stock options and shareholders who cashed out when the stock ran to new highs, whereas costs were borne by forever shareholders and the crash victims.
The AI summary below, as usual, shows data that contradicts its liberal media conclusion that the savings were not meaningful. $40b+ in stock buybacks vs single digit billions in payouts and fines, seems to be a no-brainer in strictly financial terms.
So why does AI parrot liberal media conclusions? Because AI literally pirates their content. That’s what the DMCA lawsuits were about. Doing a Cliffs Notes summary doesn’t make it not piracy.
Savings and Financial Focus under Stonecipher
Harry Stonecipher, a former General Electric (GE) executive who became the president and COO after Boeing’s merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, aimed to change Boeing’s culture “so that it is run like a business rather than a great engineering firm”. This shift involved several key financial decisions:
Prioritizing existing models: Stonecipher rejected proposals to design an all-new single-aisle aircraft to replace older models, opting instead to maximize profits from the existing 737 airframe.
Stock buybacks: The “savings” from not investing in a new plane and other cost-cutting measures were redirected towards enriching shareholders through stock buybacks. Between 2013 and 2019, Boeing spent $43 billion on buybacks, nearly double its R&D spending.
Outsourcing: There was an increase in outsourcing of jobs, including some software development tasks, to cut costs.
Warning Ignored: One report from around 2002 indicated that the costs of a grounded plane would “dwarf” the short-term savings from outsourcing, a warning that was reportedly ignored.
Claims from 737 Disasters
The two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX 8 in 2018 (Lion Air Flight 610) and 2019 (Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302), which were linked to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) introduced to compensate for the plane’s new, larger engines, led to the grounding of the entire fleet.
The financial consequences of the disasters and grounding far exceeded any short-term savings:
Direct Costs: Boeing incurred an estimated $20 billion in fines, compensation, and legal fees due to the crashes and subsequent grounding.
Indirect Losses: The company faced more than $60 billion in indirect losses from about 1,200 canceled orders and production issues.
Customer Compensation & Fixes: Over $5 billion was written off for costs related to fixing the stored planes and compensating customers.
Overall Losses: Since 2019, Boeing has bled more than $30 billion in total due to the crisis.
In essence, the managerial revolution that began under Stonecipher led to a culture where the costs of potential safety failures (risk arbitrage) were seemingly deemed less than the immediate financial benefits, a gamble that resulted in catastrophic financial losses and, more importantly, the loss of 346 lives. ]
Failure in the MAX design all the way through and past MCAS was a Boeing systematic failure. Everything about it and after the failure was confirmed still led to more systematic failures to recover.
It is only worse today.
Airbus A320 flies past Boeing 737 as most-delivered jet in history
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-a320-flies-past-boeing-737-most-delivered-jet-history-2025-10-07/
Airbus has issued a recall due to a software glitch, but haven’t had a recent record of catastrophe like Boeing. Hopefully neither will.
There were MAX airplanes parked all over the place at Boeing while it was grounded but they tried to keep the production lines open. It was sad to see such massive productivity, which had also been curtailed, just sitting there for years.
And instead of investing in a legacy of innovation and expending energies making NEW models of planes…they are playing even more catch-up now - with the ‘updated’ old ones that keep running into issues.
Yep. It was a terribly short-sighted decision not to just create a new model. In fact, there were research designs to do just that but Boeing wanted to compete with the Airbus 320 ASAP.
The refitted, bigger engines require a lot of twisting to build up power.
False premise headline by the author; likely bs article (read zero).
Boeing didn’t ‘design for bigger engines.’
They ‘compensated’ to save $$ and ignored everything in the process.
There should have been criminal charges.
Roger that. Some countries cheaped out on pilot training and the poor saps sitting in the back paid the price.
Yep, that failure of an aircraft is dropping like flies.
The FAA signed off on a civilian aircraft that was unstable and depended on the computer to maintain flight. While that may be acceptable for an F-117 or a B-2, that is unacceptable for a civilian airliner.
Problem 1: McDonnel Douglas management philosophy was cost containment, AKA bean counters and MBAs. Bad things happen when the managers do not understand what the product is. Boeing had engineers running the place; of course they went away.
Problem 2: Moving what was left of Boeing management to Chicago. I remember thinking to myself at the time “Well that was stupid”. Management was effectively isolated from the assembly plants (nevermind moving to Chicago in the first place was stupid....)
I’m not surprised they’re having serious troubles now. Too bad, really, but McDonnell-Douglas owns the problems.
Criminality should have been extended to FAA, too: They released Boeing from regulatory oversight and just rubber stamped everything.
Boeing was the one that failed to alert airlines and the FAA about critical MCAS details - or about the need for additional training in the first place. Manuals were not clear either. Again, with the gaslighting. It’s cult-like.
The whole situation serves as a visual analogy of the what’s holding America back in so many facets right now in general.
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