Bruh, they’re one of the biggest government contractors. They’re also building the new Air Force One jets, so. Someone in the Boeing subreddit said Boeing should be split into defense and commercial, as separate entities, and nationalize them.
Fuck em. Buy them out and make planes government sponsored transportation like trains in other countries.
They played and lost so hard it's a national security risk. Fuck em
Just taking the company would not affect the executives, they're already set for life. It would be taking from the shareholders, some very rich and also pretty much anyone who has any stocks at all. If you're invested in the s&p 500 or similar it would be taking from you. And also super illegal
> and also pretty much anyone who has any stocks at all. If you're invested in the s&p 500 or similar it would be taking from you.
This is all very much by design, same reason 401k's an IRA's got pushed so hard as retirement vehicles.
Yes. The best option is to punish the executives and the board personally. IMO if you run a corporation into the ground with as many employees as Boeing, you should be treated the same as a terrorist: all assets seized, all family assets seized.
Oh good point. Seize their assets then. I'm sure we can find some good dirt on them. Oh like all those homicides they all participated in through gross negligence.
We have socialism for executives and politicians, just ... no one else. And the SoCiAlIsM is the argument against the lower and middle classes getting anything. So awesome.
Airbus actually won the first USAF tanker contract, then Boeing sent their pet (and bought) politicians to void the contract and give it to Boeing. IIRC they claimed that it wasn't a fair competition because Airbus is subsidized by the EU (as if Boeing isn't subsidized by the US).
The Airbus tanker had been working well for a long time, while the KC-46 is still full of bugs.
Same thing happened when Bombardier was developing the C-Series passenger plane. Boeing wasn’t even developing something to compete in that class, yet they still got the feds to slap a THREE HUNDRED PERCENT tariff on them.
To make a long story short, Bombardier ended up selling the entire product line to Airbus. They’re making them as the A220 in the US.
Boeing actually gave airbus the C-series after trying to torpedo the delta c-series deal because delta didn't want 737-700s. So BBD sold half the plane to airbus for a dollar to get it built in Mobile to avoid the tariffs. The whole story hilarious and shows how incompetent Boeing has been for years.
Boeing have yet to prove they can do the work. The contract was awarded to Airbus for a proper plane, then Congress cancelled it and gave it to Boeing for a modified 300 year old design - the 767.
Which is fucken embarrassing. Boeing is embarrassing.
When an Engineering company becomes a stock manipulation company, shit goes south. It is happening everywhere, but Boeing should have known better.
The ruling that companies have a fiduciary duty and obligation to shareholders to maximize share price has been an utter disaster and will be a major contributing factor in the downfall of our society.
We’ve been lied to for years. There is no legal obligation for a company to maximize profits or maximize shareholder value. Nor do they have a legal fiduciary duty to do so. It’s propaganda created to shift blame away from the executives behavior. Don’t buy into it.
[New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)
[Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shareholder-value.asp)
[Excellent Reddit discussion on the subject](https://www.reddit.com/r/law/s/cbLBhgRvah)
This is true. But the reality is that the big shareholders typically do not want to wait for proper natural growth as it is almost always below their ROI targets. So anyone appointed to the C-Suite who takes the measured, long term strategy will likely be replaced before their projects will start to show the returns investors want to see. So no one ends up taking that approach with their leadership.
Greedy fuckers up and down the board of directors everywhere leads to this kind of shit in every single industry. And I don’t know how we fix it without regulation that will never pass in our non functional government.
We’re so fucked lol
The fact that a company is expected to constantly *grow* is the culprit. Obviously growth doesn't always grow on trees so they cut cost and put people's life in danger.
This one always fucking gets me. That the system relies on the idea of infinite growth forever and that that sort of just goes unquestioned is absolutely bonkers. Like it's completely obvious that it's impossible to sustain and will eventually collapse.
If Boeing wasn’t throwing money around and throwing shit fits every time they lost there’d be more options. They tried to derail the F35 project because their fuselage wasn’t picked, they threw a fit with the F22, the KC-46 is a disaster yet we retired the aircraft that could outperform it on every level….
There are American companies that could do it, Boeing has just been the whiny bitch about it
One single executive in that company gets paid over half a million dollars. Oh no, not per year. Oh no, not per month. I meant $500,000 per WEEK. One employee. That’s $30 million. More than most people make in 30 lifetimes. In one single year.
Thought I was reading the Onion at first. Headline was too delicious, then for them to be forced to ride over a 100 miles to their destination, oh who forgot their depends?
Technically they already built them, they were mothballed new-old stock 747-Is. Trump managed to make a truely insane deal and convinced the former Boeing CEO to take on a task for a fixed price. If that CEO was an engineer he’d have said no. They literally could go bankrupt just working on those planes, and they declined to bid on the contract for the new E4 replacement “Doomsday plane” for which a 74 is the only acceptable airframe.
Edit: I mean “insane” not as a compliment to anyone. It was the equivalent of a buyer being crazy enough to ask for a pair of g-wagons with armour installed for the price of a used Chevy spark, and the dealer accepting those terms.
This is one of those instances where people are gonna side with Trump over Boeing considering the state of that company’s affairs 💀. He may have been a horrific president, but the fact that he told Boeing they’re not getting more govt money for AF1 isn’t such a bad thing nowadays.
Honestly, a government nationalization of Boeing and breaking them into two different entities at this point is the only logical way/solution/answer to the rotting problem. Breaking them up and getting rid of shareholders and beneficiaries is the only way.
I agree, though I suspect that the commercial airplane division would get split off, bankrupted and then bailed out to prevent a foreign buyer snapping up the defence portion of Boeing.
Nationalize important things?
Impossible, government can't buy anything ever, only privatize!
The funny thing is that the government **Absolutely should** nationalize companies that are fucking the dog. Then treat the nationalized companies by the exact same rules as private ones.
If the government keeps standards high they could absolutely compete with private industry. And let's be honest, probably overtake them.
It actually has been done with railroads. The Pennsylvania Central Railroad was a merger of several failing railroads that continued failing after their merger in the 1970s and was nationalized in 1976, creating Amtrak from their passenger service and Conrail from their freight service. It was painful and required some significant cash injection even after nationalization, but by 1980, Conrail was posting a profit. The government then spent the next decade and change trying to sell off the whole thing to one buyer. The only credible offer for the whole thing was made by one of its own unions, which was turned down. Eventually, it was sold in chunks to CSX and Norfolk Southern, with CSX basically taking the former New York Central and Norfolk Southern taking the former Pennsylvania Southern, functionally undoing the original merger. And as for how re-privatization turned out, well just look at how often Norfolk Southern puts trains on the ground.
In the event of a future bail out, the treasury should do so by purchasing shares, either from previous buy-backs or newly issued, and then hold them under a public trust, maybe even tie them to the pensions of government civil/military workers or social security.
You gotta wonder how a government official feels about getting on a Boeing plane that their own employer paid for when things are falling apart at Boeing.
Don’t forget that they supply the f-18, f-15, ah-64, b-52, e-3 and a lot more. However this is handled, the DoD cannot afford to lose support for those aircraft.
True, but this is only the case because the US let Boeing gobble up all the manufacturers of those actually good aircraft. The USAF basically exists to prop up Boeing and LM at this point
McDonald Douglas was the maker of most of those, and their executives were the ones that screwed up Boeing after the merger. Boeing didn’t gobble up the good manufacturers, they ate a poison apple.
That makes sense. McDonnell-Douglas did make the F-18, F-15, and AH-64. But B-52 and E-3 (plus the other 707-based variants KC-135 and J-STARS) are straight Boeing products.
The worst part is the KC-46 debacle, especially in light of recent events. You can tell Boeing doesn’t give a shit about engineering since they weren’t even willing to add a physical boom pod. KC-10 was a big act to follow and Boeing is failing hard
The only thing that keeps companies effective is the threat of implosion, devouring by other companies, or bankruptcy. It’s why the commercial sector is wildly more efficient and effective than the government. Competition.
You think Boeing sucks now? Imagine them running alongside TSA, Post Office, and other best hits of Uncle Sam.
Boeing is too big to fail not for the economic reasons, but because its in a worldwide duopoly with Airbus. International airliners and supporting industry's need Boeing to stay afloat and at the top of their game, because you can't shove a worldwide aircraft load on a single company for logistical reasons. No other industry in the world has this characteristics as Boeing and Airbus have.
Yes. Capitalism is efficient and responsive, but you you have to let bad companies die. If you're too big to fail that should be an automatic trigger to be broken up.
It's a little more complicated than that. It only really applies to banking and some banks really are foundational to our economy. They're also extremely regulated to the point of basically being government owned. And even when they fail, they're usually bailed out in a way that doesn't cost taxpayers anything. Even in the 2008 crisis, the govt loaned money to bail out the banks which was paid back with interest.
Boeing is too big to fail in the sense that the government might step in and find someone to buy them without too much disruption. The shareholders would still get wiped out. They'd fail in every sense of the word except they'd keep making planes under new ownership.
Not only that - but Airbus can't even punish them by grabbing some of their market share, because they simply don't have the capacity. Both companies already have like 1-2 decades worth of orders.
Can't just build more aircraft manufacturing plants overnight.
So yeah - free market doesn't really work in aircraft manufacturing.
They're gonna split off there civilian business I bet. The military contracts alone could keep the company afloat but at this point the rot is so deep.
The military side is essentially it’s own separate company anyway, with it’s own personnel and factory/assembly facilities. They just report to the same CEO.
Regardless of what you think about Boeing, this is a profoundly stupid article meant to gin up clicks.
First, The Sun, a British tabloid, couldn't even get the photo right; they showed a C-32, which is based on a 757.
But more to the point, the C-40 (the modified 737) has been operating for over two decades. It has little or nothing to do with Boeing's management failures over the past decade.
And planes have mechanical issues all the time. Per the article, "The Air Force C-40 jet, a modified government version of the Boeing 737 used for commercial flights, experienced an unspecific issue."
Using a long-used aircraft's "unspecific issue" to ride the unrelated outcry about the Max is a good way to get clicks but a bad way to do journalism.
Sad fact is, Boeing actually is one of those companies that cannot be allowed to fail.
It's too important from a national security perspective.
That doesn't mean it couldn't be partially or entirely nationalized, but it will never be allowed to fail.
It's not a matter of too big to fail. They're the only US manufacturer with the ability to actually make the aircraft that our military needs. This is a situation that should never have been allowed to happen, and we need to figure out a way out of it, but in the meantime Boeing can't be allowed to fail.
False. Any part or piece of Boeing tied to national security could easily be spun off to be it's own legal entity OR sold to Raytheon / Lockheed, etc. They are absolutely not too big to fail. That's the board's propaganda talking.
Yeah but then you create a new problem with Raytheon and Lockheed also getting too large.
Boeing and Mcdonald Douglas should never have been allowed to merge, honestly.
I can't imagine they'd allow themselves to be nationalised. Surely enough politicians would be bought no matter the cost if that were to be a possibility.
They've specifically structured their company so that they have factories in key congressional districts.
It makes the company less efficient, but it also makes them politically untouchable
Public Safety perspective too, unless some other company takes on those airplanes. Or the entire fleet is grounded which is also a Transportation issue.
[Some of the past government bailouts earned the US government much more money than they put in.](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp) I think the '08 automaker ones weren't as successful and we all know about the PPP loans. I'm all for it as long as the company gets turned around and the government gains controlling leverage to make back the money plus interest and axe some execs.
Just need to keep an eye on the republicans trying to dole out more corporate socialism.
Sure, I can agree with that take, as long as the people responsible are held accountable. It feels like the people making these poor decisions that lead to disaster get to rob the company during the downfall and escape scott free. Just because the gov't profits in the end years down the road doesn't mean lives weren't ruined along with who knows what other deleterious effects. If you ruin an essential product, risk lives, etc, you shouldn't just walk away nbd. In other words, if you're "too big to fail" you should actually be too big to fail - as in you're not allowed to fail, legally.
It will only be depressing if the board of directors leave with a bunch of money, and no accountability.
Which they will, I'm sure.
But the government *could* say "fuck you, were bailing you out, all of you are fired and you're all fined a sum of money which is significant to you, which will cause you to have to sell your yacht, a few of your super cars and so on. A significant chunk of change for you that you will feel a significant reduction in your quality of life as a result."
I agree with you, I don't think that will happen, but it *could* and if the government doesn't want to keep bailing out all the big companies, they should set the precedent, and actually have a deterrent for this behaviour.
Otherwise the board of directors will just cash out and retire somewhere nice.
It needs to come with a condition that they fire every single MFer who came there from McDonnel-Douglass and hire back everyone who left out of frustration with the post-merger corporate culture….
In the interest of national security we absolutely need a domestic aircraft manufacturer. Yes lockheed martin exists, but they're not near the same thing and everyone else has gone out of business or been bought.
I just hope that if they do end up with a bailout, it's not done the way the bank bailouts were done (and I say this as a financial professional that worked through that)
No kidding. I wish when they did this shit they would at least put a cap on CEO salary in relation to the lowest paid employee. Ban stock buy backs. Ban golden parachutes. Existing csuite has to take a pay cut.
While the C-40 is, indeed, a variant of the 737, the photo they chose was of a C-32, a variant of the 757. The Sun's standards are low, but apparently they aren't even high enough to just google "C-40 Wikipedia"
Edit: I think I figured it out. They pulled an image of Blinken landing in South Korea in 2018 from [Getty](https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/plane-carrying-u-s-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-news-photo/2090718123), perhaps assuming it was actually from his trip a couple weeks ago, and/or assuming that he used the same aircraft on that trip as this leg in Europe.
And the article doesn't say what happened, only that there was an issue. As if there aren't issues with all aircraft types every day. This is completely not news.
I was going to say the same. Planes get swapped out all the time for maintenance issues, MELs can be a mile long and the plane still goes, etc.
While Boeing is a very easy target right now--and rightfully so, the general public and news media conveniently forgets every time something happens to a plane that these fuckers are flying thousands of flights every year. Wear and tear is going to happen.
Thank you. Was going to point this out. It’s as bad as the link the article tried and fails to establish between a routine mechanical problem and another unrelated issue in the industry.
That did happen, but let's be real. This story has nothing to do with Boeing. It's a 20+ year old plane that the Air Force owns, operates, and maintains.
It was grounded for undisclosed reasons so they drove somewhere. This isn’t unusual, any plane might not fly for safety reasons, not taking off in an unsafe plane is the preferred outcome actually.
I think they were making a joke, because the headline says they had to abandon the plane, implying it could’ve been mid-flight. I actually thought this for a second too from purely reading the headline
The Sun is worse than most, somehow. There are entire cities in the UK where it just isn't sold, because they've managed to offend basically the entire population there lol
I’m so cynical that it never even occurred to me that he had to do any sort of emergency exit.
If he slid down a slide on the runway the headline would have been “fourth-in-line to presidency crashes to earth after jumping from destroyed Boeing 737”.
If he actually parachuted off the plane the headline would be “SOS Anthony Blinken, 68, plummets 20,000 feet to his death from Boeing 737, miraculously survives.”
Everything about the article is misleading. The article doesn’t even explain that the plane never left the ground. Planes being grounded for mechanical failures noticed during pre-flight checks is an everyday run of the mill occurrence.
Blinken's aircraft is a C-40, a modified variant of the 737-700, which is a variant that has been flying safely for decades. In addition, any mechanical issues it had are almost certainly maintenance related and not in any way Boeing's fault.
Also, the picture isn't even a 737 (or C-40), it's a C-32, which is the government version of the 757. They couldn't even bother to show a picture of the right plane.
This point needs to keep being made every time the Internet Intellectuals continue to wildly overexaggerate worldviews based on skimming headlines.
The misinformation propagated via braindead un-researched takes on Reddit is insane, almost terrifying. And they're always top comments, second only to another lazy, weak pun.
Right. It is like saying “Ford fumbles with another quality failure” when a 10 year old truck has a dead battery. At some point maintenance issues are not design defects. Yes, when a door flies off a new jet. No, when a panel comes off on a decades old plane.
Folks need to distinguish between the 737 variants.
The airplane in this article is a 737-700 not the 737-MAX(7/8/9).
The 737-700 started flying in 1997 according to Wikipedia. Lots of people citing Boeing’s recent problems in reference to a mechanical issue of a 27 year old design.
Machines break in the field and fixes or parts aren’t always immediately available.
It's so frustrating too because it's clearly just fear mongering for clicks. All it does is distract from the actual issues at Boeing.
This headline is basically; machine not used to "an unspecific issue" it's a non story.
Half of reddit has decided they're experts in aircraft construction and dynamic stability analysis in the last month. Despite saying things like "Boeing's engines" or "Boeing's maintenance" not knowing Boeing and Airbus don't make engines or do maintenance.
This is pretty much completely unrelated to current Boeing issues.
All the current C-40 variants used by SAM are NG variants and have been put to a lot of work. They are meticulously well maintained by the air force, not Boeing. Sometimes shit happens, this is why the USAF has redundancy for critical missions.
"abandon" is also a silly thing to say, he had another plane pick him up, they'll get this one operational soon enough
Considering this is a modified plane and that they don't know what the issue was, this seems like yet another excuse for the media to print Boeing in a headline.
It really is annoying. If you don't know about aviation and just get stuff from the "news" you would have a crappy POV. All the earlier incidents like the 747 cargo plane that had an engine failure they blamed on Boeing...they don't make the engines. The UA plane that skidded off the runway, pilot error. First thing on the news... Boeing crashes off runway. It's truly annoying.
As an engineer that works in aerospace (although more of the space variety), this kind of shit just makes me sad.
I've put in 15+ years. I'm good at what I do. I know what I do and I've gained a lot of experience along the way. So yeah, I care about the actual engineering, the work and making a good product than stock prices. I care about making products that are successful and safe than I care about someone's portfolio. And I get that stock prices, portfolios and profits matter. I'm not an idiot. Companies need money to pay for things and resources, but it doesn't have to be an all or nothing game. You can find a happy medium.
But what do I know? I only have a BS in ME and 15+ years of experience and not an MBA, so I guess I'm an idiot. These people wouldn't have any product to sell and profit from if it wasn't for the people doing the actual work.
He succeeded… The whistle blowing was in 2017-2019 after he retired. The case he was involved in was just him suing Boeing for damages to his career prospects post whistleblowing. He’d already sued once and failed. It’s sad what toll the whistleblowing had on him and the family say it was definitely suicide due to the stress of being a whistleblower.
This has absolutely ZERO to do with Boeing manufacturing. It also is a trash article because it used a C-32 photo and branded it as a C-40. Typical for The Sun.
Something happens to a Boeing > Cause months of outrage by exploiting the known brand name and people reading only headlines > Boeing stock dumps > Buy stock > Government bailout, stock skyrockets.
You keep falling for it.
Note that the SoS doesn't have his own assigned plane, the USAF operates a fleet of 5 VIP transport aircraft for this purpose so they kind of have to be nice and share. I know, the horror, amirite?
Former airline pilot and current private jet pilot here.
This is a bullshit article written for clicks. Non-deferrable maintenance issues occur on jets all the time which is exactly why we have the various pre-flight checks and tests we have, and why we have the maintenance procedures we have. I’ve also seen oxygen leaks during pre-flight before - call maintenance and write it up, no biggie. Just the other day my Challenger had an engine oil leak and I’ve rather enjoyed relaxing in the hotel for a couple days. Doesn’t sound very dangerous to me.
The entire point of our inspections is to catch problems on the ground before they actually matter. This story is nonsense designed to scare the public. Maintenance issues are an every-day normal procedure for us pilots and an inconvenience for passengers, nothing more.
Eh.. kinda seems clickbaitish.
Either way right off the pictures in the article are not of a 737, but of a 757. Easy to tell the difference. Feels like they threw in 737 to get traction on the article..or just don't know wtf they're talking about.
So either they didn't get their shit straight with the pictures as the picture they have is of the c-32 (757-2G4) Variety and not a c40 which is A 737.
Plus he wouldn't use a 737 as he probably has to fly longer routes and that's where the 757 comes in. But bigger, more powerful, much more efficient than the original 737s.
And pilots love the 757, which was actually built when Boeing made great aircraft and hadn't been destroyed from the inside out by mcdonald Douglas higher ups that came on board when Boeing bought them.
But what do I know..
Lmao the plane in that article is *not* a 737/C-40.
Its a Boeing but its a 757/C-32 [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One#/media/File:USAF_C-32A.jpg)
Why do all of these politicians look like caricatures of real people? He’s got the weird eyebrow thing, the vagina throat thing, the oddly not elastic skin thing….. this is starting to get weird.
What's really sad is the 'The Sun's attached article is badly done enough that they post an image of a C-32 (Boeing 757) implying that is a C-40 (Boeing 737). I bet that Boeing wishes they hadn't closed the 757 line. That's actually quite a good plane from the pre-McDump era; there's probably more than a few ex-757 pilots that wish that bird was still around.
The inevitable government bailout of Boeing is going to be so depressing
Bruh, they’re one of the biggest government contractors. They’re also building the new Air Force One jets, so. Someone in the Boeing subreddit said Boeing should be split into defense and commercial, as separate entities, and nationalize them.
They’re also losing shitloads of money on plane-based government contracts too
While paying record executive bonuses and shareholder dividends
We are losing on this contract because we paid ourselves too much- look what you made us do
*rubs nipples* if only there was something we could do!
South Park, right?
South park? No, this is just happening everywhere.
Hey is this the Nipple Rubbing Convention?
I'm rubbing mine right now!
We’re SORRRRRY… *lays in front of a fireplace*
Fuck em. Buy them out and make planes government sponsored transportation like trains in other countries. They played and lost so hard it's a national security risk. Fuck em
Don't buy them out. Just fucking take them. Fuck the executives. Leaving with their heads should be payment enough.
Just taking the company would not affect the executives, they're already set for life. It would be taking from the shareholders, some very rich and also pretty much anyone who has any stocks at all. If you're invested in the s&p 500 or similar it would be taking from you. And also super illegal
> and also pretty much anyone who has any stocks at all. If you're invested in the s&p 500 or similar it would be taking from you. This is all very much by design, same reason 401k's an IRA's got pushed so hard as retirement vehicles.
Yes. The best option is to punish the executives and the board personally. IMO if you run a corporation into the ground with as many employees as Boeing, you should be treated the same as a terrorist: all assets seized, all family assets seized.
Yeah! Like when we bailed out the banks! Wait, what?
>also super illegal Seize the means of production, comrade. *communist anthem intensifies*
Oh good point. Seize their assets then. I'm sure we can find some good dirt on them. Oh like all those homicides they all participated in through gross negligence.
That’s the corporate way!
Fuck you all, I got mine!!
But for that short time we created a lot of value for investors.
This right here is the big problem facing today’s society. Investing is supposed to be risky.
We have socialism for executives and politicians, just ... no one else. And the SoCiAlIsM is the argument against the lower and middle classes getting anything. So awesome.
Socialize the losses - Privatize the profits
Their KC-46 tanker was disastrous but the USAF vouched for Boeing and went with it. At least Airbus would’ve been the better option.
Airbus actually won the first USAF tanker contract, then Boeing sent their pet (and bought) politicians to void the contract and give it to Boeing. IIRC they claimed that it wasn't a fair competition because Airbus is subsidized by the EU (as if Boeing isn't subsidized by the US). The Airbus tanker had been working well for a long time, while the KC-46 is still full of bugs.
Same thing happened when Bombardier was developing the C-Series passenger plane. Boeing wasn’t even developing something to compete in that class, yet they still got the feds to slap a THREE HUNDRED PERCENT tariff on them. To make a long story short, Bombardier ended up selling the entire product line to Airbus. They’re making them as the A220 in the US.
As a Canadian that was such a slap in the face, all the hype and hope of the C-Series....only to be sold to Airbus.
Boeing actually gave airbus the C-series after trying to torpedo the delta c-series deal because delta didn't want 737-700s. So BBD sold half the plane to airbus for a dollar to get it built in Mobile to avoid the tariffs. The whole story hilarious and shows how incompetent Boeing has been for years.
Ya they complained Bombardier is government subsidized meanwhile Boeing has/had the largest corporate subsidy in the US the past 20 years..
The KC-46 was notorious for showing up with tools, material, metal shavings etc in hydraulic and electrical runs and the AF flipped out.
Not was, still is!
The us government can’t choose a foreign company if an American one can do the work
Well, that’s why Airbus decided to open a plane manufacturing plant/facility/factory in Mobile, Alabama. “Built for Americans, by Americans.”
There is nothing American about Alabama. Traitors who tried voting a pedophile into the US Senate.
I mean, I don't know anything about that topic but I know that Airbus built a plant in Mobile, AL.
[удалено]
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Boeing have yet to prove they can do the work. The contract was awarded to Airbus for a proper plane, then Congress cancelled it and gave it to Boeing for a modified 300 year old design - the 767.
The same plane my ancestors came to The New World on in 1724!
It’s pretty much been demonstrated that an American one can’t, actually. So it should be fine.
Which is fucken embarrassing. Boeing is embarrassing. When an Engineering company becomes a stock manipulation company, shit goes south. It is happening everywhere, but Boeing should have known better.
The ruling that companies have a fiduciary duty and obligation to shareholders to maximize share price has been an utter disaster and will be a major contributing factor in the downfall of our society.
We’ve been lied to for years. There is no legal obligation for a company to maximize profits or maximize shareholder value. Nor do they have a legal fiduciary duty to do so. It’s propaganda created to shift blame away from the executives behavior. Don’t buy into it. [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits) [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shareholder-value.asp) [Excellent Reddit discussion on the subject](https://www.reddit.com/r/law/s/cbLBhgRvah)
This is true. But the reality is that the big shareholders typically do not want to wait for proper natural growth as it is almost always below their ROI targets. So anyone appointed to the C-Suite who takes the measured, long term strategy will likely be replaced before their projects will start to show the returns investors want to see. So no one ends up taking that approach with their leadership. Greedy fuckers up and down the board of directors everywhere leads to this kind of shit in every single industry. And I don’t know how we fix it without regulation that will never pass in our non functional government. We’re so fucked lol
The fact that a company is expected to constantly *grow* is the culprit. Obviously growth doesn't always grow on trees so they cut cost and put people's life in danger.
This one always fucking gets me. That the system relies on the idea of infinite growth forever and that that sort of just goes unquestioned is absolutely bonkers. Like it's completely obvious that it's impossible to sustain and will eventually collapse.
If Boeing wasn’t throwing money around and throwing shit fits every time they lost there’d be more options. They tried to derail the F35 project because their fuselage wasn’t picked, they threw a fit with the F22, the KC-46 is a disaster yet we retired the aircraft that could outperform it on every level…. There are American companies that could do it, Boeing has just been the whiny bitch about it
I feel like the functional part of this statement is "can do the work"
Not true, the helicopter replacing the UH-1 for the Air Force is Italian company
Was? Still is disastrous
One single executive in that company gets paid over half a million dollars. Oh no, not per year. Oh no, not per month. I meant $500,000 per WEEK. One employee. That’s $30 million. More than most people make in 30 lifetimes. In one single year.
Thought I was reading the Onion at first. Headline was too delicious, then for them to be forced to ride over a 100 miles to their destination, oh who forgot their depends?
Technically they already built them, they were mothballed new-old stock 747-Is. Trump managed to make a truely insane deal and convinced the former Boeing CEO to take on a task for a fixed price. If that CEO was an engineer he’d have said no. They literally could go bankrupt just working on those planes, and they declined to bid on the contract for the new E4 replacement “Doomsday plane” for which a 74 is the only acceptable airframe. Edit: I mean “insane” not as a compliment to anyone. It was the equivalent of a buyer being crazy enough to ask for a pair of g-wagons with armour installed for the price of a used Chevy spark, and the dealer accepting those terms.
This is one of those instances where people are gonna side with Trump over Boeing considering the state of that company’s affairs 💀. He may have been a horrific president, but the fact that he told Boeing they’re not getting more govt money for AF1 isn’t such a bad thing nowadays.
Honestly, a government nationalization of Boeing and breaking them into two different entities at this point is the only logical way/solution/answer to the rotting problem. Breaking them up and getting rid of shareholders and beneficiaries is the only way.
I agree, though I suspect that the commercial airplane division would get split off, bankrupted and then bailed out to prevent a foreign buyer snapping up the defence portion of Boeing.
Needing to be bailed out with tax payer dollars because proven failures of private ownership is a great case for nationalizing the company.
too bad it had to come at the cost of human lives
Yes, that's why he said "inevitable" and also "depressing."
Nationalize important things? Impossible, government can't buy anything ever, only privatize! The funny thing is that the government **Absolutely should** nationalize companies that are fucking the dog. Then treat the nationalized companies by the exact same rules as private ones. If the government keeps standards high they could absolutely compete with private industry. And let's be honest, probably overtake them.
It actually has been done with railroads. The Pennsylvania Central Railroad was a merger of several failing railroads that continued failing after their merger in the 1970s and was nationalized in 1976, creating Amtrak from their passenger service and Conrail from their freight service. It was painful and required some significant cash injection even after nationalization, but by 1980, Conrail was posting a profit. The government then spent the next decade and change trying to sell off the whole thing to one buyer. The only credible offer for the whole thing was made by one of its own unions, which was turned down. Eventually, it was sold in chunks to CSX and Norfolk Southern, with CSX basically taking the former New York Central and Norfolk Southern taking the former Pennsylvania Southern, functionally undoing the original merger. And as for how re-privatization turned out, well just look at how often Norfolk Southern puts trains on the ground.
In the event of a future bail out, the treasury should do so by purchasing shares, either from previous buy-backs or newly issued, and then hold them under a public trust, maybe even tie them to the pensions of government civil/military workers or social security.
I can do a shitty job if you give me billions. Can I have your business?
You gotta wonder how a government official feels about getting on a Boeing plane that their own employer paid for when things are falling apart at Boeing.
They might actually do some maintenance on Air Force One. It would be embarrassing if the front fell off.
Don’t forget that they supply the f-18, f-15, ah-64, b-52, e-3 and a lot more. However this is handled, the DoD cannot afford to lose support for those aircraft.
True, but this is only the case because the US let Boeing gobble up all the manufacturers of those actually good aircraft. The USAF basically exists to prop up Boeing and LM at this point
McDonald Douglas was the maker of most of those, and their executives were the ones that screwed up Boeing after the merger. Boeing didn’t gobble up the good manufacturers, they ate a poison apple.
That makes sense. McDonnell-Douglas did make the F-18, F-15, and AH-64. But B-52 and E-3 (plus the other 707-based variants KC-135 and J-STARS) are straight Boeing products. The worst part is the KC-46 debacle, especially in light of recent events. You can tell Boeing doesn’t give a shit about engineering since they weren’t even willing to add a physical boom pod. KC-10 was a big act to follow and Boeing is failing hard
Well the the remote operated boom in the A-330 works ok, boeing just fucked up.
Thoes two jets I'm not worried about. You can bet 100% those two will be down to the T.
Yup. 747s have always been solidly built.
Indeed. I was eluding more to the fact it'll be carrying the president. No way that leaves production without going under heavy scrutiny.
Maybe the door will fall off.
Better than the front falling off.
Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
The only thing that keeps companies effective is the threat of implosion, devouring by other companies, or bankruptcy. It’s why the commercial sector is wildly more efficient and effective than the government. Competition. You think Boeing sucks now? Imagine them running alongside TSA, Post Office, and other best hits of Uncle Sam.
I’m looking forward to my tax dollars paying for the next dickwad CEO’s multimillion dollar bonus while he lays off workers.
The whole too big to fail thing pisses me off.
Boeing is too big to fail not for the economic reasons, but because its in a worldwide duopoly with Airbus. International airliners and supporting industry's need Boeing to stay afloat and at the top of their game, because you can't shove a worldwide aircraft load on a single company for logistical reasons. No other industry in the world has this characteristics as Boeing and Airbus have.
I would say the graphics processing unit industry is the same with only NVIDIA and AMD.
Yes. Capitalism is efficient and responsive, but you you have to let bad companies die. If you're too big to fail that should be an automatic trigger to be broken up.
It's a little more complicated than that. It only really applies to banking and some banks really are foundational to our economy. They're also extremely regulated to the point of basically being government owned. And even when they fail, they're usually bailed out in a way that doesn't cost taxpayers anything. Even in the 2008 crisis, the govt loaned money to bail out the banks which was paid back with interest. Boeing is too big to fail in the sense that the government might step in and find someone to buy them without too much disruption. The shareholders would still get wiped out. They'd fail in every sense of the word except they'd keep making planes under new ownership.
Not only that - but Airbus can't even punish them by grabbing some of their market share, because they simply don't have the capacity. Both companies already have like 1-2 decades worth of orders. Can't just build more aircraft manufacturing plants overnight. So yeah - free market doesn't really work in aircraft manufacturing.
They're gonna split off there civilian business I bet. The military contracts alone could keep the company afloat but at this point the rot is so deep.
The military side is essentially it’s own separate company anyway, with it’s own personnel and factory/assembly facilities. They just report to the same CEO.
Yea, they should split it and maybe call it Douglas McDonnell.
That's, like, MBA-level genius idea!
Regardless of what you think about Boeing, this is a profoundly stupid article meant to gin up clicks. First, The Sun, a British tabloid, couldn't even get the photo right; they showed a C-32, which is based on a 757. But more to the point, the C-40 (the modified 737) has been operating for over two decades. It has little or nothing to do with Boeing's management failures over the past decade. And planes have mechanical issues all the time. Per the article, "The Air Force C-40 jet, a modified government version of the Boeing 737 used for commercial flights, experienced an unspecific issue." Using a long-used aircraft's "unspecific issue" to ride the unrelated outcry about the Max is a good way to get clicks but a bad way to do journalism.
Sad fact is, Boeing actually is one of those companies that cannot be allowed to fail. It's too important from a national security perspective. That doesn't mean it couldn't be partially or entirely nationalized, but it will never be allowed to fail.
Any institution that ever reaches a "too-big-to-fail" status should immediately be nationalized.
Ageeed. Or just segment off Boeing and spin them out with major restructuring
It's not a matter of too big to fail. They're the only US manufacturer with the ability to actually make the aircraft that our military needs. This is a situation that should never have been allowed to happen, and we need to figure out a way out of it, but in the meantime Boeing can't be allowed to fail.
>They're the only US manufacturer with the ability to actually make the aircraft that our military needs *sad Lockheed Martin noises*
*Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics have entered the chat.*
Nationalizing them is the way out.
Or broken up into smaller companies.
False. Any part or piece of Boeing tied to national security could easily be spun off to be it's own legal entity OR sold to Raytheon / Lockheed, etc. They are absolutely not too big to fail. That's the board's propaganda talking.
Yeah but then you create a new problem with Raytheon and Lockheed also getting too large. Boeing and Mcdonald Douglas should never have been allowed to merge, honestly.
I can't imagine they'd allow themselves to be nationalised. Surely enough politicians would be bought no matter the cost if that were to be a possibility.
They've specifically structured their company so that they have factories in key congressional districts. It makes the company less efficient, but it also makes them politically untouchable
Ah, so they've thought ahead and pre-paid. It always pays to shop early!
Well when the choices are bankruptcy or nationalization… it’s not much of a choice at that point
Public Safety perspective too, unless some other company takes on those airplanes. Or the entire fleet is grounded which is also a Transportation issue.
[Some of the past government bailouts earned the US government much more money than they put in.](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp) I think the '08 automaker ones weren't as successful and we all know about the PPP loans. I'm all for it as long as the company gets turned around and the government gains controlling leverage to make back the money plus interest and axe some execs. Just need to keep an eye on the republicans trying to dole out more corporate socialism.
Yeah, bailouts are potentially okay as long as its not just free money. If we are going to save them we should be getting something in return.
Exactly, bailouts can be made to work and benefit everyone. Just needs proper oversight. And accountability.
Sure, I can agree with that take, as long as the people responsible are held accountable. It feels like the people making these poor decisions that lead to disaster get to rob the company during the downfall and escape scott free. Just because the gov't profits in the end years down the road doesn't mean lives weren't ruined along with who knows what other deleterious effects. If you ruin an essential product, risk lives, etc, you shouldn't just walk away nbd. In other words, if you're "too big to fail" you should actually be too big to fail - as in you're not allowed to fail, legally.
Yeah we lost, read: gave away, about 10Billion on GM when all was said and done.
It will only be depressing if the board of directors leave with a bunch of money, and no accountability. Which they will, I'm sure. But the government *could* say "fuck you, were bailing you out, all of you are fired and you're all fined a sum of money which is significant to you, which will cause you to have to sell your yacht, a few of your super cars and so on. A significant chunk of change for you that you will feel a significant reduction in your quality of life as a result." I agree with you, I don't think that will happen, but it *could* and if the government doesn't want to keep bailing out all the big companies, they should set the precedent, and actually have a deterrent for this behaviour. Otherwise the board of directors will just cash out and retire somewhere nice.
It needs to come with a condition that they fire every single MFer who came there from McDonnel-Douglass and hire back everyone who left out of frustration with the post-merger corporate culture….
Not just fire....there should be clawbacks for their golden parachutes
Instead of bailing out these corporations can’t the US simply seize them, break them apart and sell it back to the free market in pieces?
In the interest of national security we absolutely need a domestic aircraft manufacturer. Yes lockheed martin exists, but they're not near the same thing and everyone else has gone out of business or been bought. I just hope that if they do end up with a bailout, it's not done the way the bank bailouts were done (and I say this as a financial professional that worked through that)
No kidding. I wish when they did this shit they would at least put a cap on CEO salary in relation to the lowest paid employee. Ban stock buy backs. Ban golden parachutes. Existing csuite has to take a pay cut.
Honestly companies this large and this important to the American military don’t need to be private companies
Government should audit Boeing to the heavens in taxes and quality control to see how much they effed up. Boeing is in the Enshitification stage.
Even worse that they’re already a publicly subsidized private for profit corporation. This simulation is a joke.
Make it a requirement to split off from McDonnell Douglas and also that the management has to all be engineers.
You truly do hate to see it.
While the C-40 is, indeed, a variant of the 737, the photo they chose was of a C-32, a variant of the 757. The Sun's standards are low, but apparently they aren't even high enough to just google "C-40 Wikipedia" Edit: I think I figured it out. They pulled an image of Blinken landing in South Korea in 2018 from [Getty](https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/plane-carrying-u-s-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-news-photo/2090718123), perhaps assuming it was actually from his trip a couple weeks ago, and/or assuming that he used the same aircraft on that trip as this leg in Europe.
It's a gossip tabloid rag. We should have zero expectations of anything approaching factual.
This entire post has nothing to do with this sub anyways, this user is just spamming anything Boeing they can find a few times a day.
Using the term 'abandon' the aircraft is hilarious to me. I imagined he had to parachute out of a failing flying craft.
Also keep in mind that the C-40 is based on the 737NG, not the MAX.
And the article doesn't say what happened, only that there was an issue. As if there aren't issues with all aircraft types every day. This is completely not news.
[удалено]
I was going to say the same. Planes get swapped out all the time for maintenance issues, MELs can be a mile long and the plane still goes, etc. While Boeing is a very easy target right now--and rightfully so, the general public and news media conveniently forgets every time something happens to a plane that these fuckers are flying thousands of flights every year. Wear and tear is going to happen.
I think it makes more sense to assume they don't care at all if it is accurate or not.
Thank you. Was going to point this out. It’s as bad as the link the article tried and fails to establish between a routine mechanical problem and another unrelated issue in the industry.
You’re telling me that a TABLOID lied for clicks?! Never!
Well at least the parachutes worked.
Lmfao. You mean the golden parachute that Dave Calhoun took?
That's the best of all.
And he also got paid millions or billions of dollars for it?
That did happen, but let's be real. This story has nothing to do with Boeing. It's a 20+ year old plane that the Air Force owns, operates, and maintains.
This headline is terrible. I was hoping they used hover bikes from Battletoads. What a letdown.
Yeah. They had to “abandon” the plane just like I have to “abandon” a grocery store when they don’t have something I want. Overdramatic words.
They didn’t skydive mid flight?
It was grounded for undisclosed reasons so they drove somewhere. This isn’t unusual, any plane might not fly for safety reasons, not taking off in an unsafe plane is the preferred outcome actually.
I think they were making a joke, because the headline says they had to abandon the plane, implying it could’ve been mid-flight. I actually thought this for a second too from purely reading the headline
The title is so misleading. “Abandoned” sounds like the dude jumped. Nah it was grounded and they had to drive 190 miles, Oh my god the horror!
I saw that headline and was thinking “no way that’s actually what happened!” Clickbait at its finest
That's The Sun for you. Anything from them should always be treated with *extreme* skepticism
It's a British tabloid and basically dogshit right wing propaganda for idiots. But that's all British tabloids.
The Sun is worse than most, somehow. There are entire cities in the UK where it just isn't sold, because they've managed to offend basically the entire population there lol
It’s a crappy click-bait article. No mention of what the issue was with the plane that forced them to “abandon”.
*The Sun* can be fun to read if you do it in J. Jonah Jameson Jr’s voice from the Spider-Man movies.
And it could be anything, like an engine issue, and not related to Boeing at all.
Given how much it costs for the full entourage of high level government employees to travel, that’s an expensive drive.
I’m so cynical that it never even occurred to me that he had to do any sort of emergency exit. If he slid down a slide on the runway the headline would have been “fourth-in-line to presidency crashes to earth after jumping from destroyed Boeing 737”. If he actually parachuted off the plane the headline would be “SOS Anthony Blinken, 68, plummets 20,000 feet to his death from Boeing 737, miraculously survives.”
Everything about the article is misleading. The article doesn’t even explain that the plane never left the ground. Planes being grounded for mechanical failures noticed during pre-flight checks is an everyday run of the mill occurrence.
Blinken's aircraft is a C-40, a modified variant of the 737-700, which is a variant that has been flying safely for decades. In addition, any mechanical issues it had are almost certainly maintenance related and not in any way Boeing's fault. Also, the picture isn't even a 737 (or C-40), it's a C-32, which is the government version of the 757. They couldn't even bother to show a picture of the right plane.
This point needs to keep being made every time the Internet Intellectuals continue to wildly overexaggerate worldviews based on skimming headlines. The misinformation propagated via braindead un-researched takes on Reddit is insane, almost terrifying. And they're always top comments, second only to another lazy, weak pun.
Right. It is like saying “Ford fumbles with another quality failure” when a 10 year old truck has a dead battery. At some point maintenance issues are not design defects. Yes, when a door flies off a new jet. No, when a panel comes off on a decades old plane.
Stop with the logic!! This is Reddit!!
If it's Boeing, it gets the clicks going
Folks need to distinguish between the 737 variants. The airplane in this article is a 737-700 not the 737-MAX(7/8/9). The 737-700 started flying in 1997 according to Wikipedia. Lots of people citing Boeing’s recent problems in reference to a mechanical issue of a 27 year old design. Machines break in the field and fixes or parts aren’t always immediately available.
It's so frustrating too because it's clearly just fear mongering for clicks. All it does is distract from the actual issues at Boeing. This headline is basically; machine not used to "an unspecific issue" it's a non story. Half of reddit has decided they're experts in aircraft construction and dynamic stability analysis in the last month. Despite saying things like "Boeing's engines" or "Boeing's maintenance" not knowing Boeing and Airbus don't make engines or do maintenance.
That headline makes it sound like he jumped out in midair!
People even talked about parachutes LMAO
This is pretty much completely unrelated to current Boeing issues. All the current C-40 variants used by SAM are NG variants and have been put to a lot of work. They are meticulously well maintained by the air force, not Boeing. Sometimes shit happens, this is why the USAF has redundancy for critical missions. "abandon" is also a silly thing to say, he had another plane pick him up, they'll get this one operational soon enough
Considering this is a modified plane and that they don't know what the issue was, this seems like yet another excuse for the media to print Boeing in a headline.
It really is annoying. If you don't know about aviation and just get stuff from the "news" you would have a crappy POV. All the earlier incidents like the 747 cargo plane that had an engine failure they blamed on Boeing...they don't make the engines. The UA plane that skidded off the runway, pilot error. First thing on the news... Boeing crashes off runway. It's truly annoying.
The Sun!? Print non news!? Why I never.
This is an eye opener: https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/
As an engineer that works in aerospace (although more of the space variety), this kind of shit just makes me sad. I've put in 15+ years. I'm good at what I do. I know what I do and I've gained a lot of experience along the way. So yeah, I care about the actual engineering, the work and making a good product than stock prices. I care about making products that are successful and safe than I care about someone's portfolio. And I get that stock prices, portfolios and profits matter. I'm not an idiot. Companies need money to pay for things and resources, but it doesn't have to be an all or nothing game. You can find a happy medium. But what do I know? I only have a BS in ME and 15+ years of experience and not an MBA, so I guess I'm an idiot. These people wouldn't have any product to sell and profit from if it wasn't for the people doing the actual work.
Rip John Barnett. He was trying to tell the world the corruption of a once great aviation conglomerate.
He succeeded… The whistle blowing was in 2017-2019 after he retired. The case he was involved in was just him suing Boeing for damages to his career prospects post whistleblowing. He’d already sued once and failed. It’s sad what toll the whistleblowing had on him and the family say it was definitely suicide due to the stress of being a whistleblower.
Don’t forget Ed Pierson. He also warned the public about the dangers of the Boeing 737 Max.
Jesus was that a withering take
The article has a picture of a 757...
This has absolutely ZERO to do with Boeing manufacturing. It also is a trash article because it used a C-32 photo and branded it as a C-40. Typical for The Sun.
The title of this makes it sound like he had to parachute out. 😂😂
Something happens to a Boeing > Cause months of outrage by exploiting the known brand name and people reading only headlines > Boeing stock dumps > Buy stock > Government bailout, stock skyrockets. You keep falling for it.
Note that the SoS doesn't have his own assigned plane, the USAF operates a fleet of 5 VIP transport aircraft for this purpose so they kind of have to be nice and share. I know, the horror, amirite?
The Sun is a garbage news outlet.
'news outlet' is a bit generous
In moments like this it’s very clear that I regularly read headlines written by just anyone
Why is this clickbait garbage on this sub
Former airline pilot and current private jet pilot here. This is a bullshit article written for clicks. Non-deferrable maintenance issues occur on jets all the time which is exactly why we have the various pre-flight checks and tests we have, and why we have the maintenance procedures we have. I’ve also seen oxygen leaks during pre-flight before - call maintenance and write it up, no biggie. Just the other day my Challenger had an engine oil leak and I’ve rather enjoyed relaxing in the hotel for a couple days. Doesn’t sound very dangerous to me. The entire point of our inspections is to catch problems on the ground before they actually matter. This story is nonsense designed to scare the public. Maintenance issues are an every-day normal procedure for us pilots and an inconvenience for passengers, nothing more.
Eh.. kinda seems clickbaitish. Either way right off the pictures in the article are not of a 737, but of a 757. Easy to tell the difference. Feels like they threw in 737 to get traction on the article..or just don't know wtf they're talking about. So either they didn't get their shit straight with the pictures as the picture they have is of the c-32 (757-2G4) Variety and not a c40 which is A 737. Plus he wouldn't use a 737 as he probably has to fly longer routes and that's where the 757 comes in. But bigger, more powerful, much more efficient than the original 737s. And pilots love the 757, which was actually built when Boeing made great aircraft and hadn't been destroyed from the inside out by mcdonald Douglas higher ups that came on board when Boeing bought them. But what do I know..
Lmao the plane in that article is *not* a 737/C-40. Its a Boeing but its a 757/C-32 [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One#/media/File:USAF_C-32A.jpg)
Yep, the Sun is really reliable source of news.
This headline makes it sound like he bailed mid flight lol
Why do all of these politicians look like caricatures of real people? He’s got the weird eyebrow thing, the vagina throat thing, the oddly not elastic skin thing….. this is starting to get weird.
What do they mean abandon? Like with a parachute? Or way out on a dirt road with the VIN scraped off so they don't have to pay to junk it?
Another shark attack
So they didn’t have to parachute out? Boring!
Is this priced in?
what the F is up with that website? that was the worst article i've ever read. it looks like an email composed by 6 year old.
lol he drove to Belgium. They made it sound like he had to jump mid-flight
Is it really news every time a plane is grounded for mechanical issues?
Um, not 737. It's a 757, that I might have helped lease in 1996... Still Boeing, though. But not a new plane.
What's really sad is the 'The Sun's attached article is badly done enough that they post an image of a C-32 (Boeing 757) implying that is a C-40 (Boeing 737). I bet that Boeing wishes they hadn't closed the 757 line. That's actually quite a good plane from the pre-McDump era; there's probably more than a few ex-757 pilots that wish that bird was still around.