Boeing defends 787 Dreamliner safety after whistleblower alleged structural flaws

CNBC ^ | Apr 15, 2024 | Leslie Josephs

[CondoleezzaProtege]

A whistleblower last week said that Boeing's 787 assembly put excessive stress on airplane joints that could reduce some of the planes' lifespans.

The whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, is scheduled to appear at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

Boeing has denied the allegations and defended the quality and safety testing on its 787 Dreamliner and 777 aircraft.

[packagingguy]

Sam Salehpour is not suicidal.

[Antioch]

Here’s a great article on the decline and fall of Boeing from a company of engineers and visionaries to its surrender to stock pumping bean counters

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

[hinckley buzzard]

Of course they defend it. What else could they do?

[SkyDancer]

I’m not so sure. I put my cellphone in airplane mode, got into my car and the doors blew off.

[Zhang Fei]

[Here’s a great article on the decline and fall of Boeing from a company of engineers and visionaries to its surrender to stock pumping bean counters

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/]

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I’d take the left wing magazine’s article with a grain of salt. There’s a lot of carping about management decisions because the magazine is making its best case while not considering why the people at the helm did what they did. Here’s an excerpt from Boeing’s 1998 annual report:

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https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/infanu/46256/iaABOEINGa1998ieng.pdf
[Financially, 1998 did not turn out the way we planned. Far from it.

There are three things we hope to accomplish in this letter. First is to acknowledge dissatisfaction with our 1998 results. Second is to show what we have done and are doing to improve. Third is to be clear about our primary goals and objectives and our absolute commitment to achieving them.
Following a loss in 1997, Boeing posted net earnings of $1.1 billion in 1998. While that is progress, it leaves us in the bottom quartile of S&P 500 companies in standard measures of profitability. Our overriding goal is to return Boeing to the top quartile of companies both in profitability and in total return to shareholders. In working toward our long-term goal of 7 percent after-tax for Boeing as a whole, we will need to raise operating margins in each of our three principal businesses to double-digit levels.

That means achieving a slightly higher level of profitability in military aircraft and missiles despite static defense budgets. It means doubling our operating return on revenues in the fast-growing and highly competitive field of space and communications systems. It means returning to peak levels of profitability in our commercial aircraft business, which was about break-even in 1998.]

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Boeing’s commercial aircraft biz was spiralling and they were trying to right the ship. A breakeven business is not a business, so they moved to make it more of one, to actually turn a profit.

I don’t want to cast aspersions on the motives of the whistleblower, but it’s possible his angst is over the union-busting move to South Carolina and his complaints are actually nitpicky procedural roadblocks he used to sabotage Boeing over that move. All manufacturing is a compromise between safety and cost. Customers do not have unlimited budgets. Even established customers will not pay a big premium over the competition’s offerings.

[pfflier]

Any hearing, in a senate controlled by the rats, is bound to be a charlie fox for the benefit of facetime with the media. This will be about as objective as a Trump trial in NY.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

I know Nikki Haley recently sat high on Boeing’s board, but their political cronies are all over the spectrum. Boeing is a once great American company and emblematic of the overall decline of the American Way and American Dream as a whole.

[RckyRaCoCo]

In today’s “society”, I’d be more worried about the defects sitting in the seats, than the aircraft.

[Zhang Fei]

[I know Nikki Haley recently sat high on Boeing’s board, but their political cronies are all over the spectrum. Boeing is a once great American company and emblematic of the overall decline of the American Way and American Dream as a whole.]

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The principal problem is the way Boeing’s unions gouged the company when Boeing had a virtual monopoly on civilian jetliners. Then Airbus came along and Boeing’s commercial business couldn’t just slap a price tag on a plane and have the airlines assent because the monopoly was now history. Its commercial airplane business wasn’t steady state non-profit. It was transitioning towards losses. Measures had to be taken. One option was getting out, leaving the field to Airbus. Its mucky mucks chose to cut costs, try to make a go of it.

[pfflier]

All of the negative Boeing news right now is a media created sensationalism tailored to headline readers.

All of the events after the blown door are airline maintenance and operations issues and not Boeing design or manufacturing issues.

The two crashes before that were third world airlines and many simulations since the crashes have shown that the situations were survivable if the pilots flew the plane rather than rode in it.

Whistle blowers are a dime a dozen when there is a chance for 15 minutes of fame.

Completely ignored in the biased reporting is that every airplane involved in recent incidents landed safely without loss of life or even injury.

My suggestion now is to buy Boeing stock while they are down.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Firmly disagree. Boeing is a once great company that is now amuck in Deep State dirt through and through in its operations.

[DennisR]

“could”

That says it all right there.

[DennisR]

Precisely.

[pfflier]

Boeing is a once great company that is now amuck in Deep State dirt through and through in its operations.

Details please.

[Zhang Fei]

[All of the negative Boeing news right now is a media created sensationalism tailored to headline readers.
All of the events after the blown door are airline maintenance and operations issues and not Boeing design or manufacturing issues.

The two crashes before that were third world airlines and many simulations since the crashes have shown that the situations were survivable if the pilots flew the plane rather than rode in it.

Whistle blowers are a dime a dozen when there is a chance for 15 minutes of fame.

Completely ignored in the biased reporting is that every airplane involved in recent incidents landed safely without loss of life or even injury.

My suggestion now is to buy Boeing stock while they are down.]

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If securities fraud can be proven, there’s potentially a bounty to be collected. But it’s a slender reed.

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https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower
[Assistance and information from a whistleblower who knows of possible securities law violations can be among the most powerful weapons in the law enforcement arsenal of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Through their knowledge of the circumstances and individuals involved, whistleblowers can help the Commission identify possible fraud and other violations much earlier than might otherwise have been possible. That allows the Commission to minimize the harm to investors, better preserve the integrity of the United States’ capital markets, and more swiftly hold accountable those responsible for unlawful conduct.

The Commission is authorized by Congress to provide monetary awards to eligible individuals who come forward with high-quality original information that leads to a Commission enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the money collected.]

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In the interval, someone with upper middle class spending habits and nominal savings could exhaust his nest egg.

I understand the whistleblower’s angle, but equally accept that Boeing’s commercial unit was starting to take on water, and needed drastic measures to right the ship. As a long-time Boeing watcher who added as it approached 2 digits and got out of my position in the 200s, this is a welcome second chance to get back in.

[pfflier]

As a long-time Boeing watcher who added as it approached 2 digits and got out of my position in the 200s, this is a welcome second chance to get back in.

Yup, Boeing is not going away although they will be politically raked over the coals for every imagined issue in this election year. (Kind of remind you of the Trump lawfare?)

[Blood of Tyrants]

If there really were serious problems, they would have revealed themselves before millions of flight hours, countless take off and landing cycles and hundreds of millions of miles of flight.