2024-01-11 05:00:15
After the disaster averted on board an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9, part of the fuselage of which was torn off, Friday January 5, the CEO of the American aircraft manufacturer, David Calhoun, made amends in front of the executives of Boeing gathered, Tuesday January 9, urgently: “We will approach this first by admitting our mistake”he explained, adding that airlines were “deeply shaken”, but that they were going to keep their ” trust in [eux] all “.
Really ? After inspections of other devices showed that the screws in the part that blocks the space reserved for a possible additional emergency door were not properly tightened? After the disaster of two 737 MAXs in 2018 (Lion Air, Indonesia, 189 deaths) and 2019 (Ethiopian Airlines, 157 deaths), which revealed design flaws and a desire for concealment from American regulatory authorities?
We can argue, like some financial analysts, that this is a quality control problem that will quickly be overcome. In reality, trust in Boeing is broken. “They went back five years. Calhoun needs to do something drastic to get out of this. This is a company that seems to care more regarding profits than safety.”, accused Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth University (New Hampshire), on January 9 on CNBC.
Savings policy
In fact, the software of Mr. Calhoun and the Boeing teams is in question. The boss is a disciple of Jack Welch (1935-2020), who, as director of General Electric from 1981 to 2001, made it the most powerful company in the world, prioritizing profitability. The conglomerate collapsed and ended up dismantled, while Jack Welch is accused of having killed American industrial capitalism. His heirs, including Mr. Calhoun, are today accused of killing Boeing, a giant of civil and military aeronautics. Too big to fall, it would perhaps have foundered if it was not strategic and had not been saved by the advantageous refinancing of the “Covid years”.
It all goes back to the shift in corporate culture that occurred at the turn of the century, with the rise of Airbus, which the firm had never taken seriously, and the race to save money. As the journalist Peter Robison explains in his book Flying Blind (“flying blind”, Anchor Books, 2021, untranslated), the company slogan, ” work together “became “more for less”. Boeing has moved from a culture of engineers to a culture of financiers and salespeople. Despite its setbacks, it is worth more than Airbus on the stock market.
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