Boeing Engineering Crisis Started Long Ago

Boeing’s engineering crisis became visible to the public with the 737 MAX crashes, but has been ongoing for over a decade, affecting all developments.

Many point at the McDonnell Douglas merger as Boeing’s rotation to squeeze out every dollar.

Boeing should learn that safety is not a relative thing that you stick to when it pleases you and a commodity you trade when schedule risk needs to be mitigated.

Having followed the industry for years, however, it also should be noted that Boeing has had issues on almost all its recent designs. In this report, I will discuss these issues per aircraft program. While Boeing’s “mistakes” will be highlighted in the report, I think it’s very appropriate to be aware that aircraft design is complex. We are talking about aircraft that need to be able to take off from a 3-4 kilometer runway, climb to 30,000-40,000 feet and land safely again, each and every day. If this were an easy task, every country would have a jet maker in the same way almost every country has an airline.

Without further ado, let’s look at some of the challenges Boeing had on various programs.

(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com