The report cites inexperienced workforce, exacerbated by the limited pool to hire from in New Orleans and the non-competitive wages Boeing offers compared to other aerospace companies. Mobile and Huntsville are right there. Lol, pony up, Boeing.
And the report mentions operators are given work instructions that lack detail and require the operator to go diving through multiple levels of specifications and historical records to understand what to do. This speaks to inadequate manufacturing engineers and processes, who are putting out the inadequate work instructions. So I’m assuming the non-competitive pay and retention problems apply to their engineers too, not just the hourly operators and mechanics.
Work for Boeing for bad pay and to see this shit in the news? Or hop over to Mobile, AL to work for Airbus at a better wage on a popular commercial plane with good reliability and a good reputation. Decisions, decisions.
the report mentions operators are given work instructions that lack detail and require the operator to go diving through multiple levels of specifications and historical records to understand what to do
Damn, That’s a red flag for anything that flies. I imagine their compliance checklists during assembly are a mess.
I work in automotive as an engineer and that would be a red flag in our industry too. Our safety standards are only a fraction as strict as aerospace for obvious reasons (we’re not shooting cars through the atmosphere at the speed of sound!), but we’d never get away with this with the amount of audits and accountability that we’re held to. This whole saga is absolutely insane.
Hmm, space is a little different because so many products are one-offs. It’s hard to design checklists and detailed procedures when you’re making what are essentially prototypes each time. So you make more general processes and then your engineers apply them as needed to each unique build. It can end up looking like a bit of a mess. Space builds rely a lot on expert techs, good modular documentation, and multiple layers of engineering oversight because things change along the way and you can’t always plan for it.
I’m a process engineer at a different aerospace company. I standardize as much as I can and work hard to make instructions clear but man it’s a struggle. Boeing’s space group needs to pay people enough to retain good talent, because they’re all making decisions all day long.
non-competitive pay and retention problems apply to their engineers too
Bruhh this is how it is pretty much everywhere… The thing is even if the employee is competent there are but so many times being told your labour ain’t shit, you don’t deserve money for it … How many times of no raise will a good worker take before either changing jobs or just doing work that the wages covers.
About time these" leadership" got exposed for their looting
Oh, agreed. And partially why I mentioned Boeing getting smeared in the news in my statement too. Pay means a lot but it’s not everything. Good managers and work a person can be proud of goes a long way.
Space industry attracts a ton of passionate people who would stick around to do cool things for mediocre pay. But not if the pay gets too low and/or when the work is not something to be proud of.
E g., I’ve already got a mediocre paycheck, why accept a mediocre paycheck and the grief of a worsening reputation. Someone currently at Boeing for mediocre pay can find another mediocre job elsewhere but it will still be better because the new company isn’t getting dragged in front of Congress for killing people to save money.
It seems like it is time to nationalize Boeing.
…imagine fuxking NASA pulling this off. After so many fuckups in USA that didn’t end with nationalising, a goddamn NASA going “welp, that’s it” and managing to push for nationalising Boeing…
NASA’s biggest issue over the last 35 years is that it became a political target. It is really hard to do long term design when your mission changes every 4 years along with a different budget. NASA should have a budget that is only reapproved every 30 years and should not have to worry about outside influence from a president dictating its mission.
Them and the military. There’s only one other major airplane military contractor, Lockheed, and then a couple of smaller companies.
The 6th gen fighter program, Next Generation Air Dominance, is supposed to be a family of planes where one human plane controls a small squadron of drones of various models. The Air Force gave contracts for two of those drones to some of the smaller companies beside Boeing and Lockheed. They tend not to come right out and say these things, but a good guess as to why is that they don’t want to have those two be the only options.
Oh god, they certainly don’t deserve that. When a company screws up this bad you don’t buy them… Fuck…
You just stop giving them contracts and watch them go belly up. Problem solved. We have plenty of other aerospace companies to fill the void and plenty of new startups who would love the chance to prove themselves.
When a company is collapsing in on itself, why would you want to pay a bunch of executives for privilege of inheriting their mess? Wait… are you the CEO of Boeing?
Gotta pad those CEO bonuses somehow!
C’mon man, you know that 40 million dollar sign in bonus is absolutely necessary to get at least your garage and kitchen in order when you move.
Honestly most of that gets eaten up just airlifting my mansion. I’m sick of doing it, but I’m glad I invested early in the airliftable frame kit when I had the place built. The foundations wouldn’t have held up more than one or two moves otherwise, and there’s no way I’m commuting more than 15 mins.
Just like their planes. Al Jazeera made a really awesome documentary about Boeing and their terrible quality control. They gave some workers at one of the major Boeing assembly facilities hidden cameras and microphones, and let them interview their colleagues. The factory is full of crackheads, and most of Boeing’s own employees who literally put the fucking planes together said that they wouldn’t fly on these planes themselves.
At this point the government just needs to sue Boeing into bankruptcy. They cannot be allowed to continue to gamble with others’ lives while taking taxpayer money
The need to seize the company. Boeing holds too many military contracts to be allowed to die. They build planes for the military, so they’ll get an inevitable bailout.
Instead, the government should start seizing parts of the company as part of the bailout. “Oh hey, we paid you all this money, so we own these parts of the company now. Shareholders have been fairly compensated for it by the bailout money, so you can’t say it’s unfair. You have proven that your leadership is lacking and you can’t be allowed to operate without oversight. So now that we own large swaths of the company, we’ll be making lots of the big decisions.”
