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Boeing Halted from Further Max Production Increases by FAA (bloomberg.com)
19 points by mfiguiere on Jan 24, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 24 comments



> CEO Calhoun to address investors in Jan. 31 earnings call

Of course, the short-sighted investors will drive the stock price down, and Boeing will cut more corners in other plane models, instead of driving the stock price up to fund safety efforts.

The entire world relies on Boeing and Airbus, if they shut down the world's economy will grind to a halt, FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL will stop functioning, executives can't travel, emergency medical care will cease to exist, families will be isolated, and tourism will die.

Their budgets for safety efforts and R&D for the transportation of ALL of the above and trillions of dollars worth of global economy should NOT be at the mercy of some armchair hooligans on Wall Street.


Is this comment tongue-in-cheek? We all know any increases in the stock price are certainly not going to fund "safety efforts" unless "safety efforts" has become a euphemism for "executive bonuses."


I don't care about the bonuses, that doesn't affect me. One thing is for sure, if budgets get cut, safety WILL get cut, and that does affect me.


the safety of the lifestyle to which the C-suite has become accustom is paramount.


Clearly the solution is to split them up into working market competition again rather than creating a single point of failure in the US economy.

It’s worse than the too big to fail banks at this point.

At minimum we need to align in incentives. CEOs and Boards held accountable, with their personals assets and in case of system issues jail


You know there are other aircraft manufacturers right? Embraer, Bombardier, Mitsubishi etc. Sure they can't just spin up a fully working airliner production line tomorrow, but Boeing going away isn't an apocalypse level event.


How many of those other vendors named are US companies? I'm sympathetic to the idea of attempting to keep US capabilities in this field a viable option. Sadly, those efforts were bamboozled to look like a boondoggle instead of actual strategic value.


Not being a US citizen, I don't have much sympathy. If the US degrades its strategic military capability by playing capitalist race-to-the-bottom sillybuggers, that's their lookout.


> Embraer, Bombardier, Mitsubishi

Except for Embraer, which has a foothold in the regional jet market, none is relevant.

Mitsubishi is not able to bring a regional jet to fruition and Bombardier (which designed an excellent plane) is now Airbus (the A220 series).


Given a gap in the market I don't see why Mitsubishi or Bombardier couldn't fill that gap. Bombardier only sold their airliner capability due to Boeing/US trade fuckery. Mitsubishi can make fighter jets, rockets and warships so I don't see why an airliner is such a stretch.

Again, sure they don't have that capability today, but GP seems to think if Boeing goes away we'd be doomed.


OK so maybe we should collectively agree as a species to bid up the stocks of these companies before bidding down the stocks of Boeing so that they have time to ramp up production.


Unfortunately, Boeing gone today won't make muchbissue other than a blip of inconvenience for maybe 3-5 years. Airbus will easily pick up the slack. What scares the western world is Russia and especially China will flourish. Take EVs, we all praise Tesla and mock slowmo Toyota, meanwhile BYD just overtook Tesla in Dec 2023 making Tesla on path to be Solyndra for Biden. I already put money to China aviation industry stocks for the long haul.


I wonder what happened at the FAA to make them not so scared of their own shadow? Has the public been voicing their concerns to elected officials that someone feels pressure? Is someone at the FAA looking at the future and realizing they can make a name for themselves? Did someone at Boeing have an affair with an FAA official's spouse? Like really, as feckless as the FAA has been with regard to Boeing, why now?


My guess: people died, then people almost died.

The repetition of different problems in the same line of aircraft probably had something to do with it too ...


so at 300+ deaths of primarily non-US citizens we just get to concerned, but then the near death of primarily US citizens it moved to action required?

the idea that the FAA allowed Boeing to self certify happened well before that happened and is a very large contributing factor for it occurring. based on time frames, the assumption would be that the FAA leadership has changed, but i'm not well versed in how often that changes. some research and rabbit holes looks in my future


Let me clarify a bit here, there was a flaw (the MCAS issue) the caused a crash and a lot of people died. Supposedly the issue was fixed and steps were taken to correct the culture problems that led to the MCAS issue in the first place. Politics are involved etc.

Now we see a second serious (the door plugs) issue and another undocumented "feature" (the cockpit door behavior). So not only were the culture issues not fixed, but we have more problems and the same class of problem in the same line of planes that we've already seen. That burns political capitol and public good will very fast, plus tends to piss off investigators...


There is an additional element of bad timing for seemingly unrelated issues. Since December 2023 several other issues have cropped up that, related or not and whether or not Boeing’s fault, make it a tough time to trust Boeing is competent when added all together.

Just a day or two ago a Boeing serving a flight from Atlanta to Bogota lost a nose wheel.

The public is understandably starting to have a negative association with Boeing. This is a big problem for the US in broader terms because they’re the only large scale passenger jet manufacturing company we have and represent an important strategic asset.


Why is it the US responsibility for stopping the flight of planes in other countries?


assumption that a lot of other countries look at the FAA as the lead on which to follow. several other countries operate with much less restrictions than those the FAA mandates, but if the FAA grounds a model of plane, everyone else will take notice. other countries are free to ground planes as they see fit and do not need to wait for the FAA. but i'm guessing there's real politik involved.

also why FAA? they are the ones that approved Boeing self certifying, so they have a lot of water to carry here.


Why dont other countries take responsibility for themselves?


if you just want to continue repeating the same question without considering the response you were provided, then this is were the convo stops


But why dont countries take responsibility for themselves?

Ive been wondering that for a while about A LOT of things.



Clawback the CEO bonus




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