We often use the word “iconic” to describe companies such as Xerox, U.S. Steel and General Electric when we really mean “no longer great.” And Boeing no longer is.
That company’s already turbulent reputation suffered another jolt this month when a door plug — a fake door that replaces a real one in some airliner configurations — on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out at about 16,000 feet. The gaping hole in the fuselage terrified passengers, but the pilots calmly landed the aircraft. Max 9s with that configuration were grounded temporarily, and Congress demanded answers. Investigations have commenced into the 737 Max 9, a fairly new jet freighted with Boeing’s penchant for producing flawed aircraft.
With flights already full, the system can ill afford the grounding of 171 737 Max 9s. Neither can Boeing, which is now paying the price for a shift in its corporate culture made decades ago.
Aerospace was the West Coast’s original geek technology: Hughes Aircraft, Douglas Aircraft, Northrop, North American, Lockheed and others in California and Boeing in Seattle. These companies thrived during World War II, churning out aircraft for the military. The postwar era was also kind, with the Cold War, the space program and the expansion of commercial aviation providing ample customers. But by the 1970s, aerospace was being supplanted by semiconductors, and the military business sagged after the Vietnam War ebbed. Hughes, Douglas and North American disappeared in acquisitions and mergers.
Boeing survived and thrived, sustained by an engineering culture steeped in designing superior aircraft built to demanding tolerances. Its airplanes were industry-changing. The 707 in 1958 replaced prop engines and led the early jet age; the twin-deck, 360-seat 747, the industry’s first wide-body, democratized overseas air travel in 1970. The 737, introduced in 1967, is arguably the most successful short-haul airliner in aviation history. This stubby, single-aisle original proved so reliable that it got stretched, repowered and redesigned repeatedly.
By 2020, Boeing itself had in a way been stretched, redesigned and repowered in a series of corporate restructurings that each yielded its own defects. Since the mid-1990s, the company has bought out McDonnell Douglas, a domestic rival, moved its headquarters twice, shifted some assembly to the East Coast (which allowed the company to sidestep the unions) and changed chief executives the way you would planes in Atlanta.
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