Boeing, get it together.
Outlining Boeing’s never-ending downfall in the aerospace industry
Design by Kevin Xiang, Editor-in chief
Neha Gurram, Staff Writer
As I’m writing the draft for this article, I’m sitting on a four-hour flight to California (thank God for the Google Docs offline option), but all that’s going through my head is: What if I’m on an aircraft made by Boeing? Is this flight even safe? These thoughts in my mind shouldn’t just be played off for bouts of paranoia; they’re actually pretty valid considering the long list of (life-costing) “mistakes” that the company has made. Boeing is one of the most prominent aerospace companies that specializes in the construction of aircrafts, rockets, missiles, and satellites. However, over the years they’ve been put under the magnifying glass for several company scandals and safety issues found with their planes, and the list is so long that even I’m wondering: when will Boeing get it together?
A company really isn’t a company without its employees, and Boeing’s employees live up to that. In 2008, a worker faced a work transfer he disliked; in retaliation, he decided to cut 70 wires out of a military-grade helicopter, and he blamed his actions on being stressed out. You would think that Boeing would instill better supervision in the workplace after this very public incident, but in 2011 the police arrested Boeing workers in Pennsylvania for maintaining a drug ring at the factory that’s supposed to be making military-grade aircrafts. The federal government ended up finding hard drugs like oxycontin and fentanyl being sold in and out of the factory. I wish I could say that was the end of it, but it’s not. In 2014, a video was found with multiple Boeing employees claiming that the use of drugs like cocaine and meth was commonplace in the 787 Dreamliner (an infamous Boeing airplane) factory. Some employees of the factory even went on to say that they would never fly on a 787 Dreamliner aircraft. Once again, Boeing management failed to supervise their employees or conduct drug tests to ensure drug users aren’t working on machines that are supposed to fly people 42,000 feet up in the air. Did the care for innocent lives leave the room just like the employees’ sanity after inhaling a line of coc’?
The actions of the employees created unforgivable consequences and ended up taking the lives of many. In 2019, the Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airline Flight 302 crashed causing 346 people to die in total. And the common denominator of each crash? The Boeing 737 Max. These crashes finally caused Boeing to take accountability for their poor work and management in front of the Senate. Later on, Boeing leadership fired CEO Dennis Muilenber from the company with hopes that new leadership would lead to new change. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Fast-forward to 2024, the door of a Boeing 737 Max detached from the plane a couple of minutes after takeoff, and as a Mission Impossible fanatic, incidents like this usually led Tom Cruise to need to take a parachute and jump off the plane. So yes, even in the cinema world, this is a pretty big deal. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. The company was also faced with a whistleblower named John Barnett claiming that there were safety issues with the 787 Dreamliner. After a deposition with Boeing’s attorneys, he was found dead. I’m not saying the timing of his death had anything to do with Boeing, but the fact that the company had a whistleblower raising safety concerns about the plane goes to show how Boeing still puts safety last, just like in the past. Similar to the CEO in 2019, David Calhoun will step down from Boeing leadership at the end of 2024. So really, how much has Boeing changed since its downfall in 2019?
I currently have two hours and 15 minutes before I land, and so far I have to say the flight has been pretty smooth sailing, but I can’t say the same thing for Boeing, and only time will tell when I’ll be able to. But for now, my question still stands: when will Boeing get it together?
