Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.
 

Just finished watching this on Netflix.
An eye-opener for me. A lot of Boeing history that I didn't know.

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And people laugh at me when I tell them I don't fly and won't fly.

But you drive?

worked at Boeing for 20 years. Shim to fit and drifting a hole is common practice.

^^^ They talk about things left in critical places after maintenance on the Netflix docu.
One was a ladder left in the rudder section!

Sounds like an upgrade that adds stiffness! Just like a strut tower brace in an old 911!

FOD ......... the silent killer in the aircraft industry . I did 26 years with Lockheed Martin with my last 8 in Aero . Built F22/F35/C130/C5 in a production control capacity . No matter how much you train/*****/complain/discipline we always were finding FOD .

People's lives depend on a clean well built aircraft . No grey area it all has to be right . People tend to get lazy and that can bite you back hard . I don't miss the stress of that environment .

Fod?

Foreign Object Damage

B
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We called it Foreign Object Debris.
The mindset of those who build planes is/was fundamentally different than that required to build satellites. Planes were/are always expected to return to earth so you can fix them. Satellites are usually one and done as in once it's up there it ain't comin' back for repairs.
It was hard for management to get that thru their heads when They took over Hughes sat's.

Foreign object damage or foreign object debris as others have stated . Basically anything found inside the aircraft that shouldn't be there is considered FOD . It can be metal shavings to tools and everything in between . All FOD is a no no but in our shop any FOD found in fuel tank bladders REALLY got everyone's attention .
DCMA ( government oversight quality ) would really make life miserable ( rightly so ) if FOD was a repeat offender . Just think about how many rivets are in a C130 . Then make sure there are NO SHAVINGS anywhere . Tough work but we were paid well and proudly delivered bird after bird with minimal issues .

iirc, it was FOD which popped a Concorde tire and took out an engine on takeoff.

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FOD is, and always will be a critical factor in the aviation industry.

So the moral of the story is, Don't Buy a McDonnell Douglas satellite?

In my 30yrs as an engineer at Douglas/McDonnell Douglas/Boeing, I had annual FOD training even though I was not involved in the production process. When I needed to visit a line, there were signs everywhere in the factory and on the aircraft warning about FOD. You would have to be blind not to see them.

Same here. Last flight was may 2012. Wife hates me now cause I wont go anywhere

Watching film now

True. Totally irrational fear. For me, it’s several very bad flights and paranoia from too many variables out of my control and probably being close to the WTC on 9/11

Still, no doubt it’s safe. If I could fly the plane, I would feel a lot better about flying

Well, at least you're honest about it. Gotta be little uncomfortable around vacation time?
I've pulled hundreds of broken and dead people from cars and fortunately for me, hasn't pushed me to that level of anxiety.
We flew into ERW in the first hours after it opened post 9/11 and never looked back. Of course, I'm not that bright.

I commuted for years in NYC on a motorcycle in a t-shirt and slip on vans sneakers. I smoked 2 packs a day for 30 something years…..so…….it has nothing to do with rational thought

It’s a fear I really don’t want to get over I guess

similar to my -no swimming in the ocean- rule. Sharks.

This film is only bound to reinforce my paranoia…so, staycations will continue for the foreseeable future Hahah

Growing up in seattle it seemed like all my grandparents friends worked at boeing. Excellent people, active in the outdoors and loved living in the pnw.

Exciting stories for me were explaining the processes to build the 747 reliably. People were really striving and not sure it could be done.

I knew very few career people at boeing from my parents generation and almost no one in my generation.

Reading the latest max stuff makes my blood boil. Those dip**** execs deserve to be in jail. I pay extra to not fly boeing and I let the airlines know.

Rotten company, treats their employees badly and I want them to fail.

^^^
After watching the movie...it sounds like the real problems started after the MD merger.
Does that sound right?

Don't watch the ending...if the execs bother you. You won't like it.

Thank Harry Stonecipher.

Having worked in construction building homes, when the great recession hit, I worked at Boeing in SC for a year. It was miserable working butt cheek to butt cheek on the inside of the barrel at station 10(?) in the 20 building (mid-body). There were some honest hard-working folks, but there were a lot of non-technical idiots building the 787. I said I would never fly be 787 and haven’t.

FOD was big, but when you’re working in some areas trying to install very small fasteners and collars, sometimes it would fall down into the bottom of the barrel and not to be found. Hopefully somebody found it.

Edit: When we moved the barrel from one station to the next it was called a line move. If the work done in station 10 was not complete, it was rolled to station 20 where it was done before, during and after station 20s job. This meant working off scaffolds instead of a platform, having to work around, over, under station 20s work. It may move down line with 100 jobs to be done, but upper management was happy it move down line early. 🙄

I had a couple friends that worked on the flight line and they were doing jobs from mid body and final assembly to get the plane 100%. They had to go back to buildings 19, 20 and final assembly to get parts to finish it.

I was friends with the older crowd right up until they died. Such amazing elegant people. Great minds and sharp right up until the end. Structured thinking made for amazing stories. They were really upset by the md merger. Really didn't like the new executives who they said really changed the culture to be more focused on shareholders. Felt like a lot of what they'd worked to achieve was being ignored and that it was going to end badly. They were intensly focused on quality, was amazing to hear them describe the issues with managing complexity because of course its the main problem with software. Was weird where I count functions and lines of code, they're counting screws and tons of metal and yet there were a lot of similarities.

The move to chicago was the end as far as they were concerned. Story I heard (from two very very senior people) was that some cadre of execs wanted better clubs to belong to. I told them I thought they were joking but nope... Folks I knew thought it was important to be connected to the factory and talk to the workers directly.

I took a class sponsored by boeing and was incredibly depressing to visit their software teams. At the end of the class nobody applied to work there.

What really turned me off was the worshipful attitude everyone had for the execs - looked to me like a serious organizational sickness if execs want to be brown nosed. Job like that you should have nowhere to hide.

Edit: forgot: also spent a few evenings with a recent boeing president. What a complete and utter douche. Could be all that brownnosing caused his compass to become unstuck - he seemed to think he was the sun king. He did not like to have his opinions questioned, was like I'd pooped in his wine glass.

I see.

I have no experience with Boeing, so I won't comment,

I did, however, spend 3 plus years at the Sikorsky Factory as the Government Flight Representative managing all flight test and acceptance activity in Bridgeport and their West Palm Beach test facility. I managed QA, other DCMA activities and all the pilots, military and civilian. I also flew everyday.

I also set up Special Depot Level Maintenance (basically rework of older aircraft) lines and was part of an inspection team that tried to fix the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) - there were Navy H-60's being reworked there as well as Blackhawks.

I helped write the FAR Clauses dealing with aircraft production, 8210 and 8220 (which are probably on the tenth rewrite) and went through significant Kazan training courses.

Lastly, I managed two new models of H-60, the S and the R, from concept to first flight. Six years.

So, with all that, I can state that FOD is just one manifestation of poor management, there are many others. Production lines reflect the ethos of management at all levels.

Sikorsky was actually pretty good...the upper management was at the factory and my boss had complete access to them. It really helped. Their QA folks were excellent and we worked hand in hand to address any production issues up stream from the flight facility.

CCAD, on the other hand, government run, was a complete mess. The Navy line was over a year late in scheduled deliveries and the fleet acceptance crews would bring Navy maintenance folks with them to completely FOD check every place they possible could. A fleet pre-flight that would maybe stretch to an hour took four days.

Production lines are, duh, very complex affairs that involve the air frame and all the dynamic components to make it fly. The pressure to maintain quality, cost and schedule are ever present.

I have so many stories on this type of stuff. Thanks for the post, btw, interesting video.

It used to be "if it ain't Boeing I ain't going". Not so much now eh?

The pressures of cost and schedule definitely have an impact . For C130's there was no grey area you had to pop a bird out every 30 days . You ever see a C130? There are a lot of parts on that bird . Controlling outside supply chain AND internal builds made me a heavy drinker 😋.

A few years ago there was a major fire at the propeller plant in England . They were sole source 🥺 . Not sure who's bright idea it was to sole source such a critical part but I am sure someone got a bonus for it 😡 . I think every Depot on the planet was called to pull in parts to keep the production on schedule . I don't miss any of my work life 😁

When I was at Sikorsky, we were making/re-working over 150 helicopters a year.

With the helicopters, we had to put "torque time" on the aircraft before we DD-250'ed (bought them). Nine hours for each H-60, twenty-five hours for the H-53's. We also flew deliveries when required. Torque checks ensured the helicopter was go to go.

How does the old joke go: They drove me to drink but for me it was only a short putt.

I expect Dr. Higgins to tell us the company was ruined by the accountants, about 20 years ago or so. My friends who worked there said the company made a philosophical and strategic 180-degree turn at some point. Major US manufacturer and yet....I think an example should be made of them. That's a shame. A self-inflicted one.

There are no guarentees in life and there is risk in every activity we engage in.

This story reminds me of how John Denver died. He was a competent pilot and he was flying on a day with good weather but he made a simple mistake of not having enough gas in the tank he was using. But that mistake wasn't enough to kill him. The guy who built his Long EZ decided he was smarter than the guy who designed it, Burt Rutan.

Rutan put the fuel switch valve in between the pilot's legs so it could be easy to get to. The builder clown put the valve behind the pilot and over his shoulder (left?). The valve was sticky and needed a vice grip to move.

So Denver took the plane up for a spin without ensuring he had enough fuel in the tank he was running on and he didn't know the fuel valve had a problem.

Avaition accidents like these are almost always caused by a chain of errors. If one of the links is broken then the accident doesn't happen and we never hear about it. We only hear about the accidents that do happen and not the near misses.

I don't worry about these things. I don't fly anymore because flying is a huge pain in the butt. The planning and reservations required, the dealing with airports and now there is COVID.

Yeah, as a matter of fact I do drive. I get air sickness like nobodies business so it really takes the fun out of going places via plane. My wife refuses to fly anywhere with me because of it too.

And in addition to all the normal chaos throw in implementation of 6S lean principles . Come to think about it , I didn't drink enough 😁

I heard about this doco and plan on seeing it but I also did some reading.

Can I say, I'm really surprised that a company like Boeing would be this bad??????

Like WTF happened? They were number one for how long??????? :confused::eek:

Nothing is harder on laurels than resting upon them.

Best
Les

I don't want to spoil it...but the docu explains a lot of what led up to it.
It's worth watching.

Worked there 37 years, retired in 2015. Culture changed radically after the merger.

^^^ 37 years...that's a good run.
I had 39 in when I retired...a big part of my life.
Funny...but 2015 is the year I retired also. (end of May 2015)

Where you a Boeing guy? My dad worked there 39 years, started right after the Korean Conflict. I started in Renton as a 727 final assembly mechanic in 1978. Served a machinist apprenticeship with Boeing Aerospace at Plant II and went on from there.

We can thank Uncle Phil and Uncle Harry, the company went from an engineering firm to a cost driven one after the merger.

There is a book out that covers the story, Flying Blind by Peter Robison.