McDonnell Douglas was in trouble long before Stonecipher took over. The writing was on the wall. McDonnell Douglas did not have (and could not raise) the capital to develop a new commercial airliner. Everything was just evolutions of DC-9s (MD-80, 88, 95 and the ‘717’
) and derivatives of the DC-10 (MD-11). As a result they were always eating the scraps left over from Boeing and Airbus. Then we “merge” and the new Boeing has a commanding share of the commercial aircraft market. Then, Boeing kills off the MD commercial planes and 3-4 years after we merge, Airbus does the unthinkable and overtakes Boeing in market share. Hardly MD’s fault that early in the game.
The C-17 was struggling with structural challenges due to its revolutionary use of carbon fiber. The early 90s were tough. John McDonnell was a great guy, but the ironic thing again was that I think McDonnell Douglas was too focused on the technical side and not the financial and they just slipped into the red year after year…. Then came Stonecipher…
I was in the manned space flight part of the company (Spacelab, mostly) but transitioned to work on Space Station when we merged. Boeing had dropped the ball so badly on the ISS program (zero award fee one year) that McDonnell Douglas basically took over and pulled it back out of the ditch.