Boeing is getting a ton of richly deserved bad press these days. The company that was once the very definition of engineering excellence has, since its ill-starred 1997 takeover of McDonnell-Douglas, devolved into a bottom-seeking pursuer of profit above everything else.
Harsh, I know.
In 2018 and 2019, two then-new 737 MAX 8 aircraft crashed after software designed to prevent stalls ended up violently pushing the nose down so severely and repeatedly that the pilots fought their planes all the way into the ground.
Last month a stretched MAX 9 variant of the jet belonging to Alaska Airlines had a door plug blow out mid-flight because bolts designed to secure it were somehow left off at the factory. Thankfully everyone survived.
The MAX itself was the result of a botched decision to re-engineer a 1960s-era design well beyond its reasonable design limits instead of starting over with a clean-sheet design. Investors liked the cheap roadmap, despite the fact that it resulted in a frankenplane that had no business being in the sky.
Those crashes? Caused by the MCAS software that was introduced precisely because the new, more efficient engines were too large to be mounted under the wing. So they were pushed forward and upward, which impacted the plane’s balance, hence necessitating the software.
Making matters worse, Boeing fed data to the software through only one sensor - a no-no in an industry where safety depends on redundancy - and then charged airlines extra for warning lights on the flight deck.
Boeing also lobbied to minimize retraining requirements for pilots transitioning from older 737 models, arguing the new plane was almost identical to the old. It wasn’t, and pilots had no idea what a monster MCAS could be.
The problems aren’t limited to the plane once lovingly called Fat Albert. 787s have suffered huge delivery delays because assembly workers kept leaving debris behind, and the next-generation 777X is years behind schedule.
Travellers used to say if it’s not Boeing, I’m not going. These days, they’re simply not going.
Which makes this photo hard to look at. Boeing calls it the AT Winglet, and it graces the wingtips of every MAX. It ostensibly reduces drag, which improves efficiency.
Beyond that, though, it’s a piece of highly refined engineering art, a tightly drawn example of why aviation can be a stunningly beautiful space if you know where to look.
It’s hard to reconcile the stark beauty of an advanced wing design against the rotting culture that produced it. It’s hard to understand the flawed groupthink that, within the space of a generation, managed to turn a one-time shining star into a global laughingstock. We’ll be studying this downfall in business schools for generations. As we should.
In the meantime, I’ll take an Airbus. Their winglets aren’t quite as lovely, but loveliness is only part of the equation.
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