The most remarkable thing about the Boeing Company in mid-2024, the American multinational civil aviation and military industry giant, is not its staggering incompetence but that the company still exists.
How many disasters and deaths does it take before government authorities step in and close down or take over operations that have become a threat to societies around the globe?
In an apparently increasingly corrupt and decaying USA, the answer to the question seems to be that there is no upper limit to the number of dead and injured. Perhaps the phenomenon can be seen as a symptom of the state of the USA today, a dying empire teetering on the brink of economic collapse and civil war.
After the 2018 and 2019 crashes the only malfeasance the company’s management was finally held accountable for was deliberately misleading the American aviation authority FAA, a crime without a victim—to be contrasted with causing the deaths of 346 passengers and crew.
Boeing managed to worm its way out of even this significantly milder charge. In fact, it even avoided the court altogether.
The price tag for the settlement, or legal bribe, was 2.5 billion US dollars.
So, US authorities allowed Boeing to carry on and continue to pose a danger to global aviation, most recently exemplified by how the company’s civilian aircraft are now simply falling apart in mid-air, as recently happened over Alaska when a door was torn off a Boeing 737 MAX shortly after takeoff.
What went wrong?
So, what had Boeing done with its new aeroplane, the Boeing 737 MAX, that doomed 346 people to death in 2018 and 2019?
The company had inserted a piece of computer code into the control system, which it kept secret from the FAA, the pilots, and the buyers of the new plane—a few lines of code that, in certain situations, deprived the pilots control over the aeroplane and initiated a nosedive.
The death script was created by the company in an attempt to compensate for substandard aerodynamic properties caused by a design flaw that was created when a new type of engine was attached to the wings of the original Boeing 737 model. The engine was actually too large for the fuselage, which was willfully ignored. The focus seems to have been to save time and money by quickly entering the market—damn the consequences, the FAA, the buyers, and members of the flying public.
Readers who have ever driven an over-engineered ”modern” car where built-in computer systems frequently wrest control of the steering wheel and take off in a different direction from what the driver had in mind, have a taste of how the last seconds of life unfolded for the pilots on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Air Flight 302 on October 19, 2018, and March 10, 2019.
The video below explains in six minutes what went wrong.
Lost in Space
On 5 June 2024, in what was probably intended to be a PR campaign aimed at patching up Boeing’s battered reputation, the company, in collaboration with the American space agency NASA, sent two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), orbiting Earth at an average altitude of 259 miles.
Here too, the technology giant stumbled.
The company’s space capsule, the Boeing Starliner, suffered technical problems, and the astronauts have since been unable to return to Earth using it.
Optics did not improve for Boeing when two of the company’s whistleblowers, John Barnett, 62, and Joshua Dean, 45, both recently died under strange circumstances. Barnett allegedly committed suicide the day before he was to testify against Boeing. Dean died from an infection that developed at a remarkable speed.
The death toll of 346, from the crashes in 2018 and 2019, may thus need to be upgraded to 348 if Barnett and Dean are also considered victims of Boeing.
Depending on the faiths of the two astronauts, Barry Wilmore, 61, and Suni Williams, 58, currently marooned on the International Space Station hurtling through space at 17,100 mph, the number could rise to 350 before the end of 2024.
Whether this happens or not may depend on how Wilmore and Williams are brought down from the ISS.
If NASA itself, SpaceX, or the Russians fly them home, the story will probably end well. But what happens if the company’s management forces the astronauts to fly home in Boeing’s dysfunctional capsule and it burns up during the descent or crashes?
The Pirates Take Over
Until the mid-1990s, Boeing was one of the United States of America’s and the world’s largest and most reputable technology companies.
In 1996, the company fell victim to a coup in which Boeing, until then characterized by world-leading engineering, had its leadership replaced by a cadre of sociopathic pirates whose horizon only extended to next year’s financial statements and was blinded by the shimmering of pirate doubloons to be spirited away by sinking Boeing’s extensive testing and quality assurance programs—the key to the company’s past successes.
The coup took place in the wake of Boeing buying its competitor, McDonnell Douglas Corporation, a deal that ended with MD’s financial hitmen instead wrestling control over Boeing from itself and then starting the race to the bottom.
Readers interested in learning more are recommended to watch the Netflix documentary ”Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” from 2022 or read aviation journalist Peter Robins’ book ”Flying Blind” from 2021.
Trailer: Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022)
The Conscientious Flight Consumer
Readers who want to fly safely today face the challenge of becoming better informed when purchasing flights.
Besides the obvious alternative of stopping flying Boeing altogether, a less safe plan might be to at least avoid the company’s latest and most accident-prone aircraft types: the Boeing 737 MAX and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The flight booking site alternativeairlines.com has published a list of which airlines still fly the death trap Boeing 737 MAX.
For readers who want to dig deeper, the site airsafe.com is reported to have statistics on which aircraft models are most accident-prone.
Sources
- BOEING: Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents Worldwide Operations | 1959‑2022
- Reuters: US prosecutors meet Boeing, crash victims as criminal-charges decision looms
- Newsweek: Boeing Says Starliner Issues Are Fixed, But No Return Date Scheduled
- BBC: Starliner: Nasa to fly new craft to space station
- BBC: Boeing whistleblower John Barnett found dead in US
- Bloomberg: What the Latest 737 Max Incident Means for Boeing
- Bloomberg: Boeing, NASA Don’t Want You to Think Its Astronauts Are Stranded