How Boeing CEO’s Catastrophic Reign Could Become Criminal
Actually, what is emerging now is just the tip of the iceberg, of the most significant fraud in American corporate history! In fact, the soon to be removed CEO Calhoun, is just one of the gang of thieves. They enormously enriched themselves at the cost of Boeing’s once pristine and well earned reputation as America’s greatest company!
Then there are the wholly unnecessary deaths of the 346 passengers of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, whose families have suffered not only the loss of their loved ones but also the outrageous lies and obfuscation of Boeing’s in-house murderers, oops, I mean management!
Going forward, much more will be revealed about the conspiracy between BA‘s leadership and the FAA, to launch a deeply flawed 737 Max. They jointly withheld critical information from the most important players in the drama, the pilots and the passengers. In doing so, they ignored the most fundamental law of aeronautics and everything else in life, ie:“The Law of Cause and Effect.” In essence they failed to apply even the most basic code of ethical conduct to themselves, all to increase the value of management’s enormous holdings of the stock.
How has that worked out for them? Their lessons are just beginning! For us it is to always keep our standards high, if for no other reason than the fundamental truth that,“What Goes Around DOES Come Around!”
Our deepest sympathies to the families. We are just an observer, but so sorry for your losses and the pain you have endured..
Find Rob’s book & ebook “What Goes Around Comes Around – A Guide To How Life REALLY Works” at Amazon or Audible
Kirkus Reviews says:
A stable, nonpreachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes of real human experiences to reveal powerful truths about life.
How Boeing CEO’s Catastrophic Reign Could Become Criminal
Calhoun and his board have long used Boeing as an ATM, putting profits over safety. And now the DOJ thinks the aerospace giant should be charged.
Dave Calhoun’s stewardship of Boeing as its CEO has been catastrophic. As he prepares to go, comforted by a $45 million retirement package, Boeing could soon face something virtually unthinkable for such a legendary company—criminal charges.
As first reported by Reuters, federal prosecutors have decided to recommend that the Justice Department prosecute Boeing for violating the terms of a deal made in 2021 in which a charge of committing fraud related to two crashes involving the 737 MAX that killed 346 people was deferred—as long as Boeing kept a pledge to seriously overhaul its compliance with safety regulations. The prosecutors say that the pledge has not been kept.
But the overriding charge leveled at Calhoun is that he, together with his board and major stockholders, have used the company as a gushing ATM, putting making money ahead of making airplanes.
Aviation history suggests that the one thing that every head of an airplane company wants to do is to retire with at least one new jet attached to his name.
But, strange as it may seem, the last thing Calhoun wanted to do during his tenure was to build a new airplane, even though one was badly needed to remain competitive with Boeing’s main rival Airbus.
The families of those killed in the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610—both Boeing jets—protested Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun as he testified at the Capitol last week. (Andrew Harnik/Getty)
In this, he was following the lead of James McNerney, who was Boeing’s CEO from 2005 to 2015. Calhoun became a director in 2009. Both had been executives at General Electric and were avid apostles of the now-discredited Jack Welch and his cost and job-slashing dogma.
In 2011 McNerney, with the backing of Calhoun, decided that instead of replacing the 737, designed in the 1960s, with a new “clean sheet” jet to compete with the Airbus A320, a 1980s design that was ahead of its time in technology and was much easier to upgrade than the 737, they would give the aging 737 one more stretch.
And so was born the 737 MAX. Not only did this turn out to be a seriously flawed jet. Instead of being the “low-cost derivative” the two crashes, and the quality control and safety issues that have plagued it since, have so far cost Boeing at least $87bn.
And this is where Calhoun starts to play with numbers in an attempt to justify his aversion to a new jet. Initially, he and McNerney put the cost of developing a new jet at between $15 billion and $20 billion.
As Boeing got deeper and deeper into a hole, Calhoun upped the price of a notional new jet until in 2020 he put it at $50 billion, a number he sticks with hoping that it is big enough to deter stockholders from wanting a new jet as long as he runs the company.
But, of course, the reality is that if Boeing wants to stay in the commercial airplane business it needs a new airplane. Whoever succeeds Calhoun will have to take that decision, whatever it costs (few experts believe it will be anything like $50 billion).
And, as that successor clears up the mess left by Calhoun they should also take a look at Boeing’s history and consider whether it contains the answer to one key part of that mess—how the company lost its mojo.
In 1992, when I wrote a book, Wide-Body, tracking the history of Boeing from the Jet Age to their greatest gamble, the creation of the world’s first wide-body jet, the 747, I interviewed more than a score of the engineers who designed the first jets.
Doubling the speed of air travel from around 300 mph to 600 mph, as did their first jet, the 707, introduced serious challenges to pilot skills and the whole safety regime. Crashes were far more common then than now, and seen partly as an inevitable cost of a huge growth in world air travel. During its almost three decades in service, the 707 was involved in 174 fatal crashes, killing a total of more than 3,000 people.
That accident rate would be intolerable now, and Boeing’s learning curve was steep, driven by the urgency to make flying far safer. As those engineers mastered and tamed their machines they virtually wrote the world’s benchmark standards for designing safety into every detail of a new jet.
The abysmal early record of the 737 MAX, its crashes, and the multiple flaws in the way it was certified as safe when it was not, would have shocked those pioneers.
But their company culture was different. Boeing’s original corporate headquarters was alongside Boeing Field, the hallowed Seattle base where every new jet was tested. Every day, the men who made the decisions at the top of the company had a keenly felt visceral contact with the machines they made and sold by just looking out the window. There was a tangible magic to that connection. Even the most beady-eyed accountant could get high on the sheer glamour and style of a new Boeing airplane.
That connection was lost when, in 2001, the company decided to leave its Seattle roots and move the C-suite to Chicago. (Calhoun moved it again in 2022, to Arlington, Virginia, to get closer to its main military customer, the Pentagon.)
Is something as atmospheric as the physical connection between a company’s executives and what they make and sell decisive in its quality of leadership?
Clearly, that’s an idea that Calhoun and his Wall Street-driven short-termism has no time for.
But when what you make can kill lots of people if you get careless about how you make it there should be serious reflection about the causes. In the case of Boeing, there was a foundational magic of place involved in how a rigorous safety culture was built. In that business, proximity has value.
Boeing’s main competitor, Airbus, now the world’s dominant commercial airplane maker, has its top managers in Toulouse, alongside the airfield where, in 1972, its first commercial jet made its debut. On visits with those managers, I have found the same palpable pride in a local achievement—the same magic—that I saw in Seattle (and, let it be said, until recently, a respect and even reverence for Boeing).
Calhoun and his managerial cohort have never felt the magic. As he was being grilled by senators recently Calhoun trotted out his standard bromide about “our culture is still not where it should be.” It’s really about where he should have been.
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What Goes Around Comes Around:
A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
The stable, positive, non-preachy and objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
How Boeing CEO’s Catastrophic Reign Could Become Criminal
How Boeing CEO’s Catastrophic Reign Could Become Criminal
U.S. Coast Guard Academy, in New London, Connecticut between 1988 and 2006, including the revelation of leaders who discouraged disclosure. Those cases do not include at least 42 more that have been identified as not having been properly investigated. That is not to mention new Pentagon published statistics showing student-reported assaults at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.
So after all the accusations and denials, the truth is finally revealed about Bill Cosby’s lifetime of raping young women, who were unfortunate enough to cross his path. The answer as to how he got away with it for so long, lies in his skill of slipping a Methaquolone pill, otherwise known as a Quaalude, into a drink he would give them. It would render them helpless to escape his subsequent sexual assault. Of course, he had also built a persona of America’s Grandpa, that was the ultimate deception.I first heard about quaaludes (‘ludes) in college in the 60’s. Apparently, he did as well! The word was that if you could slip one into a girl’s drink, she would be more compliant than otherwise. The records show that Cosby had multiple prescriptions filled at least throughout the 70’s, then apparently, subsequently found other sources. It became his “MO” and many women his victim. But that game is over now, most likely for the duration of his life! As with most abusers, Cosby felt he had a way to evade the light from shining on what he was up to. He thought he was safe and would never get caught, but If accused, he could claim it was consensual. It is what all abusers think, regardless of the form that abuse takes, and sometimes it can work for a long while. But when the light finally does shine and reveals the truth, the rule is that the longer the perpetrator got away with their nasty deceptions, the deeper the hole they will have dug for themselves. Epstein escaped via suicide. I think they’ll be keeping a close eye on Bill!