Boeing is heavily entrenched in defense contracts of US and international governments. Domestic airline industry is just a minor piece of their pie. They will be around a long time, despite the QC issues. Can you spell military 'drones'?
But I keep wondering, what if? What if SpaceX has a spectacular failure. Maybe a loss of life. Maybe they prove totally unable to supply the multiple Starliners required to do in-orbit refueling. Or the whole concept (starliner, or the refueling) turns out to be unworkable with the engineering they've chosen. What if some major flaw shuts the whole program down?.
Flip side ... what if that agile start-up says "we wil move more broadly into defense" and throws its hat in the ring to compete on things like military planes?
The defense industry (and defense budget) badly needs more competition. That would be very interesting to watch.
What do you base this information on? Just wondering, as I worked there for many years and didn't see this going on. But maybe I missed something.
Not to say that the IAM and SPEEA are perfect - they certainly aren't.
However, Management decisions regarding corporate mergers, outsourcing, selling facilities to non union companies, internal staffing, QA processes, etc, etc, etc, are the real cause of these sorts of issues.
Boeing is heavily entrenched in defense contracts of US and international governments. Domestic airline industry is just a minor piece of their pie. They will be around a long time, despite the QC issues. Can you spell military 'drones'?
Which union at Boeing did you belong to?
I'm sure in 2-3 years we will all forget (again) how terrible QC is at that company but I just don't want to support them by holding their stock.
Logically, I understand that you can't make these planes perfect: they would cost too much and require ticket prices to go way up. So 100-300 dead passengers every now and then is probably an acceptable price for running a business. Cars, guns, trains, boats etc. - all these industries deal with accidents and we happily own their stock. Besides, worldwide demand for new planes is too big for one company - Airbus - to handle it. I'm not even going into military contracts which have nothing to do with market.
So... all that is logic but I don't care about being logical - I don't trust them, I don't like them and I hope they will fail. They certainly deserve to.
Over the past number of years I believe that Boeing senior management has failed it's employees, it's shareholders, it's Board of Directors, it's supplier partners, and its customers big time. Such a shame.
Quality starts at the very top. Clearly this has not been the modus operandi of Boeing leadership for quite some time.
The real question is what needs to happen to change this corporate culture from the very top down to the assembly floor?? Words are meaningless at this point.
Their reputation is in shatters. Think what that does to employee morale and customer confidence!
It's time for a management philosophy change at the Boeing company. It morphed from an engineering based company with the mission statement of "Be the #1 aerospace company in the world" to an MBA based company with the mission statement of "Be #1 in shareholder value". I worked there when it happened in the late 1990's. It's taken a while to weed out all the old values but they have finally accomplished their goal. Too bad they managed to kill the company in doing so.
Note - I understand that Boeing wasn't perfect before the Phil Condit era, but since then, it's been a long slide of questionable business decisions. Promoting Alan Mullaly to the CEO was the last hope they had of reversing the slide. Too bad they passed on him.
What Boeing commercial customers are saying/feeling.
Not such a great reference when several of your largest customers feel obliged to place their own QA staff in your shop because of your continued history of serious QA issues.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/05/business/boeing-last-chance-emirates-tim-clark/index.html
...Apple just released Vision Pro which is just another innovative product in their portfolio. They are consistently on the vanguard of technology - we already forgot that it’s thanks to Apple, digital music is the norm (iTunes store) as well as digital payments (Apple Wallet)...
How long did you own the shares, and did you make any gains on the stock?
VW
While I agree these are very differently run companies, I think you're giving Apple a bit too much credit for innovation here. There have been VR and AR products for years. Likewise digital music and payments. Apple made them popular, but didn't invent them. Whether because of true quality or just very clever advertising. But you certainly can't go wrong buying stock in a company whose products people will line up to pay a premium for. Fashion industries always have high profit margins.
...they managed to elevate the retail experience to a cult-like level...