Patched over exit door fell out.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today? Is it Andrew Tangle? And he is the aviation reporter at the Wall Street Journal. And there’s so many problems lately. Every time Boeing seems to solve a problem, another one is created. Andrew Tangle, tell us what your thoughts are? I mean, the Boeing stock is almost two seventy a month ago, and today it’s back

0:25 down to the two hundred. What say you?

0:30 Speaker 2 Well, as Boeing problems have emerged in recent years, it generates a lot of scrutiny internally at Boeing and with the FAA and also the Pentagon which oversees the production of their military jets, and so more scrutiny finds more problems, and that you know, has over the last few years slowed things down. It slowed down the production line as

1:00 they try to fix it and improve the quality, and that slows down their deliveries to customers that desperately want the new airplanes. And if customers an’t getting their airplanes, then going isn’t getting paid and that hits the stock price.

1:18 It’s not clear yet what’s going to happen in this case. You’ve got what appears to be according to the FAA, a manufacturing problem that resulted not just in some imperfections, but in a major, terrifying stafety issue that could have been a lot of worse. And so it is going to take a hard look at what the heck happened

1:48 here inside of buying and also their own oversight, and they are promising more oversight. So I don’t know what the effect is going to be on production medium term, but the FA administrator you know under said that the overall goal is to fix this problem and figure out what’s going on.

2:12 Speaker 1 It seems like, like we said, every time they solve a problem, another one turns up. Uh, is are are the people are Boeing in your opinion? I mean, are they not tough enough on management to make sure It wasn’t an expression when I was growing up when they built the seven oh seven, the seven forty seven and

2:36 seven twenty seven, they built it like a brick crap house. If I don’t want to use I can’t use the other word. I mean really versus after the seven twenty seven, seven forty seven, Uh, the accountants took over any opinion in it.

2:58 Speaker 2 Well, Boeing has got a long tradition of improving aviation safety because they they they you know, over engineered the airplanes. They build a lot of margin into the airplane, so the airplanes could take a lot they would be totally safe, even if there were some imperfections or you know, manufacturing defects.

3:23 What’s the the expression if it’s you know, if the name going ain’t going uh and right? And you mentioned the uh, you know, the the worries about the financialization of the company, and you know, there’s been a lot written about and a lot argued about about whether or not the merger with McDonald Douglas and the focus uh

3:53 on uh financial metrics over engineering has led to a biggeration of quality and safety. You know. There it depends on how you talked to you know, we’ve we’re we’re seeing though, you know, a lot of quality problems emerge.

4:16 What their sort of root management cause is uh, you know, an open and open question. The I mean, after the two Maxes crashed five years ago, going management uh really you know talked a lot about improving uh safety, but and and engineering. But also you know, their attention to quality and UH, they they’ve empowered uh their engineers to

4:54 raise issues internally, and that has slowed things down these engineers in large part UH also work for the FA. In many cases it’s part of the oversight structure. So maybe it’s you know, the the evolution of Boeing from you know, whatever you know happened in the past, getting away from its you know, core values. If that is

5:16 the case, it’s you know, it fits and starts trying to get back to it’s its earlier reputation. This this, this accident, UH doesn’t help, and there’s clearly a problem that Boeing’s got to address. And what they’ve done, as the FA administrator has said, you know, just hasn’t been enough at this point. So we’ll see what happens.

5:44 Speaker 1 Understood, should the border directors, you know, it was being talked about the other day, the border director should stand up and say enough is enough and put some tougher management in.

5:57 Speaker 2 Yeah, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Been with with management or the board, I mean, the board. Oversight has been a big question over the last five years. We’ve written about how Boeing management you know, after the first crash and then after the second crash, you know, or how how the board you know, Allegedly, according to

6:25 some shareolder blocks you know, didn’t question management enough and hold management accountable. And you know, we didn’t see any major management shake up even after the two crashes in two hundred and forty six people died. That was in twenty nineteen when the second crash occurred. And uh, there was late that year the auster of the commercial airline

6:48 shooting Commercial Airplanes chief and then and then at the end of the year they kicked out the overall CEO, Spollenberg, and the chairman of the board, who was on the board for about a decade at the time, became the CEO, and he’s a CEO still. So I don’t know what kind of shake up there might be. There’s a speculation

7:19 about what could happen and that it might happen among the Wall Street analysts and so forth. But you know, this process of sort of reckoning with what happened is just beginning. We’re seeing, you know, signs of more activity on the hill. You know, there could be a hearing and so be more and more scrutiny and more and

7:42 more calls for accountability. But we’ll see how that plays out well.

7:49 Speaker 1 Andrew Tangle, please stay on top of this and would love for you to talk to you again in the near future because people are concerned, you know, they want redundancies. I mean I was a pilot. I had four thousand hours when I quit, and you would like to know that your airplane has redundancies and and and that you

8:12 know not one mistake is not gonna end up killing you. The old expression was in aviation, three consecutive bad mistakes will kill you. And uh that was that was a good Uh you know that was a good thing. Well, Andrew, thank you very much and let’s catch up again real soon.

8:31 Speaker 2 Absolutely, John, thanks for having me. And as Ted Cruz yesterday said, people got an airplane, they expected doors to stay on. Absolutely, thanks a lot, John, Thank you