So yet another Boeing 737 crashed, this time in China, taking more than 130 people with it. little is known yet about the cause, but the thing seems to have lawn darted straight into the ground. Unless Russian separatists whacked it with a Buk or the Chinese operator *really* bungled maintenance or the pilot decided that Today Is The Day, the chances are real high that once again this one is on Boeing.
Chinese Boeing jet crashes in mountains with 132 on board, no sign of survivors
Boeing was for a long time the premier American manufacturer of jetliners, with “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going” being a sincerely held opinion among many. And then… Boeing merged with McDonnell-Douglas. In the process, the successful Boeing management approach, which was engineering-centered, was replaced with a more management-centered approach. Since then, Boeings ability to get *anything* successfully done, from the 787 to the 737 Max to the Starliner capsule to the SLS, seems to have been seriously compromised. Boeing is unlikely to produce a new jetliner within the next *generation.* They, the designer and manufacturer of the B-47 and B-52, are unlikely to ever again build a fighter or a bomber. The Delta IV launch vehicle is yesterdays news; the SLS is a hideously overpriced and underuseful dinosaur, the Starliner is so far behind schedule and over budget that if it ever carries out a manned mission it’ll be a miracle. All of this is Boeings fault.
Nobody else in the US is likely to build a jetliner anytime soon. Lockheed stopped trying with the L-1011, decades ago; Northrop-Grumman aren’t into jetliners. Nor-Grum are building the B-21; Lockheed is building the F-35. And… that’s pretty much it for the foreseeable future. Boeing is, for all intents and purposes, done. if this crash turns out to be the result of more Boeing incompetence, they could well find themselves is *serious* trouble quite soon. The phenomenally successful 737 line might end up a sky-pariah.
Having Boeing either go belly-up, or turn into an ossified tax-dollar sink that provides nothing usable in return are both bad results. This would be bad for Boeing employees, Boeing stockholders, American taxpayers, the US military, the US economy as a whole. So is it time to consider breaking Boeing up? Instead of one complacent conglomerate, take its various parts and pieces and separate them, give them separate and unrelated managements set them to compete with each other. Make the Phantom Works – formerly McDonnell Douglas turf – into its own thing. Turn Boeing HQ in Chicago into… I dunno, a WalMart or something; can all the business majors who have turned Boeing from a rampaging engineering success story into a freakin’ joke. Boeing has factories in Everett, WA, Renton, WA and North Charleston, SC. Make them separate companies. Set them to compete against each other for the next generation jetliner… BWB, LTA, electric, what-the-frak-ever. If one fails spectacularly, it doesn’t mean the others will suffer at all; indeed, a failed company could be seen as instructive. The failed former division could be picked up for a song by, say, the USAF and DARPA; the people responsible for the failure can be fired, better people brought in and the division set the task of cranking out experimental types.
The US used to have a *lot* of major aircraft manufacturers. Perhaps the days when the economy could simultaneously support the likes of Boeing and Convair and Lockheed and McDonnell and Republic and Grumman and Douglas and Martin and North American and Bell and Curtis and Sikorsky and Vought and Northrop and Hiller and Fairchild are over… but now we have *one* jetliner manufacturer, *one* fighter company, *one* bomber company. This is intolerable.
Behold: A Boeing.