By replacing career professional engineers and aircraft mechanics with an array of outside temporary contractors, Boeing has jettisoned most of their institutional knowledge. In business, there's no value placed on institutional knowledge, it's pretty much assumed all work is fungible, and an outside contractor would do the same quality work as someone with 20 or 30 years of experience designing or building airplanes. In my experience working at Boeing back in the 1990s, outside contractors tended to be narrowly focused in their own little silo, and lacked any solid understanding of the big picture. But when you're building or designing aircraft, you really need to appreciate the big picture, since an aircraft is a complex set of systems and subsystems that all interact with each other. Unfortunately, I have seen no indication that Boeing is seriously rethinking their contractor-centric business model, or taking steps to rebuild lost institutional knowledge. To do that, management would have to make Boeing a great place to work again, put employees back in the drivers seat by making long-term careers attractive with both pay and career progression, and put employee experience and expertise ahead of maximizing profits. That is why when people say, "they never should have built the 737 Max, but instead built a clean-sheet aircraft", I say Boeing has largely forgotten how to design aircraft, and any new clean-sheet design would also require a huge learning curve, that wouldn't have been needed in the past.

Sarcasm: As a pilot, they pay us an extra $50 each month to keep chemtrails secret. I also get an extra $20 each month to pretend the world is a sphere, and I intentionally waste time and fuel by flying a curved flight path over a flat earth to keep the secret a secret. If I fly too far, my airplane bounces off the wall, just like in the Truman Show, and goes the other way. So for $70 each month, I keep all these government secrets... And it's not only pilots. The people in the aircraft maintenance, and manufacturing get an extra $20 each month, so if the chemtrail system breaks, they fix it with parts from thousands of parts suppliers. So the parts manufacturers are in on the secret, and they have to be paid. The minimum-wage airport workers get an extra $2 each month to not mention chemtrails or the chemicals they have to upload onto the airplanes. Maybe that's why they quit faster than minimum-wage McDonalds workers, but then again, or just maybe it's working outdoors in the Winter in Minneapolis....

There are literally millions of workers who would have to keep it a secret. There are supply chains for the chemicals, the aircraft plumbing, and all the support equipment. In aviation, every aircraft maintenance action is documented, so there would be a paper trail. This is literally such a huge conspiracy that nobody has bothered to follow the money, or inspect the airplanes, inspect the maintenance records, or the parts supply chains, or measure the air around airports, or do anything. It's so easy to get on a keyboard, and make unsubstantiated claims, but nobody seems to consider that it would literally take 100s of thousands of poorly-paid minimum-wage airport workers to keep it a secret, and it wouldn't be a secret for very long, since the first one who goes public could literally cash in for millions by spilling the beans. The problem I have with conspiracies, is they're always demanding that you prove a negative, when the burden of proof is on the conspiracy theorist making the claim. If you believe in chemtrails, flat earth, vaccine conspiracies, aliens, etc. then prove it. Nobody owes you their precious time proving a negative. The fact that the legislature in Tennessee is wasting time with this just shows how ignorant they are, or how ignorant and backwards the political base is that they're pandering to. I guess solving real-world problems takes both leadership and money, and it's easier for corrupt and inept politicians to invent fictitious problems they can "solve". The people of Tennessee deserve better representation. Maybe the reason the fly-over States are struggling economically isn't coastal elites. Maybe the real reason is their own political choices that they have made over many decades have held them back.

The problems cut across the board. In aerospace engineering and manufacturing, institutional knowledge is key. The reason airplanes don't crash isn't because of better engineering analysis. It's because we get smarter over time, and ideally if you have younger engineers sitting next to guys and gals who designed the last few generations of aircraft. Same goes for manufacturing and quality control. Ideally the guys running the factory worked on the previous generations, and you know what needs to be done, and why it needs to be done. In Boeing's case, they replaced many of their career employees with contract- workers to save a few $$. But when you do that, you lose all the institutional knowledge and stupid decisions are made, or are not properly vetted. The problem for Boeing is that once the institutional knowledge is gone, it takes many years and lots of hard work to get back, if ever. A start would be that Boeing invests in their workers, both in terms of training and also in retention, while reducing the dependency on contract-labor. Then maybe in 10 or 20 years, Boeing might have a chance to regain its lost prestige. But unless Boeing gets serious about being a career destination of choice, I don't see this happening.

I am a 737 pilot for a major airline and have flown the 737 Max 9. The MCAS system has been beaten to death like a dead horse at this point. But what is often overlooked, is that the 737 Max flies just fine and is a perfectly safe aircraft without the MCAS system. It's arguably a safer aircraft without this system. The only issue was that it handled slightly differently than the legacy 737 NG, and would have required additional pilot simulator training on the different handling characteristics. MCAS was a band-aid fix that was intended to simulate the handling characteristics of the 737 NG on the 737 Max, so that the FAA would not require any flight simulator training for NG crew transitioning to the Max. This was one of Boeing's main selling points to airlines, even though they would have bought the Max anyways, as they were already committed to the 737 and the 737 NG would eventually be phased out of production. Obviously this was a very bad decision, and simulator training is now required anyways, thereby defeating the need for MCAS in the first place. I would have personally preferred that the MCAS system were deleted altogether. Instead there was a "software fix"..."we fixed the glitch" so to speak.

For those blaming MDAC, or thinking Boeing's problems only began in the last 10 years, read up on the 737 Hard Rudder Over in the 1980s and 1990s. Boeing blamed "average airline pilots" for incorrect control inputs leading to several fatal 737 crashes, and refused to fix a design defect until the FAA took action. Boeing has always played loose with the rules and put profits above safety, going back long before the MDAC merger in 1996. It's just now the public has less tolerance for air disasters than they had in the 1980s, and Boeing now has meaningful competition from Airbus.

My grandfather was wounded in WW2 at the battle of the Bulge. When he came home, he could no longer work a farm, and he got a union job at Sears and Roebuck (the Amazon of the time). He was able to afford to own a home, send his kids to college, and get a pension in retirement. Had he lived nowadays, he'd get wounded in Iraq, or Afghanistan, get a non-union job at a Walmart or Amazon, not send his kids to college, never own a home, and because Social Security won't cover retirement, he'd be one of the old men working at Walmart until he dropped dead.

As an American, what I honestly don't understand my country is how vehemently many of my fellow citizens are against any Government in their lives, and will go to great lengths to prove their independence, even when it kills them (i.e. motorcycle helmets, vaccines, guns, etc.). But when corporations or Wall Street try to control their lives, they enthusiastically sign away their rights and any chance at future prosperity. How can you claim to be free, when you eagerly accept corporate tyranny. Imho. corporate rule is worse than government rule, because at least with government rule you get a vote and have some representation. With corporate rule, you do not have a vote or representation, unless you're an owner, or major share holder.

In other news, fast food corporations won't do anything to fight obesity. Gambling casinos won't do anything to reduce or treat gambling addiction. The gun industry (in America) won't do anything to prevent mass shootings or even accidental shootings. The tobacco industry won't do anything to curb smoking addiction. The idea that the we can just take a public problem, and then expect the very industry that profits from that problem to do the work to actually solve that problem is ridiculous.

Trump loyalty points only go one way. You work hard for Trump loyalty points, sometimes even breaking the law and going to prison, and Trump redeems them for whatever he wants. But you get nothing, just ask Trump loyalty champion, Rudi Giuliani.

We see the political bias of the author in this line....Electric vehicles in Europe exist because of government regulation. The reason Europe doesn't lead in electric vehicles is because the European Automotive industry doesn't want to make electric vehicles.

Since this is a WSJ article, I think we need to realize this is more about American politics than European regulations. In America we have short memories, and most Americans haven't studied the 19th century. We have forgotten what it was like to have boiler explosions that killed thousands, or textile mill fires that every worker because the fire exits were all locked, or massive strip mining and deforestation, etc. In America we have a class of ultra-wealthy oligarchs who have bought into a political fantasy that governments have no natural right to regulate anything, ever. Most Americans like regulations, especially when they only apply to other people. (Left wingers love environmental regulations, and right-wingers love immigration regulations)... Telling Americans, we want to do away with all regulations isn't a winning political strategy. So instead, they need to confuse two separate issues, i.e. Europe's economic stagnation and government regulation, and make people believe that one causes the other.

I'm not going to get the Apple Vision, but I'm very confident that the ability to shoot first person HD video will become the killer app. Expect the Apple Vision Pro Challenge and Darwin Awards coming soon to TicTock and YouTube. APV motorcycle racing, APV BASE jumping, APV Planking, etc.

First off, don't blame me. I was a lowly 23-year-old engineer at McDonnell Douglas in the '90s when this happened. I worked on the C-17 Military Transport Aircraft in the forward-fuselage group, and then in the avionics integration group, working on systems such as the warning-and caution computer, flight management system, cockpit displays, etc... What happened in the 1990s was the government told the defense industry they had to merge or die. This was right at the end of the Cold War, and the Clinton administration was talking about the "peace dividend" and going back to a peace-time military posture. For whatever reason, they believed fewer defense contractors would be more efficient and save money. We know how that turned out... So Lockheed merged with Martin. Northrop merged with Grumman. And there were other mergers, too many to count. McDonnell Douglas was a defense contractor that happened to make a few airliners, but our McDonnell Douglas airliners weren't competitive against Boeing or Airbus in most market segments. The MD-11 was an excellent freighter, but the MD-80 and MD-90 had fallen behind both the 737 and A-320 in the narrow-body short-haul market.

Boeing was a manufacturer of airliners that hadn't had much success in defense contracting since the B-52 and KC-135 days. They competed for and lost the Military-Transport Aircraft MTA contract in the 1970s, which became the C-17. In the 1980s, Boeing competed for various fighter contracts, such as a super Phantom (hugely upgraded and remanufactured F-4), losing all of them. Boeing at the time was competing for the Air Force tanker contract, proposing a tanker based on the 767 airframe. Northrop was proposing a similar tanker based on the Airbus A-330 airframe. Additionally, Boeing was competing against Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas for the Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft to replace the Navy's P-3 Orion. This eventually became the P-8 Poseidon, based on the 737 NG airframe. The government basically told Boeing if they wanted to be a prime contractor on either of those contracts, or any future defense contracts, they would have to merge with another company. Imho, that was the real reason for the merger.

Now time for opinions. I'm not trying to make a political statement, but the Clinton administration pursued some very bad policies in the 1990s. They "encouraged" consolidation in the defense contracting industry, deregulated Wall Street by repealing Glass-Steagall, which basically put Wall Street in the drivers seat in managing companies. Lastly, they passed NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Overnight, we went from a national economy that was managed by companies, to a global economy that was managed by Wall Street. This in my opinion created a perfect storm for Boeing and many other companies. It reduced competition in the defense industry, so the incentives were wrong. The tanker contract from the mid- '90s only entered service in 2019, almost 20 years too late, and some people literally went to jail. It also led to a fixation on short-term profits over long-term competitiveness, quality control, and safety. NAFTA encouraged Boeing to outsource most of their production to other parts of the nation and ultimately other parts of the world. Prior to the 1990s, 90% of the 737 was manufactured in Renton, WA. It was easy to control the quality. Now days, 90% is outsourced and the airplane is only assembled in Renton. Boeing is learning a hard lesson that you can outsource parts, but you cannot outsource quality assurance, because the incentives aren't aligned. In a perfect market economy, Boeing would be afraid of losing market share, and ensure safety and quality. But since we have no real competition within the USA, Boeing considers themselves to be "too big to fail" and manages their operations accordingly. Again, this is only my opinion based on having been there. I think it's become group think to simply blame McDonnell Douglas, and people throw that conclusion out because they heard it from other people, and those people heard it from others, and so on. The real reasons are far more complex, and we had a perfect storm of "too big to fail", lack of competition, deregulation in terms of FAA oversight, an outsized role of Wall Street in corporate management that emphasized short-term returns over long-term thinking, and a misguided belief that you could outsource engineering and quality to subcontractors. and still have the same quality at a lower cost. Those imho are the real culprits that have corrupted Boeings corporate culture and reduced the company from the gold-standard in aircraft development to a national embarrassment. Boeing can't be fixed because it is a reflection of our current political-economic system. We need to reform ourselves before we can reform Boeing. Lastly, I'm sick and tired of this DEI B-S about Boeing being put out there by various "influncers". The Max wasn't caused by unqualified minorities. It was caused by Wall Street and the pursuit of short-term profits and a misaligned corporate incentive structure. Enough of that soap box. I am a qualified pilot on both the 737 and the A-320 and have flown the Max 9. They are all excellent aircraft in their own right, and I would gladly fly them all.

Airships simply trade problem set for another. Airships don't need airstrips. Good. Airships need very large airship hangars. Bad. Airships can hover indefinitely over a point. Good. Airships can be destroyed by weather that would not be a significant hazard to an airplane. Bad. Airships don't use as much fuel compared to aircraft. Good. You cannot just park and airship outdoors and leave it, it's always flying. Bad.

I think on the whole, the problems inherent to operating airships in real world conditions haven't been adequately solved, or those solutions are more costly than using conventional heavier-than-air aircraft. We've had airships in one form or another for about 150 years, but by the 1930s, it was clear that airplanes were superior in terms of cargo capacity and safety and the only advantage airships might have still had was range. But by the 1950s, we had intercontinental-range aircraft. Imho. engineering is mostly an exercise in rational thinking, and the airplane was the more rational method of air transportation. So we have airplanes today, and not airships. Nothing has changed since the 1930s that would make airships practical or more economical than heavier-than-air aircraft. But it seems that every 20 years or so, somebody has to relearn the reasons why airships just aren't practical for applications other than a few niche ones such as sightseeing or aerial advertising. That's where we are with this latest project, recreating the past and relearning all the lessons we forgot.

Pretty much every large airship project has failed, ever. I don't think this project will turn out any differently. It seems about every 25 years, we forget history, we forget all the inherent problems with large airships, and try again with the exact same result. When somebody mentions airships, I'm reminded of the monorail man from the Simpsons. He comes to town, promotes the monorail as the future of everything, takes all the money and skips town before the people get wise to him. Just like the monorail man from the Simpsons, I think this project will run into the same realities that caused all the other airships of the past to fail, be it weather, lack of infrastructure, poor performance, not economical to operate, etc. People will lose money and somebody will skip town and try the same grift again in 25 years. There's a very nice indoor swimming pool in Brandenburg Germany from the last large airship project. I'm sure it only wasted a few hundred million Euros of taxpayer funds, but at least they got an indoor beach and swimming pool out of it.

Impassable terrain is also associated with extreme air currents and weather. Airships do not do well in bad weather.

Moore's law also applies to memory and SSD storage. But Apple's trying to gaslight their customers that Moore's law doesn't exist and we're stuck at 2009 with 2009 RAM and SSD prices. So why not a 24 inch screen? 24 inches, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD should be enough for anybody...in 2009 that is. I'm a long-term Apple customer, but I'm having a very hard time justifying giving up my USER-UPGRADEABLE Intel-based Mac for the latest- and greatest. I almost feel as if Apple is asking me to give up far more than I would be gaining. At this point, I'm starting to seriously look at Linux-based alternatives where I don't have to pay an extra $1000 for RAM and storage.

BINGO. Biden is buying votes this way. We both agree on this. We're talking truth, not high-minded platitudes about "responsibility".