12 thoughts on “Boeing”

  1. Hmm, usually Aboulafia is a Boeing fellator; they must have canceled his consulting contract 🙂

    Putting the engineers back in charge would probably help though.

    1. There’s an old joke that goes like this:

      Q: How do you make a small fortune in the aviation business?
      A: Start with a large fortune.

      1. That was a long-standing joke in the commercial space transportation business, to whose accuracy I can personally attest. However, Elon has completely upended that joke. He is a force of nature.

  2. Boeing can continue to sell what they have for longer than any of the senior management intends to be there. Why would they take the chance on developing something new? Especially when the 787 and 737MAX debacles show they are completely incompetent to manage the engineering challenge that would entail.

  3. Hasn’t it been claimed before that MD’s management ended up in charge of the combined form, and that essentially ‘MD bought Boeing using Boeing’s money’

    If so it’s not surprising they ended up following the same path.

  4. Will it matter, if the entire civil air industry collapses as a result of Covid and the slow breakdown of the Pax Americana? How much demand will there be for airliners in 10 years? In 20?

    1. That’s a reasonable question. On the one hand, I think there’s a lot of pent up demand to travel again after the COVID restrictions are lifted. Business travel may take longer to recover, though, and gouging business travelers has traditionally been a big money makers for airlines. I sometimes wonder if history can be a guideline. In the years after WWI and the Spanish flu pandemic, people resumed their lives with gusto during the Roaring Twenties. Will the same thing happen again?

      1. As long as the mask Nazis are in charge of air travel, my wife and I won’t travel by air under any circumstances. I won’t accept a shortened lifespan due to hypercapnia, which is what these fascists demand…absent any evidence that masks have any effect whatsoever on the spread of the dreaded Wuhan Red Death. (My wife, by the way, is fully vaccinated.)

        Unfortunately, I don’t see this nightmare ending any time soon. Our inferior “betters” are too drunk on the power of making us signal the virtue they think virtuous to ever let go of it.

        1. “In the years after WWI and the Spanish flu pandemic, people resumed their lives with gusto during the Roaring Twenties. Will the same thing happen again?”

          Good question. At the end of our weekly grocery run, as we drove home along the country roads, my wife made an observation that I think answers your question. She said that the generation going through high school is more screwed than any other in American history. I said that, yes, they’re saddled with an absolutely staggering debt, and likely will have no skills commensurate with the wealth production needed to pay it off. But her concern was more fundamental. She pointed out that this will be the first generation of Americans who believes that the government has all of the answers, can do whatever it wants to do, issue any order it sees fit, and as as result, they will have to obey every order the government gives them.

          I think she’s right. Given the fact that the denizens of American government know less about the real world – and how to flourish in it than even an average high school student today, we have a situation where people will be ordered to self-destruct – and they will obey.

          I have a grand child on the way, my first. I don’t know if I want to get to know him or her very well…

          1. There was this cartoon in Mad Magazine where hippy parents were disappointed that their kids turned out “wrong” as “squares”, but as aging hippies they took heart that they had “swinging grand-cats” that could relate to them.

            I know, the analogies and metaphors are strained, but we are talking Mad Magazine, here.

            It is in the natural order of things that you will develop some sense of “where did I go wrong” with your children, but you will find your grandchild to be an absolute delight. You will wonder how such a bright kid could be raised by such lame parents.

            I haven’t experienced this, but I have seen it.

        2. From all of the flights I have taken sitting next to ill passengers and all of the times I have gotten sick from them myself, forget about The Virus. I am just talking about the run-of-the-mill “cold” where I get this painful sore naso-pharynx, and then it progresses into nasal congestion and you can’t sleep and feel too crummy to stay up and work and you get the idea.

          I have gone almost a year now with no upper-respiratory nothing. Maybe I am prone to sinus infections from little-bitty cold viruses? Second-hand smoke on planes used to be a trigger for me getting sick, and I kind of take it for granted to with rare instances, people just don’t smoke around me?

          I am not saying you have to wear a mask, but going forward, I am doing the East Asian thing and am going to be masked out in public.

          I don’t think I am ever going back to getting those scheduled arrivals of colds and the flu? Boy, when this thing is over, I am hoping I can buy genuine N-95 masks like I used to, and I am wearing one of those puppies if I ever board an airplane again.

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