Pathfinders: Boeing: out in the cold (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

After nearly three months on the International Space Station, two astronauts are to be marooned there until next February as their proposed transport home, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, remains out of service after a host of thruster failures, software glitches, parachute problems and helium leaks. The astronauts are being philosophical about it, but Boeing will be aggrieved at losing credibility points to its arch-rival NASA co-contractor, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, which will now take on the responsibility for bringing the astronauts home (tinyurl.com/3bj3ua2t).

Boeing is fast becoming a byword for ‘omnishambles’ with a recent history that showcases just how capitalist competition and corporate profit-chasing can result in highly uncreative destruction.

When Boeing swallowed up the last of its US aviation rivals in the 1990s, it saw the chance to adopt a less product-oriented and more shareholder-focused and monopolistic approach which sought to maximise returns by outsourcing not just part production but the cost of part development too, while also extorting price reductions. This put the squeeze on suppliers, who were faced with a Hobson’s Choice of a bad deal or no deal at all. But outsourcing creates complexity, and this compartmentalised approach on the wide-bodied 787 Dreamliner resulted in delays and overruns and never delivered the savings expected (tinyurl.com/fsmbd8mz).

While Boeing wrestled with a problem of its own making, its major European rival, the joint venture Airbus, announced the re-engined narrow-body A320neo, which it claimed could cut fuel use by up to 35 percent. This caused consternation at Boeing, whose 50-year-old 737 had previously dominated the core-segment single-aisle market. To compete, Boeing really needed a brand new plane, but the lead-time to mass production of an all-new design, outsourced or not, would be far too long, and Boeing were already haemorrhaging buyers to Airbus. So bosses resorted to the least-worst option, to re-engine the 737. Morgan Stanley said of this ‘reactionary’ solution, ‘Boeing’s hasty decision to re-engine the B737 is a clear indication of the success and strong competitive positioning of the A320neo’ while another business analyst was ‘astounded at the Airbus smackdown’ (tinyurl.com/36rkdsrr).

Enter the 737 MAX. But when you put new and bigger engines on a 100-ton aircraft they alter its centre of gravity and flight characteristics. Normally this would necessitate costly flight simulator retraining and recertification of pilots. Instead Boeing used a background software fix known as the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which altered the plane’s rear flaps in response to sensor signals. As long as it worked properly, they reasoned, the pilots didn’t need to know about it. So Boeing did not tell them about MCAS or include it in the pilot manual. The Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t too worried, despite whistleblower allegations of its regulatory capture by Boeing, and agreed with the company to give pilots just an hour of training on an iPad, without mentioning MCAS. Boeing weren’t worried either. They had calculated the likelihood of a ‘major failure’ (one not resulting in the loss of a plane, which is termed ‘catastrophic’) as once in every 223 trillion flight hours – around 2 billion years of annual MAX fleet service (tinyurl.com/549z2ahj).

In the event they had two catastrophic failures in less than 6 months. The sensors and control panel light didn’t work properly, and pilots did not know about MCAS or how to override it when it malfunctioned. In October 2018 a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 crashed in the Java Sea, killing all 189 people. Airily dismissing this as ground crew and pilot incompetence, Boeing announced record $100bn earnings the following January. But in March 2019 an Ethiopian Airlines MAX 8 also fell out of the sky, killing all 157 on board. Clearly this was no coincidence, and Boeing immediately saw its orders, stock prices and reputation plummet. Its CEO promptly resigned, though with a cosy retirement package of $80m in stock options (tinyurl.com/498cvau4), and the new CEO issued a mea culpa to the US Senate, accepting the company’s responsibility for the deaths and agreeing to pay compensation and submit to regulators.

And then, despite all the regulation, a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January this year, because bolts were missing. How could this happen? Multiple whistleblowers had faced company reprisals after drawing attention to falsified inspection reports and a string of unsafe practices due to cost-cutting and inadequate staff training. In July Boeing pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy after being found to violate the terms of the regulatory agreement, meaning the company now has a criminal record (tinyurl.com/mv4av7m2).

On top of that, Boeing workers have been on strike against a union-busting and bullying culture, pay rates that have not increased in 16 years as the cash-strapped company grinds down on its own workforce, and ‘panic mode’ as managers hound staff to keep quiet over quality concerns (tinyurl.com/ysjh9mnc).

Now Boeing has $60bn of debt and is ‘one level above being potentially downgraded to non-investment grade status – junk status’. But nobody wants Boeing to collapse, not the airlines, who are faced with a global shortage of aircraft and fear an Airbus monopoly even more than the current Boeing-Airbus duopoly, and not the US government, which relies on Boeing’s aerospace defence arm and fears market capture by a major Chinese competitor like Comac (Economist, 20 June).

Airbus has seen A220-300 engine failures, diversions, groundings and supply chain problems but no crashes, and its stock has gone up, not down. The story of Boeing shows what can happen when market competition tightens the screws, and things like quality control, adequate training, product performance and company honesty begin to crack and splinter. Accidents will still happen in non-market socialism, but not because someone is eyeing the balance sheet instead of the safety inspection reports.

Meanwhile the astronauts continue to float in the ISS, patiently above it all. Compared to what many others have suffered at Boeing’s hands, they might consider themselves lucky only to be left out in the cold.

Paddy Shannon

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

World’s 5 Richest Men Have Added $14M to Their Wealth Every Hour Since 2020.

[tinyurl.com/bdh2vxyt]

Green capitalism is a con. Only Marxism can save the planet.

[tinyurl.com/mpdpwp54]

A member of the Chinese Communist Party is the second-largest foreign owner of US land, according to the Daily Caller. Billionaire Chen Tianqiao, founder, chairman and CEO of Shanda Group, owns around 200,000 acres of land in Oregon.

[tinyurl.com/2mztxehy]

…the Deng drive produced a de facto capitalist economy presided by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie: ‘As has been true of the histories of all capitalist economies, the power of the state was very much involved in establishing China’s labor market. Indeed, in China a highly repressive state apparatus played a particularly direct and coercive role in the commodification of labor, a process that has proceeded with a rapidity and on a scale that is historically unprecedented’.

[tinyurl.com/yc44v6sw]

Since gaining power five years ago, the civil-military-religious alliance headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has waged two major wars against its citizens.

[tinyurl.com/43tkkrej]

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, spoke… to extol the “outstanding” performance of the Israeli military in Gaza.

[tinyurl.com/yss442ke]

Some of the riches that these countries and companies seek include rare-earth metals and the isotope helium-3, which, while rare on Earth, is abundant on the moon and can theoretically be used to power nuclear fusion reactors.

[tinyurl.com/3j84pnu5]

It can be argued that Lenin only followed a pattern set by the Tsars, whose ruthlessness and autocratic rule had defined and despoiled Russia for centuries. Yet sitting in his seat at the British Museum, Lenin had fancied he could fashion a better, more peaceful, more equal Russia – only for the reality of exercising power in that vast country and his determination to force a reluctant population into line, whatever the cost, to turn him into a tsar in all but name and every bit as terrible as his predecessors.

[tinyurl.com/52b2sf7f]

Life expectancy for a Russian man is only 65. Mr Putin’s regime is trying to turn getting killed into an economically rational choice.

[tinyurl.com/49hfwte2]

In Pretoria… President Cyril Ramaphosa was seen warmly shaking the blood-soaked hand of Hemedti, a one-time leader of the Janjaweed, which holds the dubious distinction of carrying out the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur.

[tinyurl.com/bdf87ucw]

Homeless rise sees young person become destitute every four minutes, research finds.

[tinyurl.com/nusjjuw3]

The specific piece of equipment, a plug door that broke off a Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft during Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 from Portland on Friday night, in fact illustrates many of the broader trends in the airline industry today: the desire to cram more passengers into finite space, the standardization of production across outsourced subcontractors, and the lack of oversight from federal regulators into these increasingly dangerous schemes.

[tinyurl.com/bhsjrwd2]

As MAGA devotion to Donald Trump grows within the evangelical community, once politically powerful religious leaders are losing sway over followers who have convinced themselves that Trump is the new savior.

[tinyurl.com/2p8xesnz]

Sting in the Tail: Money-grubbing Olympics (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money-grubbing Olympics

Some people who watched the recent Olympic Games were interested less in the prowess of the athletes than in their potential for advertising endorsements.

Advertisers are looking for athletes with sales-appeal—no charisma, no contract, and one ad-man predicted that Carl Lewis’s ninth gold medal wouldn’t help him because “He's won before and no one liked him ’’(New York Post, 31 July).

And athletes should know when and when not to shed a tear:

“They're allowed to cry for joy when they win, but any athlete who cries because they've lost can forget about endorsements. ”

But patriotic tears could be more rewarding than mere tears of joy:

“The guy who won the high jump came close to crying during the National Anthem, but he held back, one tear could have been worth tens of thousands of dollars. ”

Maybe the next Olympics will see medals for those athletes who land the most lucrative advertising contracts.

Marriage of convenience

The decision by Boeing, the world’s biggest maker of civilian aircraft, to buy Rockwell, the aerospace and "defence” company, for three billion dollars, is more bad news for America's European competitors.

A spate of similar take-overs in America has produced a handful of industry giants and put European rivals at a competitive disadvantage because they have remained independent—and relatively small.

“But this attitude may be changing—Efforts to create a pan-European aerospace industry capable of matching US rivals gathered pace yesterday when the new chairman of Aerospatiale called on his fellow industrialists to “regroup” their interests ” (Guardian, 9 August).

For any industry' to survive in today’s capitalism it must “regroup” into bigger but fewer economic units—witness what’s happening in banking, insurance, car manufacturing, brewing, retailing, etc., and Europe’s fragmented aerospace and defence industry is belatedly catching on.

Hard Times Down-Under

We have received a pile of newspaper cuttings from a sympathiser in New Zealand which tell some familiar stories.

They tell of strikes involving teachers, telecom workers, air-traffic controllers, and many others, the health service is collapsing, one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, pay and benefits have been cut, etc.

A less familiar story concerns an employer who has ordered his workers to have their “bowel movements ” in their own time only:

“It's a completely reasonable request. It's a personal discipline" (Sunday Star Times, 7 July).

Presumably, this superman has disciplined himself to crap on cue, but for mere mortals it’s a case of “When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!”

Workers in New Zealand are clearly having a tough time, but for some the screw has been turned just that little bit tighter.

Orwell’s “Lesser Evil”

The revelation that George Orwell named “crypto-communists” and “fellow travellers” to the British secret service drew noteworthy comments form some prominent left-wingers.

For example, Christopher Hill, the communist historian, claimed that Orwell’s writing was always ambiguous, and added that “Animal Farm was precisely an attack on communism. ” How an “ambiguous” writer could write “precisely” Hill didn’t say, but presumably he still defends the “communism” which Orwell so brilliantly attacked.

And Tony Benn curiously excused Orwell’s act on the grounds that “the biggest terrorists in the world are states”, possibly forgetting that he had been part of the British state when he was a Labour cabinet minister.

Orwell’s denunciation of the Russian dictatorship was wholly admirable, but in naming names he sided with one bunch of exploiters in its sordid quarrel with another, and that was utterly deplorable.

Big-time con-artists

A vicar at the C of E’s General Synod speaking on Camelot’s running of the National Lottery, described the lottery as evil, and added that “Punters are being deceived on a grand scale. ”

Yes, this is the same C of E which has for centuries been telling folk that after they die they will live on in one place or another., that once upon a time a luckless Israelite got himself done-in as payment-in-advance for their sins, that the meek shall inherit the earth, etc., etc.

When it comes to deceiving punters “on a grand scale” then Camelot has got nothing on the C of E.

Naive Greens

Anyone who wonders why we are so critical of the “Greens” should consider the following.

The United Nations commissioned a group of international economists to advise on the best way of achieving a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Big Issue, 4 August).

Aubrey Meyer, a Green activist, discovered that the economists are working only on the cheapest way of tackling global warming:

"Their task was to work out the slowest rate of increase in emissions that the world could afford. It was putting economics before lives."

And yet Greens remain convinced that this problem can be solved within the capitalist system which creates it.

Boeing: the fatal price of competition (2019)

From the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism’s supporters are always telling us that competition brings out the best in human beings. It is supposed to encourage efficiency and creativity and promote innovation. We are also informed that capitalism’s drive for profit creates high quality goods that most people desire at a competitive price. However, as we have shown time and time again, the reality is rather different, and as in the two recent air crashes, the consequences can be fatal.

On 10 March, an Ethiopians Airline flight bound for Nairobi from Addis Abba crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 157 on board. This was eerily similar to the Lion Air crash that took place five months earlier in Indonesia where 189 passengers lost their lives. In both cases the pilots were unable to prevent their planes from taking a steep nosedive and both planes were of the new Boeing 737 Max 8 design. Preliminary investigations in the Ethiopian Airlines crash absolved the pilots of any blame.

Competitive pressures

Around ten years ago, Airbus developed a new range of aircraft with enhanced fuel efficiency and lower operating costs. They were able to pick up a lot of orders from airlines keen to lower their running costs. Boeing feared that they might lose out on market share to their European rival and were spurred to action when American Airlines, a longstanding customer of Boeing, purchased a large consignment of the new Airbus model. Boeing set to work to design an aircraft to compete with Airbus.

For a plane to fly successfully without stalling, that is avoiding a situation in which the angle of the plane points so far upwards it stops flying and is at risk of falling and crashing, the weight and power of the engines needs to be in balance with the wings, the cargo areas and other component parts of the plane. Therefore, if you are going to build a plane with heavier, more fuel-efficient engines you normally need to design an entirely new aircraft. Indeed, Boeing did investigate this option, but they ruled this out as it was deemed to be too expensive and just as importantly the development timescale of up to ten years was considered to be too long, as Boeing needed to deliver the new planes more quickly in order to maintain its share price. So they made the fateful decision to fit the new heavier engines onto the existing 737 design. The 737 Max 8 aircraft was introduced in 2017. The aerodynamics of the new plane were altered with the heavier engines, in certain flying conditions, potentially forcing the plane to thrust upwards raising the likelihood of stalling. To counteract this, Boeing installed anti-stalling software, known as the ‘Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System’ (MCAS). When the angle of the plane is too high, sensors on the nose would transmit signals to MCAS, which would then force the nose down. An advantage from the point of view of the manufacturer and the airlines was that this automated software obviated the need to retrain the pilots, thus saving Boeing and the airlines money.

This set up depends on the software working correctly at all times. However, It is now generally believed that in both fights incorrect signals were being transmitted from the sensors to MCAS indicating that the angle of the plane was too high when in fact it was flying normally, thus forcing it to point downwards. The only thing that the pilots knew about MCAS is that they could deactivate it and use manual controls. Unfortunately, as the sensors continued to supply incorrect signals, MCAS was reactivated after a few minutes, forcing the planes to nosedive until they crashed. Two safety measures, a so-called ‘angle of attack indicator’ and a ‘disagree light’ indicator which warn that the sensors are malfunctioning, were not installed on the planes as Boeing sold them as optional extras. Evidently, Neither Lion Air nor Ethiopian Airlines had decided to purchase them.

Largely due to budget cuts over the last ten years, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has found itself short of the qualified staff that is required to oversee the airworthiness of new aircraft and have effectively delegated regulation to airlines and manufacturers. One thousand Boeing employees had been seconded to the FAA.

In the wake of the crashes, the US flight attendants’ trade unions called for the 737 Max 8 planes to be grounded and pledged that they would support any member who refused to fly in them. Airlines around the world grounded their 737 Max 8 planes. The FAA in the United States reluctantly agreed to ground the planes a few days after the crash in Ethiopia. Boeing shares plummeted and their image has been tarnished. They are facing expensive lawsuits from victims’ families. They are desperate to restore their reputation and get their 737 Max 8 planes flying again, and are working on a fix for their MCAS software and have pledged an improved safety manual and training for pilots.

Some do see that the market has played a role in these tragedies, but do not arrive at the conclusion that capitalism should be abolished. They argue that corporate power should be reined in with tougher regulations. Will Hutton, in an article published in the Observer (7 April), says ‘The Boeing scandal is an indictment of Trump’s corporate America’, citing ‘America First nationalism, indulgent free market economics, Republican libertarianism and a political system in hock to corporate lobbying’ as the villains. It is true that Trump’s government pursues a free market capitalist agenda which is hostile to regulation, and Trump is in favour of privatising the FAA. He has representatives from the major banks and corporations in his government. Indeed, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan is Trump’s acting secretary of defence and it is alleged that he has tried to enhance Boeing’s contracts with the government. Boeing has spent billions on lobbyists to obtain lucrative defence contracts and has given donations to both Republican and Democrat lawmakers

When a government is said to embrace free market ideology, what this really means is that it is committed to pursuing the interests of its capitalist class ruthlessly without the impediments of workers’ rights, human safety and human welfare. This is not just the case with Trump, but also with Republican and Democrat presidents before him. Indeed it is the function of governments within capitalist society to defend and promote the profits of their capitalist class. Over recent years, governments have come under global competitive pressures to cut their costs and therefore implement more ‘free market’ policies of deregulation.

Cheating the regulations

Then there are manufacturers who try to cheat the regulations. In September 2015, the US Environment Protection Agency discovered that Volkswagen installed software in the engines of their diesel cars that was able to detect when they were being tested and give out false emission readings to enable them to pass emission tests. These cars would be pumping out more pollution into the atmosphere compromising people’s health. As with Boeing, Volkswagen shares fell and its reputation was badly damaged.

In the era before Trump and ‘indulgent free market economics’, some companies would dangerously cut corners to maintain their market share. One notable case in the 1970s was the Ford Pinto car, in which the fuel tank was placed dangerously in the rear. This meant that if another car hit it from behind, the tank was in danger of exploding. In fact this happened in one instance and the driver was killed. An investigation by the victim’s lawyers found that Ford cynically calculated that it would be more cost effective to pay out damages than remedy the design flaw. Ford was forced to pay out substantial damages.

The ex-Militant Tendency Trotskyists claim, in an article, ‘Corporate capitalism jeopardises air safety’ (Socialist, 3 April) that ‘public ownership of the aviation industry under democratic workers’ control and management’ is the solution. However, companies under public or state ownership also have to compete in markets and keep their costs down. In 1966, disaster befell a small Welsh mining village called Aberfan when a colliery spoil tip collapsed and engulfed the village, including schools, killing 116 children and 28 adults. A period of heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to slide downhill as a slurry, The National Coal Board, a state-owned company, decided it was cheaper to dump the colliery waste on the mountain slope above the town. In 1987, a fire ravaged Kings Cross station killing 31 people. A shortage of staff and lack of maintenance due to budget cutbacks resulted in more people losing their lives. More recently there has been the tragedy of the Grenfell fire where the local council had the block of flats covered with cheaper but highly flammable cladding.

Not only does capitalism exploit us, it is gambling with our lives. State ownership, tighter regulations and software fixes cannot change this. We need to stop being chips on capitalism’s roulette table and organise to get rid of this pernicious economic system once and for all.

Oliver Bond