Latest news with #McDonnellDouglas
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Chicago didn't ruin Boeing, but the company paid a price for moving out of Seattle.
Seattle and Boeing were together for decades until Chicago came along. But after the company moved its headquarters from a cloudy city to a windy one, it struggled. Was it us? The deep-dish pizza and Italian beef? The ongoing wait for another Super Bowl title? As this iconic aerospace giant tries to regain altitude after yet another turbulent stretch, it's fair to ask if its move to Chicago in 2001 put it on the wrong course altogether. When then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that the city had won a bidding contest for Boeing's headquarters, this page joined in the celebration. The company got over $60 million in public incentives for moving its boardroom to the Loop. Chicago got bragging rights. The move made sense to us at the time. Chicago gave Boeing's leadership team the convenient, centralized transportation hub they were missing in the Pacific Northwest. Settling in a more global city with a financially savvy workforce was widely considered a plus as well. Moving out of Seattle also put almost 2,000 miles between the company's top brass and its restive unions, which might have been one of the biggest attractions from the corner-office point of view. As it turned out, though, the move seems to have undermined an engineering-friendly culture focused on design, safety and quality. In retrospect, separating from the critical mass of aerospace experts in Seattle isolated the company's leaders from the heart of their business. Apart from the move to Chicago, the other 'X factor' in that transformation was Boeing's 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, a company better known for financial engineering than the aerospace kind. Its priorities were quarterly profits and returning money to Wall Street shareholders — priorities Boeing embraced after the deal closed, appointing a string of chief executive officers who collected massive paychecks but cut corners in making planes. One outcome of this change was the decision to upgrade a popular passenger jet instead of designing a new one with all the latest advances, as the perfectionists at old-school Boeing no doubt would have preferred. Extending the life of its workhorse 737s helped Boeing's bottom line in the short run. Over time, that approach opened the company to serious problems, including the notorious 737 MAX crashes. In October 2018, this newly modified version of the old 737 jetliner crashed near Indonesia. Five months later, another new 737 MAX crashed in Ethiopia. Boeing had reconfigured the MAX model with bigger engines that affected its aerodynamics, and federal regulators had given the company too much control over certifying the new design. A faulty flight-control system forced down the two planes despite their pilots' desperate efforts to keep them aloft, killing a combined 346 aboard. Instead of taking responsibility, the company reportedly tried to blame the foreign airlines and resisted grounding its MAX fleet in the interest of safety. Then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg spouted insincere baloney about safety being a core value, until he was finally ousted by a board that paid him off with a $62 million exit package. In the waning days of the first administration of President Donald Trump, Boeing reached a settlement with the Justice Department that protected it from prosecution over the MAX crashes. Shortly after, in 2022, the company moved from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, closer to its No. 1 customer: Uncle Sam. Last year brought another shocking safety gaffe, when a door panel blew off in midair from a 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines. A few months later, federal prosecutors determined that Boeing had violated its deferred prosecution deal by failing to implement a compliance and ethics program. In response, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud, but a federal judge in Texas rejected the plea deal because it included diversity goals. Now, with Trump back in power, Boeing appears likely to receive a lighter settlement that avoids a criminal plea. During a recent Middle East trip, Trump also publicly promoted Boeing jets — a reminder of the company's political clout and close ties to its largest customer: the U.S. government. Cozying up to a pro-defense administration may be giving Boeing's stock a boost, but it won't restore public trust or prevent future failures. Boeing recently published the sad results of an all-employee survey, its first in years. Most Boeing employees said they lack faith in senior leadership, and barely a quarter recommend the company as a good place to work. That's a big comedown from the old days. Still, Boeing stock has bounced back strongly this year and its new-ish CEO, Kelly Ortberg, says he is putting the company's problems behind it. Earlier this month, Ortberg told Wall Street that he's introducing 'new values and behaviors to the entire organization,' vowing to 'seize the moment to make the necessary changes within the company.' Ortberg also reportedly bought a house in Seattle last year, which we consider a positive step. If Boeing was going to move the headquarters anywhere from Chicago, and if it was serious about rebuilding its culture, it probably should have moved back to Seattle. Still, its time here left a positive mark: Boeing supported civic institutions, hired local talent and helped elevate Chicago's stature as a center for global business. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
Chicago Tribune
02-06-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Chicago didn't ruin Boeing, but the company paid a price for moving out of Seattle.
Seattle and Boeing were together for decades until Chicago came along. But after the company moved its headquarters from a cloudy city to a windy one, it struggled. Was it us? The deep-dish pizza and Italian beef? The ongoing wait for another Super Bowl title? As this iconic aerospace giant tries to regain altitude after yet another turbulent stretch, it's fair to ask if its move to Chicago in 2001 put it on the wrong course altogether. When then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced that the city had won a bidding contest for Boeing's headquarters, this page joined in the celebration. The company got over $60 million in public incentives for moving its boardroom to the Loop. Chicago got bragging rights. The move made sense to us at the time. Chicago gave Boeing's leadership team the convenient, centralized transportation hub they were missing in the Pacific Northwest. Settling in a more global city with a financially savvy workforce was widely considered a plus as well. Moving out of Seattle also put almost 2,000 miles between the company's top brass and its restive unions, which might have been one of the biggest attractions from the corner-office point of view. As it turned out, though, the move seems to have undermined an engineering-friendly culture focused on design, safety and quality. In retrospect, separating from the critical mass of aerospace experts in Seattle isolated the company's leaders from the heart of their business. Apart from the move to Chicago, the other 'X factor' in that transformation was Boeing's 1997 acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, a company better known for financial engineering than the aerospace kind. Its priorities were quarterly profits and returning money to Wall Street shareholders — priorities Boeing embraced after the deal closed, appointing a string of chief executive officers who collected massive paychecks but cut corners in making planes. One outcome of this change was the decision to upgrade a popular passenger jet instead of designing a new one with all the latest advances, as the perfectionists at old-school Boeing no doubt would have preferred. Extending the life of its workhorse 737s helped Boeing's bottom line in the short run. Over time, that approach opened the company to serious problems, including the notorious 737 MAX crashes. In October 2018, this newly modified version of the old 737 jetliner crashed near Indonesia. Five months later, another new 737 MAX crashed in Ethiopia. Boeing had reconfigured the MAX model with bigger engines that affected its aerodynamics, and federal regulators had given the company too much control over certifying the new design. A faulty flight-control system forced down the two planes despite their pilots' desperate efforts to keep them aloft, killing a combined 346 aboard. Instead of taking responsibility, the company reportedly tried to blame the foreign airlines and resisted grounding its MAX fleet in the interest of safety. Then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg spouted insincere baloney about safety being a core value, until he was finally ousted by a board that paid him off with a $62 million exit package. In the waning days of the first administration of President Donald Trump, Boeing reached a settlement with the Justice Department that protected it from prosecution over the MAX crashes. Shortly after, in 2022, the company moved from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, closer to its No. 1 customer: Uncle Sam. Last year brought another shocking safety gaffe, when a door panel blew off in midair from a 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines. A few months later, federal prosecutors determined that Boeing had violated its deferred prosecution deal by failing to implement a compliance and ethics program. In response, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud, but a federal judge in Texas rejected the plea deal because it included diversity goals. Now, with Trump back in power, Boeing appears likely to receive a lighter settlement that avoids a criminal plea. During a recent Middle East trip, Trump also publicly promoted Boeing jets — a reminder of the company's political clout and close ties to its largest customer: the U.S. government. Cozying up to a pro-defense administration may be giving Boeing's stock a boost, but it won't restore public trust or prevent future failures. Boeing recently published the sad results of an all-employee survey, its first in years. Most Boeing employees said they lack faith in senior leadership, and barely a quarter recommend the company as a good place to work. That's a big comedown from the old days. Still, Boeing stock has bounced back strongly this year and its new-ish CEO, Kelly Ortberg, says he is putting the company's problems behind it. Earlier this month, Ortberg told Wall Street that he's introducing 'new values and behaviors to the entire organization,' vowing to 'seize the moment to make the necessary changes within the company.' Ortberg also reportedly bought a house in Seattle last year, which we consider a positive step. If Boeing was going to move the headquarters anywhere from Chicago, and if it was serious about rebuilding its culture, it probably should have moved back to Seattle. Still, its time here left a positive mark: Boeing supported civic institutions, hired local talent and helped elevate Chicago's stature as a center for global business.
Hindustan Times
19-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
‘We've lost control': Chilling cockpit audio resurfaces from Alaska Airlines Flight 261 before deadly 2000 crash
A haunting cockpit voice recording from the final moments of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 resurfaced on social media platform X, clocking more than 5 million views. The recording, capturing the last exchanges between the flight crew and air traffic control, offers a chilling insight into the mechanical failure that caused the aircraft to plummet into the Pacific Ocean on January 31, 2000, killing all 88 people on board. Also read: Video: Air ambulance makes emergency landing near Kedarnath, tail rotor damaged The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft was en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with scheduled stops at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and its final destination, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). Everything appeared normal at takeoff, but mid-flight, the crew reported serious control issues. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the root cause of the accident was a mechanical failure in the tail of the plane. The horizontal stabiliser, crucial for pitch control, stopped responding due to the failure of a component called the jackscrew. Investigations revealed that the threads of the jackscrew had worn down excessively due to insufficient lubrication, ultimately rendering the aircraft uncontrollable. As the situation unfolded, the cockpit recording captured the flight crew's increasingly urgent communications: 'This is a test flight of the LF-261, which is in a dive here. LF-261, say again? LF-261, say again, sir? We're at 26,000 feet. We're in a vertical dive. Not a dive yet. But we've lost vertical control of our airplane…' The crew momentarily regained some control, reporting, 'We got it back under control, ma'am.' But the relief was short-lived as the situation deteriorated again: 'We're at 21,000 feet. Kind of stabilized… There's a little trouble shooting up. Can you give me a block between 20 and 25?' Controllers can be heard giving calm instructions, attempting to maintain communication and gather positional information. A key voice says, 'Okay. Sir, just do what you need to do there, Skywrath 5154. Keep us advised. Any intent in the water?' A voice responds, 'Yeah, I have the water in front of me,' indicating a chilling proximity to the ocean. The exchange reveals a desperate effort to both regain control and provide real-time updates as the situation rapidly deteriorated. Shortly after, controllers and other pilots tried to pinpoint the crash location. One voice reports, 'He's about two and a half miles off the east end of Anacapa,' confirming the aircraft's impact point. Another adds, 'Actually, he's on the northeast end, probably at 030 heading on Anacapa.' The reference to 'a boat in the area out right of Anacapa' and 'do you still see the spot?' suggests that the crash site had been visually confirmed on the water's surface, marking the tragic moment the aircraft hit the Pacific Ocean. All 83 passengers, two pilots, and three cabin crew members lost their lives in the tragedy. In remembrance of the victims, a memorial was established at Port Hueneme, California. The site features a 20-foot-long sundial, which casts a shadow on a plaque every January 31 to mark the day of the tragedy. Also read: Simi Valley plane crash: Small aircraft accident in Wood Ranch, first photo emerges
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NASA, Boeing pause X-66 to chase breakthrough ultra-thin wing aircraft design
NASA and Boeing are pausing the development of the X-66 full-scale Sustainable Flight Demonstrator. Instead, they will re-focus their efforts on demonstrating the benefits of thin-wing technology. Until recently, the US space agency and Boeing touted the X-66 as a great leap for sustainable aviation. That aircraft design featured extra-long, thin wings supported by diagonal struts. Though those plans have been put on ice, they still believe in the benefits of thin-wing technology. Their new project "would focus on demonstrating thin-wing technology with broad applications for multiple aircraft configurations," NASA explained in a statement. The re-evaluation would see Boeing focus on a "ground-based testbed to demonstrate the potential for long, thin-wing technology", NASA explained on it website. The X-66 program heavily modified a McDonnell Douglas MD-90 aircraft to demonstrate a truss-braced version of the thin wing. The experimental aircraft was at the forefront of NASA's plans to achieve net-zero aviation emissions by 2050. The transonic truss-braced wing (TTBW) aircraft was scheduled to make its first flight in 2028. If flight demonstrations were successful, Boeing planned to start operating the aircraft commercially in the 2030s. Now, in its statement, NASA says it is 'evaluating an updated approach to the agency's Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project that would focus on thin-wing technology with broad applications for multiple aircraft configurations.' According to a report by Aviation Week, engineers from the X-66 program are being reallocated to support Boeing's delayed certification of the 777X and 737 MAX variants. The new development is in line with Boeing's recent cost-cutting strategy as well as its renewed focus on finalizing programs that serve existing customers. Unfortunately, it also reflects the Trump administration's efforts to slash NASA's science budget in half for the upcoming fiscal year. Still, Boeing claims it still believes in the potential of thin-wing technology to enable efficient, sustainable air transportation. NASA's original X-66 agreement with Boeing would see it provide $425 million in funding through milestone payments. Boeing and industry partners were set to contribute $725 million toward the project. The new statement doesn't specify whether these details have now changed. NASA notes that "since NASA issued the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator award in 2023, the project has made significant progress toward its goal of informing future generations of more sustainable commercial airliners." Under the new proposal, "all aspects of the X-66 flight demonstrator's design, as well as hardware acquired or modified for it, would be retained while the long, thin-wing technology is being investigated with more focus. NASA and Boeing would also continue to collaborate on research into the transonic truss-braced wing concept."
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Step Inside A Factory Building 1960s Airliners
Stories about lost parts and corners being cut on the production line might give American aviation a bad rap these days, but it's always fun to look at how far we've come in more than half a century of aerospace research. That's where this vintage footage taken inside the factory that assembled McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft comes in. Boeing wasn't always the biggest name in American aerospace, and back in the 1960s a company called McDonnell Douglas churned out some pretty iconic civil jets that went into service across the U.S. and around the world. The company's most famous plane was probably the DC-10, a strange machine with a jet engine on each wing and a third mounted to the tail of the aircraft. In a new video shared by excellent YouTube channel Boeing Classics, workers at the McDonnell Douglas show off what it took to assemble a DC-10 back in the 1960s. Read more: Here's Why You Always Board Planes On The Left The clip, which you can see for yourself above, shows four DC-10 fuselages lined up inside an enormous factory. In one, a crew is working to pack insulation into the body of the plane, while another sees crews working to seal all the workings of the plane in. Inside another fuselage, workers are installing all manner of wiring looms and plumbing, while another is being lined with the kind of plastic window surrounds that wouldn't look out of place on a modern commercial jet. At the opposite side of the plant, tail sections of the 300-passenger aircraft are being assembled and the housing for that third engine on the tail is being fabricated. Another side of the plant is working on nosecones, with windows being fitted to three different cockpits. Once the three sections of the 180-foot long aircraft are fabricated, they are brought together with the 155-foot wings. The components are all carefully hauled into place, before being riveted together at the seams. When they are connected, work begins on the mechanics of the planes with flaps and ailerons installed on the wings and tails, and equipment is strapped to the nose of the DC-10. At this point, there's a choreographed display as all manner of parts and components are swung into place while ladders are lent up against different surfaces and engineers get to work. The final piece of the puzzle is the installation of the three engines, which were either General Electric CF6 units or Pratt & Whitney JT9D turbofan engines depending on the variant. The DC-10 was in production for almost 20 years and McDonnell Douglas churned out almost 400 of the aircraft in this manner. While the DC-10 operated commercially from the early 1970s right up to 2014, none of the nine remaining aircraft fly passengers anymore. The majority of these remaining planes work as cargo carriers, and one remaining DC-10 is used as a firefighting aircraft here in North America. Despite remaining in limited service today, production of the DC-10 ceased in the late 1980s after slowing sales for the commercial jet. It had been plagued with safety issues, crashes and problems with fuel economy, which meant it wasn't a popular jet for many operators. So sure, maybe footage of the construction of a plane that was caught up in more than 50 incidents that led to the deaths of more than 1,200 people might not be the best way to look back on the golden age of American aviation. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
