Boeing has faced challenges to its survival in the past. The human cost of losing two 737s to avoidable accidents should not and cannot be minimised - hundreds of lives were tragically cut short, and families torn apart. However, the evidence from past crises suggests Boeing will survive and thrive again, probably sooner than many are expecting - thanks in part to the hard lessons the company has learned from its latest challenge.
The company was founded by William E ‘Bill’ Boeing and Commander G Conrad Westervelt in 1916, (see Boeing 707 Group, Pen & Sword 2017 by the same author) just in time to benefit from a surge of military orders during World War One. After the war, Boeing won lucrative airmail contracts from the federal government, and assembled a sprawling aviation conglomerate - its holdings included engine-maker Pratt & Whitney and what became United Airlines - aimed at dominating US aviation.
In 1934 the Roosevelt Administration cancelled the company’s airmail contracts and broke up what it saw as an emerging monopoly. Bill Boeing was so upset by these moves that he quit the company that bore his name and sold all his stock. Unlike competing companies begun by aerospace pioneers such as Donald Douglas, Glenn Martin and James McDonnell, Boeing lost the driving force of its founder early on.
That could have been fatal for the enterprise - many aircraft companies failed during depression years - but it taught Boeing to operate without a visionary at its helm. Most of the companies whose founders stuck around later proved incapable of competing when that visionary faltered or died.
While Washington was prosecuting its trust-busting campaign against Boeing, the company introduced one of the most revolutionary products in its history. The Boeing 247 today is considered the first modern airliner. It was a monoplane rather than a biplane. It was all-metal rather than containing wood or canvas in its design. It had a streamlined shape and retractable landing gear to minimise drag. It even had a wing de-icing system.
The 247 was an impressive technological achievement, but few were sold. The airliner was eclipsed by the even more advanced Douglas DC-3, which could carry a larger number of passengers. In the end only seventy-five Boeing 247s were built, sixty which went to the company’s airline unit that Washington would soon force it to divest.
Boeing and its competitors were rescued from the Great Depression by World War Two. Even before America entered the war, Washington launched a vast buildup of US airpower that multiplied the company’s revenues. Boeing built the B-17 and B-29 bombers. But within weeks after victory was won in 1945, the government started wholesale cancellation of military aircraft contracts, resulting in around 70,000 Boeing workers losing their jobs. Boeing and its rivals thus entered the postwar period severely diminished and with uncertain business prospects.
Boeing transformed the B-29 airframe into a commercial airliner after the war, but what really lifted its prospects was the coming of the Cold War and the advent of jet engines. The Cold War generated demand for new Boeing bombers, most notably the jet-powered B-47 and B-52. Boeing also built hundreds of jet-powered tankers to support the bomber fleet, and work on that programme contributed to the development of its 707 jetliner via the Model 367-80 - a late-comer to civil aviation after the British, French, Canadians and even the Russians.
By the late 1960s, Boeing was the global leader in jetliners, having developed the single-aisle 727 similar to the earlier British DH.121 Trident and then the 737 - itself a concept from the British of fifteen years or so earlier - that was to become the most widely used commercial transport in history, and the 747 that held the world record for passenger-carrying capacity over four decades. Both designs were eventually eclipsed by Airbus products with their A320 and A380 respectively - a simple fact that grated on American egos.
Development of the 747 left the company heavily in debt. An economic recession caused orders for commercial aircraft to dry up just as military demand generated by the Vietnam War was softening. Between 1968 and 1971 the number of workers at Boeing’s commercial aircraft unit fell over seventy-five per cent. Company finances were stretched to the breaking point, and bankruptcy was barely averted.
In 1991 a 737 crashed on approach to Colorado Springs after inexplicably rolling to the right and then going into a steep dive. Everybody on board died. In 1994 it happened again near Pittsburgh, with the plane this time rolling to the left before pitching down. Once again, everybody on board was killed. These 737 accidents did not provoke the same crisis atmosphere as 737 MAX mishaps did, because they were much more widely separated in time and thus did not create a media frenzy of reporting. However, a four-year investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board after the 1994 crash concluded that a malfunction in the rudder had caused it to reverse direction, causing both tragedies. The US Federal Aviation Administration ordered modification of a key mechanism and mandated new training procedures so pilots could cope with unanticipated shifts in the flight control system. Globally, the entire fleet was discreetly modified.
The growing commercial threat of the European aerospace company commonly called Airbus to Boeing cannot be understated. The inroads that the Europeans were making into Boeing’s global market and especially their own national market was dramatic. Something had to be done and done quickly. A product was needed that was more attractive than its rivals were offering. This was the 737 MAX.
Writing this book has proved to be challenging - reading it may be the same. The difficulties, as usual with much of my work, springs from the differences of the so-called ‘common language’ British and Americans share. Color becomes colour, program becomes programme, and of course, American phrasing is often different from English. Then there is the dreaded use of plane instead of aircraft; I don’t care what anyone says, a plane is a cutting tool used to smooth wood in my books!
This brings me to the conundrum of whether to use Imperial or metric units of measurement? Invariably there are times when I must use both, but by and large my writing rules are simple: the aircraft was designed using Imperial units, so I use Imperial measurements. I am English, so I write in that language; however, as a sign of respect to that nation, if I am quoting an American, I use their spelling and phrasing in any quotation.
Another difficulty is that for much of this book two independent storylines are in place - the chronology of the 737, which in itself is somewhat convoluted, and the commercial and political events that were swirling around it. Inevitably this has produced a disjointed main storyline, which I have tried to at least partially resolve by telling the story in a series of almost stand-alone chapters. Unfortunately it does mean that some photographs do not mesh into place with the main body text.
Boeing and its corporate antecedents have faced many other challenges, such as the end of the Cold War which severely reduced demand for military aircraft, and the rise of a European jetliner producer that eventually claimed half of the global market. The enterprise as it exists today was shaped by the stresses these recent events created.
Can Boeing survive the 737? In order to try and answer that question, it is necessary to go back and look at all that went on, where the airliner came from and the events that have happened.
This title can be ordered here - https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Boeing-737-Hardback/p/18427
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