【Military Subplane】Author: Big Ivan
On the 5th of this month, the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-Max9 (hereinafter referred to as the Boeing 737-9) grounding incident is still fermenting. According to Reuters, on January 7, United Airlines ordered the grounding of all of its airline's Boeing 737-9s and inspected the failed closed emergency exit doors until January 25.
United couldn't hold back itself, and disclosed that "many" bolts were loose in the same position of the 79 Boeing 737-9 passenger planes operated by the airline, which was shocking, and Boeing had to announce that the Boeing plant in Seattle would be shut down for a day on the 25th for a plant-wide quality inspection.
Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737-Max9 disappeared from the hatch during the flight
At the same time, after entering January, Boeing's bad luck is simply endless:
On January 5, Alaska Airlines used a Boeing 737-9 to fly a Portland to Ontario flight mission, flying and flying away the closed hatch, allowing all 171 passengers to enjoy the treatment of an air caravan;
On January 14, a Boeing 737 of Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) suffered a cracked windshield during the flight, but fortunately there were no major problems. Afterwards, ANA denied that the model that had the accident was the Boeing 737 Max series, which is estimated to be the classic Boeing 737NG.
Eyewitness footage shows the massive Boeing 747 resembling a burning behemoth......
On January 20, after taking off from Miami International Airport, an Atlas Air Boeing 747 Cargo suddenly suffered an engine failure, and the plane performed an aerial firethrow, and the crew used emergency procedures to return to the scene, but fortunately there were no major problems.
In just over 20 days in January, all three of Boeing's main models had problems, and one model was grounded.
What the hell happened to Boeing
In fact, we think that on the surface, it is indeed Boeing's back, but what is reflected in it is the gradual de-industrialization of Boeing's corporate culture and even the entire United States.
When it comes to Boeing's corporate culture, it has to mention the abstract work that Boeing has engaged in in R&D, manufacturing and delivery in recent years. In 2022, Netflix (Netflix) launched a documentary about Boeing - "Boeing: A Plummet", in which Boeing was made black inside and out.
For example, Boeing's flagship profitable Boeing 787 Dreamliner (Dreamliner) was originally planned to use the North Charleston plant in South Carolina as a Boeing 787 assembly shop. After the final assembly of most of the section was completed, it was transferred to the Everett plant in Seattle for final assembly, and after the final assembly was completed and the factory test flight was carried out, the delivery work was still completed at the Everett factory.
Boeing 787 plant in South Carolina
However, due to some reasons, in order to reduce the length of the supply chain and reduce the cost of final assembly, Boeing abandoned the plan to carry out final assembly at the Everett plant around 2010, and instead moved all final assembly to the North Charleston plant to complete. It is hoped that by reducing the transportation links in the assembly process, coupled with the lower labor costs and lower union costs in the South Carolina area, the labor and social costs in the assembly process will be reduced.
But it was clear that the North Charleston plant simply could not afford to assemble the Boeing 787, and there were many problems after the final assembly. For example, the rivet holes in the fuselage were misplaced, the equipment in the aircraft was installed incorrectly, and the wiring harness of the avionics system was not in accordance with the regulations, resulting in a mess of the wiring harness, etc., a large number of airlines waiting for pick-up saw that the South Carolina plant had become this virtue, and they were not willing to accept the Boeing 787 manufactured by the factory at all. Boeing had no choice but to send some of the Boeing 787s, which were really not good, back to the Everett factory for rework......
Of course, considering that the North Charleston factory is also considered a novice, and the novice hand tide seems to be normal, it is not impossible to adjust it slowly. Until 2020 or even 2022, the quality of the Boeing 787 manufactured by the North Charleston factory is still criticized by users, and it is often found that there are all kinds of strange problems, and there are too many problems, and it has even affected Boeing's original Boeing 787 delivery plan. Not only did it not save money, but in order to save money, it cost more extra money, which was more expensive than the previous plan.
If there is room for redemption at the North Charleston plant, then the work at the Seattle Renton plant, which is responsible for assembling the Boeing 737NG and 737MAX, is a bit scary. According to the Netflix documentary, the final assembly work of the Renton factory can only be described as barbaric production, during the final assembly, tooling fixtures and special tools are placed at will, and the unused materials are casually discarded in the mezzanine of the cabin......
The documentary even revealed that there was a widespread phenomenon of "flying leaves" in the Renton factory, and everyone happily "flying leaves" together during lunch was about to become a factory subculture, and even in 2011, the FBI and anti-narcotics police entered the factory to conduct a search and arrested a group of confused workers who were "flying leaves" on the spot. Now that Boeing's brutal production has reached this point, let's not make a fuss about the fact that the Boeing 737NG and 737MAX families are still in full condition.
In addition to the Boeing 787 and Boeing 737 series, the two main models of Boeing, the Boeing 777X is also in a difficult state of birth, and we know that Boeing also has a military model - F-15EX fighter, which is also struggling. In fact, the F-15EX is obviously the US Department of Defense wants to find something to do for Boeing, so as to avoid the dominance of the Loma company because of the F-35 project.
It stands to reason that the F-15 is a very mature model, and it is still a third-generation fighter, and Boeing's St. Louis plant was previously McDonnell Douglas' factory for assembling F-15A/C fighters, so there should be no problems with production at all. I didn't expect that even this kind of mature model and mature production line, Boeing can make problems, the F-15EX has been grinding for two or three years, and so far it has delivered 4 aircraft, and these 4 aircraft still have manufacturing problems, and after being delivered to the US Air Force Chinese National Guard, it has been unable to form combat effectiveness for a long time......
Aircraft manufacturing has reached this point, let's think that Boeing has more or less lost its share of this century-old factory.
How to look at Boeing's decline
On the surface, Boeing has done so much abstract and ruthless work because of problems in its corporate culture, such as the adjustment of the company's business orientation from technology-oriented to purely market-oriented, and for example, within the enterprise, it has changed from engineers and skilled workers as the core to accountants and actuaries as the core.
But in essence, Big Ivan thinks that Boeing's current virtue is just a microcosm of the gradual deindustrialization of the United States and the overall shift from reality to virtuality. After all, industrialization cannot fall from the sky, and high-tech industries cannot appear out of thin air:
The Boeing factory during World War II
From the perspective of the former, as the support of industrialization, it is necessary for the whole society to respect workers, engineers, and technical laws, and to have a systematic training of skilled workers from low to high, and it is necessary to form a complete industrial chain, so as to form a complete industrialization system;
From the perspective of the latter, don't underestimate low-end industries, including raw material supply and low-end manufacturing...... Etcetera. The technology tree required by the high-end manufacturing industry needs to be pointed up step by step in the low-end industry, and skilled workers also need to be selected step by step from the low-end manufacturing industry.
In this sense, Boeing, or even Lockheed Martin, is beyond the entire level of industrialization in the United States. In the United States, when the middle- and low-end industrial skilled workers are gradually dispersed and gradually aging, how can you expect a Boeing company to stand out? I am afraid that the Boeing company itself can recruit Amigo from Latin America, and it is obviously a fool's idea to expect these people to build airplanes......
So, this is the fundamental reason for the current situation of Boeing in the United States. In fact, it is not only the Boeing Company of the United States, whether it is General Dynamics, which can only produce one battalion of tanks a year, or the speed of aircraft carriers is far from keeping up with the Huntington Ingalls Company during the Cold War, it is just that the current level of industrialization in the United States is gradually declining, and the industrial system is missing more and more classes, resulting in production efficiency and production scale are much inferior to before, and even cannot be compared with the peak of the Cold War.
Therefore, for us, it is actually a great opportunity for the civil aircraft manufacturing industry to gradually catch up with the level of the United States. Don't look at our COMAC currently only has two flagship models, ARJ-21-700 regional airliner and C919 trunk narrow-body airliner, don't look at the former has only delivered more than 100 aircraft, and the latter has only delivered 5 aircraft so far. The problem, however, is that the mainland's overall industrial strength, especially the completeness of its industrial categories and the scale of its industry, far surpasses that of the United States, and the mainland's national strength is also on the rise.
Even from the perspective of national strength, our civil aviation industry and civil aircraft manufacturing industry will catch up as soon as possible, and even eventually reach the level of the peak of the Boeing Company of the United States. After all, as long as we have taken the first step, we should not be afraid of the long way to go, and we will surely achieve our goals step by step.
Of course, considering that Boeing has recently begun to think about helping to build a final assembly line for Boeing aircraft in India, and establish a delivery center for the Boeing 737 Max family...... Big Ivan thinks that if Boeing is willing to make this move, it will be better to achieve our goal faster, and that's probably it.