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The investigation is tied to an incident on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Boeing also told a Senate panel that it cannot find a record of the work done on the Alaska plane.
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If it’s anything like other criminal inquiries in this country, they will find the lowest paid chump on the totem pole to pin all the blame on while the C-Suite once again walks away with Golden god damned Parachutes.
It’s optimistic to assume they’ll even bother finding someone in the company guilty even if it’s some low level chump. I don’t actually expect anyone to be found guilty in this whole thing. The only time corporations in this country actually suffer repercussions for their actions is when they cost shareholders significant money Enron style.
This is absolutely right. The worst case scenario in these situations is a settlement with no admission of fault.
I think even this isn’t as hurtful to major shareholders - the ones that have decisionmaking power - as you’d hope. They typically have more information and pay more attention than the small fish. They’d offload their shares earlier, for longer, as to not disturb the price too much, leaving the remainder to hold the bag once shit hits the fan. The stock market enables that. They’ve extracted a shit ton of money by steering the company over the last couple of decades. The ones that would really bear the brunt are the shareholders that never had any decisionmaking power, and the company’s workers.
Or when they’re foreign companies.
Oh I’m sure their Legal team will get QA people to do a full audit trail to find out who was on shift at the assembly line and blame them.
Just this country? Remember the diesel scandal at VW?
Couple of rogue engineers.
“Couple of rogue engineers.”
Oliver Schmidt was a senior executive at VW who was prosecuted for that. Yes, upper management did take a hit.
Was he an executive, or just a manager, or just an engineer? Articles (including those on the justice department website) aren’t clear about exactly what his role was. None of the actual executives holed up on DE have appeared to pay the price.
He’s listed as a senior executive. Not clear to me if he was on the board or anything, but he’s definitely more than an engineer or mid-manager.
Where is he listed as such?
“former engineer:” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswagen-ag-charged-conspiracy-and-wire-fraud-diesel-emissions-scandal
“senior manager:” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-senior-manager-sentenced-84-months-prison-role-conspiracy-cheat-us-emissions-tests
“Senior manager” basically means Vice President or President. He was pretty high up, and likely reported to the board directly or only one step away.
“Senior manager” means manager of managers, still below director.
He testified that actual executives and lawyers gave him his script to read to regulators. He was complicit, he was guilty, but he was far from the topmost person responsible.
I assume Boeing’s response to this criminal inquiry will be a stock buyback.
How else will their stock price go up amidst all this controversy lol.
Accountability should be held at the top. If they can benefit from cost cutting that can potentially kill people through negligence, they need to face criminal consequences for doing so.
Not potentially.
MCAS did kill several hundred people just a few years ago.
A system Boeing put in place and snuck past regulators specifically to deploy a cheaply developed product that could compete with airbus.
The executives at Boeing already have blood on their hands. They should have faced manslaughter charges for the 2 flights that went down due to MCAS.
No no no, this is all a 5D Chess move:
Make shit planes, stock falls like the planes
Buyback stocks, price rises
repeat
WAKE UP, SHEEPLANE!!!1
Only after they lay off the subcontracted QA department
Increase their lobbying budget too
Oh Mr Oliver, thank you for imparting your wisdom.
Sadly nothing Boeing has done is criminal in the US even though it absolutely should be. It’s just the bog standard corporate pursuit of profit at the expense of all else. Cutting corners, ignoring safety, rushing everything, and all with fewer people to do the work than are necessary. If Boeing is found criminally guilty for that half the corporations in the US are in trouble.
No, this is just political theater, much like the TSA is. Boeing has fucked up enough that people are starting to take notice, so this is just a little reminder to them that they need to stop fucking up quite so publicly. The executives will sweat a little, temporarily improve things, and then go right back to their usual bullshit in a year or two when things calm down. Worst case scenario they’ll put out a series of BP style “We’re sorry” videos where they emphasize how much quality and safety supposedly mean to them.
much like the TSA is
While mostly true, the TSA was also a stealth jobs program for flunkies who couldn’t get jobs anywhere else (and to help Bush pump his jobs numbers, which were abysmal). You kind of have to be a motivated fucking idiot to spend every day undermining the fourth amendment and acting like you’re doing a service to society. Especially with all the evidence of TSA agents using their authority to just outright steal shit. They’re not hiring the best, and everyone knows that they hire the worst of the worst for these jobs, so it’s hard to even call it “theater” anymore when everyone sees right through it. Hypernormalization.
While you’re correct in your assessment, I’d like to remind people to not be assholes to TSA when they’re going through security. They’re people just trying to do their jobs like the rest of us. It’s a shit job with no recognition and a ton of public contact. The agents aren’t there because they want to stomp on your rights; they have bills to pay and people to take care of.
Being assholes to them is irrational, they can be more of a nuisance to you than you can be to them. However I disagree people doing those jobs deserve any respect, doing evil because it’s a job and it pays and they can’t think of anything better… that doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes acceptable. The pawns don’t feel like they’re responsible for abuses.
Sadly nothing Boeing has done is criminal in the US even though it absolutely should be.
I doubt that you know whether Boeing has or has not broken any laws.
OK, well nothing there’s anything public about anyway. It’s always possible they’ve been embezzling or I don’t know, running a drug smuggling ring out of their warehouses, but nothing they’ve probably done is illegal. Remember this is all just a response to the multiple accidents related to manufacturing defects in their planes. At this moment the worst charge they’re looking at is maybe criminal negligence.
Cover up is where I’d put money. Supplying a federal agency with falsified documents or otherwise lying would start getting into criminal territory. Though I agree that we, the public, have no evidence of that.
He didn’t say illegal, he said criminal.
What is your point?
They’re being investigated under “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States”, which does have criminal penalties.
Now, that’s a prison sentence of up to 5 years. People died because of the decisions by Boeing executives, and countless others were put at risk. There should be a whole lot more here that they should be charged with, but probably won’t.
And when was the last time that the US sent to jail anybody in the C-suite of a major US company?
In the US (and not only) the Law might be on the book but it’s most definitelly selectivelly applied and all we’ve seen when it comes to the top people in such “too big to fail” companies is settlements with no admission of guilt.
I don’t disagree. I also think people should present the VW Diesel Emissions scandal accurately.
Oh yeah, that stuff was a complete total disgrace and partly why I wrote “In the US (and not only)”.
Protecting C-suite types in big companies is almost always how things work in Western Nations, even the supposedly more honest ones.
The FAA and the DOJ are not the same as TSA. Not at all.
An enterprising DA should charge a corporation with murder under the personhood standard established by citizens united and go for the death penalty . Revoke their ability to exist in the state.
If someone bought off that the bolts were reinstalled they can get in trouble for falsifying inspection records.
Slap on the wrist incoming
The CEO of Boeing is running for president!
Can’t be sued right now, he’s running for president…20 years later… still running for president…
Yeah thats about the extent of consequences for American corps.
Slap on the wrist? More likely they’ll get the Federal Legislature to send in another multi-billion dollar bail-out.
Not if they find a scapegoat.
Somehow I doubt American Ju$tice will jail the executive who went laughing all the way to bank with the bonuses they made from cutting corners in design, manufacturing and QA, cutting costs down to the bone and using Boeing employees acting as in-house FAA “representatives” to self-certify the pieces of junk Boeing now makes.
(As somebody else pointed out, the deaths attributable to such practices, namelly in the MCAS debacle, should’ve been treated as manslaughter).
Its a functional state-financed monopoly that isn’t owned or operated by the state and gets to charge taxpayers an absurd markup per unit by passing every expenditure through half a dozen shell companies that each get to squeeze out profit on the margins.
But hey, we get the latest in aviation technology, right? Not like they’re just churning out lemons that fall apart in midair.
Not even. They knew MCAS was unrecoverable. Their test pilots told them this and the government has the documents. They released it anyway and lied about it. That’s not, “oops”, that’s malice and forethought.
I’m making four flights soon with the Boeing 737 Max 8. I’m sure the software is probably all updated and debugged properly.
I also took an iPad course.
It’s never too late to write your will. Just don’t take it with you, leave it with a close reltive.
Funny thing is, I did.
F
Boeing assures you everything is properly debugged. Only known issues is that the engines could explode if the anti-icing is accidentally turned on, but the pilots have got a foolproof plan to avoid killing everyone with the flip of a switch:
Big deal, they did the same thing on Apollo 13, and that flight didn’t experience any issues!
Trust me bro.
The likelihood that there will be anything wrong with your flights is minuscule. A hundred thousand planes fly around the Earth every single day and they almost never have any issues.
Of course. These are all routine <2 hr flights as well, without exposure to any particular weather extremes. They stay airborne well enough, under normal conditions. It’s when there’s a quirky mishap things can quickly escalate beyond control, and take a “dive” for the worse as it were…
Just flew on two flights both 737 Max 8.
I figure after a disaster there is more scrutiny, so these could be the safest planes to fly on right now.
Well after the first disaster the side fell off of a a second plane, so I’m not sure I’d risk it.
It’s not supposed to do that.
Fly?
Just fly it outside the environment
I figure after a disaster there is more scrutiny
I thought that half a dozen accidents ago. Now I’m a bit less confident.
This is like reverse gambler’s fallacy.
Rosie the riveter is getting old and can’t keep up with the assembly speed…
2 years jail for Rocie for riveting slowly
2 weeks community service for the CEO who required managers to push Rocie faster
I’m a manager, so I’m pretty sure we’re blameless lol.
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The internet archive has worked reliably for me, but I am definitely checking this out.
Diversify your options! That way if one disappears, you’ll have other options. Diversifying options also helps keep other options functioning, because they’ll still have userbases instead of the userbase shrinking.
I try to use every option available, especially because while Pypass Paywalls Clean has been super useful for me, it only works about 95% of the time. The rest of the time, I have to turn to another option.
Definitely.
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I wonder if John Oliver had anything to do with it by bringing attention.
Nah, the door blowing off the airplane was world news. The 2 Boeing crashes a handful of years ago were world news. It’s a massive American company. The writing has been on the wall for a while.
Ummm, it’s a long going story which John reported quite late actually
It is a long going story, but this extra concern happens right after their report and their reports get a lot of views.
There was a documentary about Boeing that was very detailed and it was largely ignored. Oliver’s platform helped get the problem the attention it deserved.
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The truly rich shareholder billionaires that could affect the price, not the measly millionaires, have their own chartered personal business jets. 20 mil can get you a starter jet that runs well, say 1m/year for pilot, copilot, and crew to be on call 24/7. Fuel expenses and runway time, all in all its cheap for them. The ones that want a brand new jet are spending a 60-100mm.
No billionaire cares more about their non-existant demon tube travel than the profits. If they’re selling or shorting Boeing shares, it’s because of the public outrage, not their own fear of personal safety.
I suspect the explosive decompression caused by one of the doors flying off a plane mid-air might have been more directly responsible than the rapidly downsizing streaming service comedy show that decided to make a few jokes about it.
Well you can trust them, kuf, kuf…
Boeing 777 weel fall off:
https://youtu.be/BeGo79nRMwU?si=S_9Of9EJyhTNhSrY
Boeing 737 Max 8 leanding gear colapse:
I’m sure their accountant CEO will know how to fix all their engineering problems.
The only reason they’re pretending to give a shit is because the stock prices are dropping. The whole time I guess we’ll just ignore the whistleblower that just got “Epsteined” right in the middle of depositions about these self same quality issues. Maybe they’ll even try to blame the dead guy since he was a quality manager, can’t get any more convenient than that.
