Insight Friday 21 February 2020: The Boeing Soap Opera this Week

News

Boeing’s struggles continued this week on three fronts as the soap opera continues.  The news this week for Boeing was mixed.  The company asked the State of Washington to rescind certain tax breaks for aviation companies, thereby moving Boeing into compliance with WTO guidelines to attempt to eliminate potential tariffs from the EU prior to the settlement of a WTO case.  While the change is cosmetic, at best, it will likely enable Boeing to further delay WTO actions against it, as the organization is terribly slow.

Boeing also discovered foreign objects in the fuel tanks of some of the already completed 737s that are sitting idle and will need to inspect and correct every aircraft that was built.  This will be a time consuming and costly exercise and indicates the lack of control Boeing has over its quality process.  There have also been whistleblower comments about foreign objects in 787 aircraft in South Carolina, and Qatar Airways will only accept 787s built in the Everett factory.