What is Going On inside Boeing?!

is Boeing on its way to follow MacDonald Douglas into just becoming another almost irrelevant name in the aircraft manufacturer graveyard several industry insiders are starting to be really frustrated with Boeing's apparent lack of vision so is it time for a change of leadership stay tuned in late 2022 Boeing held an invest today event for the first time since before the pandemic on that day among other news its current CEO David Calhoun stated that the company was not planning to launch any new aircraft before early as the year 2035 and to really put emphasis on this he added that Boeing won't even go to the drawing board to work on a new airplane before the end of this decade Now by saying this Calhoun was likely trying to put investors at ease putting a lot of emphasis on financial stability and it appears that it might have initially worked because Wall Street who was very worried about the looming recession really liked Calhoun's message at that time but this happiness from the markets came in stark contrast to the disbelief that was voiced from people who were actually working inside of the aviation industry this included many of Boeing's own suppliers especially those who would eventually be directly involved in the development of a new Boeing commercial design such a delay in launching an all-new aircraft would mean that Boeing could have a 25-year gap between the launch of its previous all-new design the Boeing 787 and its future new design whatever they choose to call that an innovation Gap like that is virtually unheard of and just to give you some sense of reference here Boeing launched six new aircraft in the space of 27 years during the 20th century if all of this information sounds a bit familiar it's because I talked about this in a recent video and in that video I also gave you my first reaction to this news which was that I basically didn't believe it in that video I mentioned that perhaps what is really happening here is that Boeing isn't actually telling us the full true plans and that they're already developing something new but they're keeping it on the wraps after all they had already been working on studies for a new aircraft to replace the Boeing 757 and 767 for many years before the pandemic but why would they keep that development a secret in that case well the answer to that question is that at this point in time whatever Boeing chooses to do Airbus can do faster thanks to its relative Financial stability and resources Airbus can potentially out develop Boeing to respond with devastating speed to whatever plans Boeing might announce for example if Boeing would launch a mid-size 757 replacement Airbus could immediately launch a counter project to re-wing and lengthen its Airbus a321 nail they would then be able to bring that to the market much faster than Boeing could ever hope to develop and certify an all-new aircraft if that would happen Airbus would unsteal much of the potential market for this new aircraft from Boeing without them having a chance to respond to it making the development completely uneconomical this is why I thought that Boeing's announcement about how it won't even start deciding a new aircraft in this decade might not be entirely honest Boeing could be working on something and planning to announce the launch of a new design in 2025 or 26 when their free cash flow and other Financial indicators are better and by getting a couple of years Head Start they could surprise Airbus and even out the odds of it even though some people initially might have thought that this was the case it now appears that a lot of the aviation experts out there are really getting frustrated with Boeing because they are now starting to believe that Dave Calhoun really meant what he said about not starting any new development in this decade and why do the Insiders think that then well that's because the development of an all-new aircraft is not something that you can just pull out of your hat just suddenly and start up after Decades of engineering slumber a brand new aircraft would need input design and investments from a lot of suppliers and Boeing would also need to be discussing this new aircraft with prospective launch customers there are currently no signs of this happening and because of that it looks like Boeing is really just sitting on their hands officially Boeing is justifying the strategy by pointing at new expected developments in Industry that should become available around the middle of the decade they include things like the CFM rise a very promising open fan Engine That Could bring enormous improvements in efficiency and also the transonic trust brace Wing which Boeing is building as a demonstrator together with NASA both of these new technologies holds Promises of huge efficiency improvements and with the First Flight of the transonic trough space Wing demonstrator coming in 2028 and a similar timeline for the CFM rise programming a new aircraft launched towards the turn of the decade could sort of make sense right well actually no a lot of people in the industry are not at all convinced by this as they see this as basically just excuses to justify buoyant's complete in action for the coming years and by the way if you're wondering where I verify many of these new stories that I cover in these videos I do so with the help of today's sponsor ground news ground news is an amazing news up that I personally use in order to stay informed about what's happening in the world with this platform I can compare how different media Outlets report on the same story like Boeing's latest plans or news reports for example ground news has aggregated over 600 stories about Boeing in just the last three months making it an excellent resource for researching Aviation issues like the one that we're covering in today's Story the platform starts by providing an overview of the story that's being covered and then it continues by showing which news outlets that are currently covering it it also displays the political leaning bias distribution and any potential political blind spots for both the right and the left in the political Spectrum this means that whether you are on Aviation Enthusiast or other journalist or just someone who wants to be well informed I highly recommend downloading ground news if you're interested in trying it out for yourself go to ground.news Mentor now to get 35 off the price but it's completely free to test it out but if you choose to subscribe your subscription will be helping this Independent News platform to continue helping readers navigate a really complex media landscape and of course by supporting my sponsor you're also supporting me thank you ground news now let's continue alright so let's look at this as a question instead if Boeing will be able to use these new developments in both Indians and possibly fuselage design if they just wait a few years then why would they try to launch something brand new before that especially if they know that Airbus can out develop them with an updated a321 Neo well the first reason is because Boeing really doesn't have a choice here whatever they decide to do Boeing's Gap to Airbus will only continue to grow one that's because Airbus will of course also benefit from these new technological developments when they arrive the gap between the two companies will only get worse with time especially if Boeing is just twiddling its thumbs while Airbus grabs a bigger and bigger market share by Boeing's own admission Airbus could soon be holding a 60 share of the civilian Airline Market meaning that they will effectively be making and selling 50 more aircraft than Boeing well this would be really bad for Boeing but according to many analysts this is actually a optimistic scenario with no new aircraft coming from Boeing the balance could easily swing further with Airbus taking as much as 70 market share in the coming years but what's also really important to understand here as liham news have explained in a couple of their recent articles which are linked to down here by the way there is already a big market for a new Boeing aircraft right now so there's really no reason to wait yes in theory it might be possible to achieve efficiency gains near 25 or even 30 with a combination of the CFM rise engine and the transonic truss brace Wing but these designs will likely both need more time before they become practical to use we don't even really know if the trough space Wing will have enough space inside of the wing for fuel or if it's practically possible to fold such a large part of the Wings to make them fit into the existing gate infrastructure and there are also similar questions around the CFM rice engine so what many critics are saying is that betting on promises for new disruptive designs like this haven't really worked out well in aviation for decades it would probably be much safer and definitely more achievable to aim at producing a new design with existing technologies that is maybe eight to ten percent more efficient and that might even be possible to use already existing aircraft types and improve them hopefully not the Boeing 737 though but maybe the 787. so if Boeing did this it's likely that Airbus would also respond with its own all-new aircraft design but even if they did that Boeing's new aircraft would most likely sell like hot cakes get it while it's hot and that's because so much of the airline business is based on momentum and brand loyalty a modern efficient Boeing mid-sized aircraft like a single aisle version of the Boeing 787 backed up by Boeing's immense support and infrastructure would definitely find buyers there's no question about that Airlines generally plan their Fleet Acquisitions over a lot of years so on all new aircraft platform that is built with plenty of upgrade potential would be hard for the airlines to ignore especially if they have to replace large fleets of Aging Jets and Boeing is still a hugely trusted brand inside of the industry but there is a second perhaps even more pressing reason why many believe that Boeing are running out of time if they are to develop a new aircraft unless they act quickly Boeing could eventually lose their ability to design new aircraft altogether in previous videos I have discussed how the events of 2020 abruptly stopped many people's plans from pursuing their pilot careers but it's worth remembering that the same is true of many aspiring engineers and other key but perhaps less visible jobs inside of the Aerospace industry and this really matters to Boeing because they spend much of last year 2022 not only trying to retain its existing pool of experienced Engineers but also try to find new ones I recently explained how Boeing tried to launch a couple of joint ventures with the Brazilian aircraft maker in brayer and one big reason they did that was to get access to embraer's pool of young Engineers who had recent experience with designing new aircraft Boeing was clearly hoping to be able to use this experience and talent pool for their future plane developments now that obviously didn't happen since Boeing walked away from that deal in 2020 but they also had talks with Mitsubishi about a similar partnership which also fell through now the reason Boeing was in the hunt for a lot of Engineers was because potentially thousands of its existing Engineers were set to retire in November of 2022. this was because for very complicated reasons to do with interest rates pension terms and lump sum pension payment payouts these Engineers do to lose money if they were remaining as employees for the company instead of retiring and of course that's typically the opposite of how these contracts normally work but here Boeing had a bit of bad luck because besides Brazil and Japan Boeing had previously thought that it could find loads of engineers in Russia obviously this was one of those stories about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that only produced a footnote in the media but it was very significant for Boeing nonetheless Boeing had built up what it called the Moscow Design Center which employed as many as 1500 engineers at its prime and this Center was abruptly shot when the Russian aggression started Boeing actually did manage to relocate some of its key Engineers from there to other facilities around the world but those relocations amounted to only about 100 engineers in total so with no pool of Engineers coming from Brazil Russia or elsewhere Boeing tried everything it could to convince its existing Engineers to not retire in November 2022. they tried with offering strong financial incentives but even so Boeing reportedly lost over 500 of its most experienced Engineers which must have been a hard blow Boeing is currently continuing to look for new Engineers recruiting directly in Brazil and India and they added nearly 15 000 jobs in total in 2022. that's including retirement and in 2023 Boeing is planning to hire another 10 000 people and by the way these aggressive hiring plans was why some of us thought that boy might be working on something new hidden behind closed curtains it is important to point out here that Boeing is currently adding engineering capacity worldwide instead of concentrating it in very few design centers like it has historically done mostly back in the United States now some of these jobs did go to Washington state which is Boeing's traditional home according to Dominic Gates Boeing increased its employee count in the state by eight percent last year but there is no doubt that the manufacturer is diversifying the locations of its engineering capacity so the question then is can Boeing build a coherent engineering design core by using teams of Engineers around the world strong enough to start making new designs Boeing as public has said that they're making new digital design tools that will allow them and their suppliers to bring the new designs to Market in just four to five years which if they manage would be much faster than they did before but many analysts remains very skeptical about that but there is of course the possibility that another reason behind these new design tools could be to make teams of Engineers work better from different sites around the world however Boeing's first aircraft to test this new digital design tools is its t7 Air Force trainer which has already had quite a few problems during development so what can Boeing do then well more and more voices in the industry have started to doubt the real company vision of Boeing and that Vision ultimately comes down to its leadership technology giants like Boeing and Airbus tend to cycle between different leadership strategies which usually start with being entrepreneurial that means taking bold risks with promising but expensive projects but if they are successful they then continue into a phase where they're sitting back managing their new products and Designs reaping the financial benefits from that and then they wait until they need to go back into the entrepreneurial State again in order to stop the company from stagnating now Boeing appears to have been stuck in the managerial stage of the cycle four well decades at this point when Boeing delivered the last ever 747s to its customer recently Dave Calhoun talked about maintaining Boeing's leadership culture forever and some industry insiders really booked at that statement because of the perceived lack of vision that Boeing has been showing lately another group of people who have been very unhappy with the Boeing Leadership lately includes some of their most important suppliers because previously Boeing would pay their suppliers within 30 days which is the standard in many Industries but in recent months this has been stretched to 60 90 or even 120 days now these type of payment deferrals are a big deal in an industry that has been hammered so hard in recent years the aviation industry is incredibly Finance intensive which parts costing many millions of dollars sometimes so for suppliers to suddenly have to bear these costs for another month or two longer than they had expected without getting paid that can become a huge problem and I cannot over emphasize how important it is to keep the chain of suppliers happy because without them no new aircraft but to be fair though during the past few years with the max getting grounded the pandemic problems with the triple 7x and the 787 and then Russia's War it wouldn't have been an easy job for anyone to lead Boeing I would even go as far to say that someone like Dave Calhoun was exactly the right type of person for this job during this very difficult time but is this passive and conservative leadership style the way to go or is Boeing actually in need of a true entrepreneur right now someone like Steve Jobs that can take bold decisions and start large projects built on a true Vision not the numbers from the financial wing of the company well I'm not sure about the answer to that but I would sure love to find out what is certainly true is that building and certifying an aircraft is through craftsmanship and like anyone who is an expert will tell you true craftsmanship with us if it's not being used so Boeing chooses to wait another seven years with starting a new bold project well then they might find that when they want to start it they don't have any of the engineers left to knows how to properly do it and the aviation world might have discounted them as a resource long time ago that's why I am hoping for Boeing to step up from this lull and to go and do something really truly awesome I want them to remember their core engineering background and their Visions from previous years where they were willing to bet the form on fantastic projects like the Boeing 747 for example because to be perfectly honest to my knowledge there hasn't been a single company that has ever retired itself into greatness now I would love to hear what you guys think about this let me know in the comments below especially if you work for Boeing or any of their suppliers and I also want to say a huge thank you to my patreon crew who helped me and support me in so many ways including previewing all of these videos and giving me some quality control and I also want to thank all of you who have decided to buy yourself some cool merch or send the super tanks it really helps the channel have an absolutely fantastic day wherever you are and I'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 270,758

Keywords: trending, mentour pilot, mentour now, aircraft, boeing, airbus, game changer, concept, wing, brace, 2030, 2025, David Calhoun

Id: 4XFq9HjyeRc

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023