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S11.E03: Boeing

Lantern7

By Lantern7
in Last Week Tonight

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Lantern7

Lantern7

(edited)

Main Topic: Boeing

Also: Gaza; Supreme Court; Newscasters react to falling iguanas in Florida

Another fun-filled episode where John spotlights how an American institution succumbed to stockholders' bottom line. You know things are bad when trip advisors allow you to pick the type of airplane you can fly with, lest you get the same type that had a hole blown into its side. On the bright side, it was a delight seeing Roy Wood, Jr. in the episode-ending sketch.

Right now, I think Clarence Thomas has fifteen days to accept John's million-dollar offer. Takes the sting out of him and other members of the Supreme Court having a conflict of interest.

Edited by Lantern7
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Annber03

Annber03

I remember seeing a "20/20" episode once about those two panes that crahed as a result of the MCAS problem. It was fascinating and utterly infuraiting. I watch that show "Air Disasters" and theyv'e had quite a few storeis about Boeing plane crashes on there thus far. There's one I vividly remember about a plane crash that happened in the Pacific Ocean, which killed everyone on board. 

It was an Alaskan Airlines plane. The company that built it? McDonnell-Douglas. To make matters worse, there was an Alaska Airlines employee, John Liotine, who, a couple years prior to the crash, tried to alert the FAA about the shoddy maintenance work being done at his company in regards to this plane. 

He got rewarded for his whistleblowing...by being fired. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

That episode is called "Cutting Corners", for those who might be interested to check it out. 

The thing that always boggles my mind about stories like this is how these coprorate execs keep on about cutting costs to "save money" and so on. But then you hear about them being able to finally let planes fly years after they were originally planning to let them do so, and well over budget at that, and then of course the costs involved in these crashes and the money paid to victims' families and survivors ain't cheap, either. So...pray tell, where exactly does the cost-saving come in? I'm no math whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but even I know that math doesn't add up. 

It's just...insane that we live in a culture that allows this kind of corporate control. We definitely need serous overhaul of corporate influence in things like this, but of course, that's going to take far more than even the companies themselves changing their culture at this point. 

On a significantly lighter note, I cracked up at John's musing about the poor Economist employee who had to look up camel porn for that cover (which, serously...what the hell?) XD. I also loved the running thing of him commenting on the one guy marrying his first cousin ('cause again, WHAT THE HELL?). 

n other topics, I know John made his offer to Thomas, but for real, are there any other efforts people can take to actively make him recuse himself from this Trump case? 'Cause yeah, he absolutey should not be involved in that. For a whole host of reasons. 

The reveal that one of Trump's sons' birthday is on January 6th is both surprising and yet not surprising all at the same time. Just. Wow. It's details like that that, if you were to include them in a fictional novel, people would mock it for being too on the nose/cutesy. 

I love that Florida has an iguana falling warning system :p. What a bizarre phenomenon. 

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ALenore

ALenore

Elon Musk was going around saying that the reason Boeing is having problems with planes is that they hire black people. I'm sure he knew at least something about the real cause of Boeing's problems, but he's been on a tear agains DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), which he likes to call DIE, and he figured this incident 'proves' his point.

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peeayebee

peeayebee

That was a very informative and infuriating story about Boeing. I learned a lot.

But my blood is boiling. Stockholders and investors are ruining this country. (Or helping to ruin it. Or have ruined it.) Companies are bought or merged, and employees lose their jobs. CEOs and other muckety-mucks are raking in the dough while the real workers are barely surviving. I don't know what can be done.

And this Boeing story shows so clearly what the drive to keep stock prices up does to the product. It becomes a death machine.

It all makes me so angry.

And more anger... the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas. Well, of course not just Thomas on the SC. But... geez. 

I did enjoy the story about iguanas falling from trees and all the local news "iguana-casts." I would freak out if I lived there and saw those things raining down.

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

They barely scratched the surface on the Dreamliner problems. The portion of the documentary they showed about whether the employees would fly on the plane is on youtube. There's also a part where they talked about scoring weed and who smoked up during the day. 

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andromeda331

andromeda331

Yeah, I don't think I want to get on a plane again.

So this mess is half Boeing's fault for focusing only on stock prices and half the FAA for the brilliant idea to let Boeing employees be inspectors. Gee how could that go wrong?

I agree with @Annber03 how could it be cost effective if they later spend billions over budget and the payouts to the victims families? 

I love John continuing the employees being clowns, managers at monkeys and etc all the way up to a balloon guy. Yeah, sometimes I feel like that's who most companies are ran by. 

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DoctorAtomic

DoctorAtomic

The Dreamliner was the first plane to be partially assembled outside of the main plant in WA. I think it was in SC. The assembled products, electronics from SC were shipped to the main plant incomplete. So they had to fix all that and then do what their work was at the same time. 

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Lugal

Lugal

On 3/4/2024 at 5:33 PM, Annber03 said:

The thing that always boggles my mind about stories like this is how these coprorate execs keep on about cutting costs to "save money" and so on. But then you hear about them being able to finally let planes fly years after they were originally planning to let them do so, and well over budget at that, and then of course the costs involved in these crashes and the money paid to victims' families and survivors ain't cheap, either. So...pray tell, where exactly does the cost-saving come in? I'm no math whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but even I know that math doesn't add up.

Easy.  The corporate execs that make the cuts and "save money" are lauded and rewarded by the shareholders and move on to better things by the time the costs come due.  Then it's someone else's problem.

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vibeology

vibeology

There's also the fact that someone does the math on lawsuits vs the cost to implement a fix and if the lawsuits are theoretically cheaper, they will let people die to save money.

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swanpride

swanpride

I think it is quite telling that a company which was originally founded by the son of a German immigrant was operating for years really successfully under a "think long term" business approach which is very typical for German companies and then literally got swallowed up by the American mind-set. 

Guess that means that Airbus will now take the place Boing used to have. Quite a shame, I still remember the awe I felt the first time I saw a 747. 

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