The Boeing insider didn’t say much, but muttered quietly to me in the hallway about some design elements, and about the culture, or how the brave new world was going to work out. I was caught off guard and didn’t know what to say, didn’t know of what he was speaking. I’ve never forgotten it, it unnerved me, and I regret not trying to dig deeper. Another leader there, a wonderful wonderful man, not an engineer, had a roll of the eyes, a shake of the head in a conversation about the direction of the company.
I loved that company, viewed it was a bastion of American leadership and strength. Looking out over a factory of people with pride in their work, a culture that respected engineering and supported their customers, I thought “this is America’s strength”. The leadership they showed, the respect they had earned, and the fact that the world could have confidence in their engineering integrity and their systems discipline? That was power. They were the standard.
I expected it to last forever. And as an engineer with some interactions with the FAA, I respected the way the industry and the FAA worked together as professionals to constantly improve the safety of the traveling public. Unlike other industries that “capture” their agencies or else disable them, the aviation relationships were cordial but effective. The engineering community that I saw from the early 1990s through 2005 or so was in charge and they shared a vision across airlines, across Boeing, across the FAA to make aviation safer.
The loss of Phil Condit at the top was huge. Boeing culture was damaged with mistrust amid fundamental change, massive reliance on computer models and subcontractors combined with focus on profits all took their toll. But the erosion of the FAA as THE oversight body — squarely in the hands of a GOP-driven agenda to shrink government by shedding all functions that “could” be done by private industry — might be the biggest factor. The FAA had been a safety net for a company that took care of its safety problems as soon as they emerged. You don’t need a safety net — until you fall. The FAA had been a safety patrol who stands around LOOKING USELESS until the morning that a careless mood takes over among the youth, and the safety patrol pushes the kid out of the street and says “LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE YOU CROSS!!! PAY ATTENTION!!”
The safety patrol is an extra set of eyes, always looking for the risk in a situation. The 13th man — “have you thought about this??”
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