The Unraveling of Boeing | Landing the Plane | 5

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Would you fly on a Boeing 737-Max plane? Ed Pierson won’t. He’s a former Boeing senior manager who blew the whistle on safety concerns with the 737-Max project. Today, Ed is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Aviation Safety, and he joins David to discuss Boeing then and now, and where it all went wrong.

Later, Sharon Terlep, aerospace reporter for the Wall Street Journal, dives into the company’s future, discussing the billion dollar question: can Boeing bounce back?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all four episodes of Business Wars,
0:03.8	the unraveling of Boeing, early and ad-free right now.
0:08.0	Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:16.8	I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars. By the end of the 2010s, Boeing was in a tailspin. A flawed computer system in their new 737 Max plane caused not one, but two fatal crashes.
0:54.6	346 people died.
0:57.2	The tragedy spurred federal investigations that revealed a problematic company culture that
1:02.1	was years in the making.
1:03.9	It proved that Boeing had shifted its focus from safety to shareholders.
1:08.8	2024 wasn't much better for the company.
1:11.8	A door blew off an Alaska Airline 737 Max 9 plane.
1:16.3	Factory workers went on strike, and two astronauts got stranded by the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
1:23.0	You could say the aerospace industry is experiencing some heavy turbulence right now.
1:27.2	We're speaking with
1:28.4	journalist Sharon Turlip to hear more about what the future could hold. She covers Boeing and
1:34.0	global aerospace for the Wall Street Journal. Her recent reporting shines a light on how current
1:38.5	and former Boeing employees see a way forward following the corroded company culture and
1:43.3	unsafe manufacturing strategies.
1:45.9	But first, we're speaking with Ed Pearson.
1:48.5	In 2015, Ed was a senior manager at Boeing working on the 737 Max project.
1:53.9	By 2018, he says he and his team were extremely overworked.
1:58.4	Ed even recommended that leadership shut down production saying that for the
2:02.4	first time in his life, he was hesitant about putting his family on a Boeing plane. Business
	...

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