This has been a miserable year for Boeing. Not only has it struggled to cope with a safety and quality control crisis, it has lost billions of dollars

'It's still in shambles': Can Boeing come back from crisis?

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2024-12-28 22:30:04

This has been a miserable year for Boeing. Not only has it struggled to cope with a safety and quality control crisis, it has lost billions of dollars following a strike by workers that paralysed production at two of its biggest factories.

Even its space programme has been in trouble. Two astronauts were left stranded on the International Space Station in June after their Boeing Starliner capsule developed a potential fault, which would have made returning to Earth in it too dangerous.

On top of all this, the company faces a crisis of confidence from within its own ranks, says Bjorn Fehrm, an aeronautical and economic analyst at industry consultants Leeham Company.

Sam Mohawk is a 51-year-old quality assurance investigator at Boeing's factory in Renton near Seattle, a huge plant where the 737 Max is built. It is the company's best-selling aircraft, but one with a chequered safety record.

Earlier this year Mr Mohawk came forward as a whistleblower, claiming that chaos on the factory floor in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic had led to thousands of faulty or "non-conforming" parts going missing, and potentially being fitted aboard aircraft that have since been sent to customers.