An Immediate RX for the Boeing SMS malaise ???

JDA Aviation Technology Solutions

The below article assesses the Boeing Max 7 debacle from a 50,00’ level and declares: “it’s not enough to say that the company will ‘ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe’”. It is way too early to define specific responses to whatever the FAA investigation increased oversight & delegation examination and NTSB investigation. 

What appears to be self-evident is that the ESTABLISHMENT OF A TOP to BOTTOM SAFETY CULTURE and correspondent implementation of SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS have been deficient however fervent the executive statements have been, the repeated SMS messages on the Boeing websites and the posters tacked throughout the company’s many massive manufacturing hangars.  

Without some causation chain from the Max 7 flaws (design, manufacturing, QC/QA, installation???), initial focus can be directed to messages being sent by the Board and senior managements—not just words, but actions that signal to that person in part intake QA examining a subcontracted system, to the women and men who draw designs plus exact each definition of form/fit/function, to the QC team when creating the inspection parameters in each step of manufacturing, to the HR team creating a non-punitive environment for all Boeing employees who surface safety concerns and on and on …. 

FIRST MESSAGE TO BOEING STAFF, who has been elected to lead the company and what does the Board’s composition say about adding Safety Management System as a guiding principle to Boeing? No one brings extensive aviation SMS experience to the body that sets the strategic direction to a company reeling from the MAX debacle. There’s a pilot, more engineers than previously and a retired airline CEO, but their resumes neither highlight nor hint that they can add to establishing SMS at Boeing. Yes, most safety experts would point to a lack of religious adherence to this discipline established by the ILO, strongly recommended by ICAO, increasingly required by the FAA, positively cited by the NTSB, and successfully implemented by most airlines around the world (i.e. Boeing’s list of target customers). 

A Board of Director executive headhunter would quickly identify names like (alphabetical order, not exhaustive): 

• Randy Babbitt safety expert, former FAA Administrator, pilot union president, airline pilot 
• Dan Elwell current associated with company’s EVTOL certification, former FAA Administrator (+), aviation trade association executive, airline pilot and executive  
• Chris Hart creator, while at FAA, of FOQA one of SMS’s key data sources, especially aircraft, NTSB Chair and Member, aeronautical engineer [BS and MS aeronautical engineering], lawyer 

The addition of any one of these aviation SMS experts or a host of other individuals who KNOW this discipline would announce to the Boeing team that by flagging an issue there will be no reprisal and that SAFETY CULTURE’s rubrics are fully understood by and endorsed by the Board!!! 

NEXT, significant symbolic actions speak louder than 5,000 posters. The leadership moved ~2,000 to the East, Chicago, IL, away from the men and women who are responsible on a daily basis personally guaranteeing that Boeing’s aircraft meet the highest safety standards. If that distancing between leadership and the Boeing workforce was not offended, the executives moved further East to Arlington, VA. To the individuals building these aircraft, this move signified that proximity to the President (a Boeing client), the Congress, the Pentagon, the FAA, the ExIm Bank, etc. was more important than the folks who create these incredible aerial machines. 

Given that history and the value of EXECUTIVE SAFETY CULTURE VISIBLITY, A CLARION MESSAGE would be to insert the senior leadership offices into the Renton and other Boeing hangars. Seeing the leaders walk through their work environment, viewing the production line challenges and the like would create a bond in a joint campaign to restore SAFETY as Boeing’s #1 priority. 

No doubt that these executives have work requiring some privacy, but that need and associated considerations pale with the absolute necessity to show the rank and file that their work is Boeing’s #1, #2, #3 mission.  

As preposterous as these steps may sound, CONSIDER Carsten Spohr, Yuji Akasaka, Greg Foran or Joanna Geraghty entering the office of Stephane Pope located above the Renton hanger to talk about the NMA, being greeted by someone from the above list and seeing a Max 9 being assembled. In addition to the symbolism of this office location to all of those on the shop floor and the engineers at their desks, THIS AUDIENCE WILL LIKELY BE MORE CONVINCED THAT BOEING HAS REESTABLISHED ITS GOLD, NAY PLATINUM, SAFETY STATUS!!!  

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Boeing’s CEO Just Responded to Intense Criticism Over the Alaska Airlines Flight Emergency. It’s a Lesson for Every Leader 

An apology isn’t going to be enough. 

EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST@JASONATEN 

It’s been a rough few weeks to be the CEO of Boeing. Only a few years after a pair of fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, an Alaska Airlines flight was forced into an emergency landing after a door plug blew out while the plane flew at 16,000 feet. In this case, thankfully, no one was injured, but it certainly raises questions about whether the aircraft maker is up to the task. 

Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s CEO was hired after those crashes when the company’s board (which included Calhoun) pushed out Dennis Muilenburg. The main problem for Muilenburg was that the board lost faith in his ability to overcome the problems the company faced in trying to get the previous version of the MAX back in the air after the FAA grounded the aircraft in 2019.  

As a result, you can imagine that Calhoun has faced intense criticism over the company’s safety problems. Part of that criticism comes because Calhoun is not an engineer by education; he is an accountant. That’s not uncommon–a lot of CEOs have a finance or accounting background. One of their most important jobs is to make sure the company is managing expenses and making a profit.  

The thing is, at a company like Boeing, the stakes seem a little higher since mistakes result in things like plane crashes. To be fair, Calhoun spent a few decades at GE, overseeing divisions that make things like aircraft engines, but that hasn’t stopped the criticism. 

Really, if the thing your company does is make airplanes, each of which carries hundreds of people through the air, you might think your responsibility is to make them as efficiently as possible, or as profitably as possible, but no, your main responsibility is to make sure those planes are safe. That’s not just common sense, it’s actually good business because if you don’t do that, no one will buy your planes. If your planes crash or have other safety issues, no one will want to fly on them.  

It’s weird, then, that Boeing hasn’t seemed to be able to fix whatever went wrong in the design and building of the 737-MAX. The company has already admitted it made faulty assumptions and bad decisions about important features of the aircraft, but it doesn’t appear as though it’s actually fixed any of them. 

“We’re going to approach this, number one, acknowledging our mistake,” Calhoun said in a statement to employees. “We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.” 

I think there are two lessons here for every leader. The first is that this is definitely the right thing to say. On the other hand, Calhoun doesn’t have a choice.  

We’ve seen plenty of CEOs face criticism and attempt to deflect it or rationalize whatever it is they did to end up in the hot seat. We’ve seen that playbook many times, and it never goes particularly well. Your only move here should be to admit that you’ve made a mistake and commit to fixing whatever went wrong. 

The problem for Calhoun is that it’s not enough to say that the company will “ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe.” He can say that to employees, but, right now it’s not clear that people believe that to be true. That’s reasonable, considering that if you’re an airline CEO, the last thing you want to do is spend billions of dollars on aircraft from a company you don’t trust.  

Trust, after all, is your most valuable asset. That’s the second lesson. 

It’s not your intellectual property or engineering prowess. It isn’t your company culture or financial position. Sure, those things are important. They matter in terms of designing airplanes and building a company, but without trust, no one is going to give you money for whatever it is you build. All of those things matter only to the extent that they give you credibility and earn you trust.

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