How Boeing Lost Its Way

The 2019 column I most wish I could take back was about Boeing. In May, two months after the second deadly 737 Max crash, I compared Boeing’s current troubles to other times when Boeing had stumbled badly, including 2013, when the new 787 — which had come to market four years behind schedule —had a problem with its lithium ion batteries, which burst into flames several times. The Federal Aviation Administration even grounded the plane temporarily.

Airplanes are fiendishly complex, and new planes almost always have kinks that need to be worked out (though, admittedly, those kinks don’t usually include fatalities). In any case, my working assumption was that the company had always overcome its problems and would do so again. “Boeing’s history strongly suggests that it will recover from this fiasco and do so quickly,” I wrote. “It will emerge stronger than ever.” Ouch.