Flying Blind by Peter Robison

Doubleday 336 pp.

Paul Markowitz

Peter Robison, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, has a provocative thesis: that what happened to Boeing with its two crashes of its new 737 MAX in just 5 months in 2018-2019 reflects the same forces that have impacted corporate America since the Reagan revolution.  This “revolution,” according to Robison, ushered in an era of imperial leaders, most notably Jack Welch of General Electric, who obsessively focused on stock market investors to the detriment of all others.  This philosophy was epitomized by the conservative economist Milton Friedman who stated that, “The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.”

Robison meticulously describes the history of Boeing in general, and the development of the 737 Max in particular, to clearly portray a once engineer-centered company that had been caring and scrupulous in its plane development and then drifted to a shockingly unsympathetic corporate entity fixated on the bottom line of its investors and corporate leaders. He may not entirely back up his overall thesis about the connection of this specific tragedy to the Reagan revolution, however, largely because he does not spend enough time in trying to prove it, but he makes a compelling case that something was very wrong at Boeing.

Before going into the details of the development of the 737 Max and the two horrendous crashes causing the death of some 347 people, Robison carefully describes the metamorphosis of Boeing as it dramatically changed its corporate style after merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 in what he calls “a battle for Boeing’s soul.”

The causes of this transformation of Boeing from one of an engineer-driven company to a financial-driven one were numerous. By 2003 Airbus, with financial support from the French and British governments, overtook Boeing for the first time in the commercial air business.  At about the same time, the FAA began to slowly alter its clear and comprehensive oversight of the development of new aircraft to a looser supervisory approach where aircraft manufacturers themselves have more control of their own development of products. The mandate for FAA changes to one of encouraging growth along with its traditional role of maintaining safety.

The biggest change for Boeing, however, was the hiring of a series of leaders from the ranks of General Electric, a corporate behemoth run by Jack Welch. “Neutron Jack” not only ran GE for twenty years but also wrote a series of best-selling books on his personal style and business philosophy that made him one of the best known businessmen in the world.  Boeing became the place that many GE proteges would go after Welch retired.  The present CEO of Boeing is David Calhoun, a former GE employee of 26 years, who is commonly known as the person “most like Jack”.

In giving us a short history of the aeronautic business, Robison explains the slow and expensive process of new airplane development where an idea could take as long as ten years to go from an initial plan to an operational plane. It cost many millions, if not billions, of dollars in the process, so decisions about planes were not to be taken lightly or quickly.  Numerous individual choices have to be made along the way and if one group is left out, the results could be disastrous. 

Boeing’s leadership became obsessed with cost-cutting. They were determined to build the new workhorse of Boeing, the 737 Max, without requiring pilots to be retrained , which was a major savings for the company.  Boeing’s newfound relationship with the FAA allowed this extremely questionable move to be a rather simple process. And as engineers became more upset about their lack of input into changes within Boeing they began to unionize, which led Boeing to build new facilities and outsource to other companies in the non-union south.  With the corporate philosophy within Boeing changing so radically, Robison suggests that the catastrophe that occurred was all but inevitable.

Robison describes in detail the development of the new 737 and the almost inevitable failure of the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), an automatic stabilization system that was barely mentioned in the new flying guide for the Max that allowed the Max to go into service without an electronic checklist for the plane and its pilots.

After describing the particulars of the two air crashes, the author depicts scenes of the families of the survivors gathering at their respective meeting places with representatives of Boeing eagerly accosting families with requests to sign documents that would limit Boeing’s financial responsibility. 

Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing during much of the development of the 737 Max and during its two crashes, showed an astounding lack of empathy toward the relatives of those who died while still assuring the government that the 737 Max was safe after both the first and second crashes. He impugned the skills of foreign pilots and their respective airlines, insinuating that foreign elements were the real cause of the disasters.

Ultimately, this was even too much bad publicity for the Boeing board, which sent Muilenburg off with a $62.2 million parachute.  In the end, Boeing was sued for fraud and fined $2.5 billion without any serious “cultural reckoning” for the company. The only two people cited by name in the final report from the government were two technical pilots. The FAA came out largely unscathed from the investigation, with a minor change in reporting required.  Boeing remained financially secure throughout the investigations.

Robison’s account adds depth and feeling to what could have been a dry retelling of a story weighed down with technical details. Robison puts the emphasis where it belongs, on the human elements and personal stories behind the disaster, and he shows how the myriad decisions of individuals led to tragedy.