Industry standard now a Pulitzer Prize winner dominic gates covers the Aerospace Industry for the Seattle Times. Hes had this beat since 2003. Theyre here tonight to discuss peters book flying blind, the 737 max tragedy in the fall of boeing. Please join me in welcoming dominic gates and peter robinson. Okay. Well, first of all, thank you all for coming. Im dominic gates. This is peter robison. And before i start throwing questions adam, let me just say a a few things about the book. And id like to begin by since the subtitle of the book is includes the fall of boeing. Id like to begin by recalling the great legacy of boeing. And what it means to this region and to the world. Boeing give the puget puget sound region a great part of its social fabric all those bluecollar jobs, very highly paid. Engineering work that was world class. Was all here for a hundred years and generations of families have grown up with boeing and its created the economy of the Pacific Northwest and of course it gave the world an iconic line of like the 747 that have just shrunk the world incredibly in my lifetime. So this is a company that is given the world a very great deal. Now the fall from public favor recently. Obviously began with the two crashes of the max in 20182019. And since then it seems like nothing is going right for boeing everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Right now the max is back in the air, but obviously the pandemic has really hit the Airline Industry and boeing. But theyve got all sorts of manufacturing problems and theyre not delivering that have theyve delivered fourteen seven eight sevens in the last year. They were supposed to a month. So its definitely one of the low points in boeings history. And the question that this book sets out to answer as peter wrote. In how did a company that prided itself on its engineering prowess that had perfectionism in its dna . Go so wildly off course. Thats the question he sets out to answer and i have to say that i think this is a great book. I think itll become the goto book for boeing. What i find. Id like to just mention three things. I found very impressive about it. First of all, theres he really nailed the cultural shift that has happened in bowing over the last two decades. And if youve ever talked to boeing people, im sure there are some here youd often have heard that oh the merger with Mcdonald Douglas ruined everything ruined the culture. And thats perhaps too easy a conclusion, but he with deep research and lots of exclusive interviews. Topside this cultural shift incredibly well and and its really worth reading for that to get a perspective on how we got here. The other thing is that hes a wonderful writer. There are so many arresting sentences in the book. Im just going to read one of them. It refers to the theer worthiness directives that the faa issued one week after the lion air crash, and i remember reading that so well because you know when i when a plan crashes very far away, unfortunately it often doesnt get a lot of attention here in the united states. Bad weather poor airline old airplane Something Like that as the usual picture. Now this was odd. This was a new plan and the weather was perfect, but still. What had happened nobody really knew but a week later boeing issued a bulletin and the faa followed with an error worthyness directive and i remember reading it and it said, oh theres this system that pushes the nose down if the sensor goes wrong. Telling pilots what to do if that happened. And for me, and im sure every space reporter in the world. It was like what . Bullying was telling us that week afterwards. Theres something wrong with a plan. But it wasnt the wording of it. Heres what heres what peter wrote. The faa were those directive was so pedestrian on its face. Its neutral wording like an iphone bug alert. But so paradoxically earthshattering. And and i feel it was i feel that from that moment on i as an Aerospace Reporter knew this was going to be a big investigation. We have to find out what happened here. And finally before i ask go to questions, i will say that the other thing i really admire about the book is the way hes on flinching in his conclusions. He really . Very succinctly he documents it all its footnoted. He very succinctly says what he means. Those of you who know boeing will remember jim mcnerney. Who is ceo for 10 years and who really solidified this culture that was focused on the financials. And before mcnearney came to boeing. He was at 3m for four years. Three amethysts company that makes office products, but was very famous for lots of inventions including the postit note. And so peter writes this in just over four years mcnerney doubled the companys annual profits. He did it by going straight at 3ms future. Because he slashed jobs. He slashed r d spending. But he destroyed the the future of the company. So terrific story terrific history great writing and transient conclusions. Thats the book. So now im going to give peter his chance to talk about it. With a few questions and later on. Well come to your questions. Peter it seems to me a company cant move past a great tragedy like this one that killed 346 people. Without at first admitting what it did wrong. Do you think boeing has done so thank you. I want to stop and just thank you for that introduction. And its high praise coming from from you everyone in the room. I think knows the esteem that dominic has held in and the Aerospace Industry and has coverage over. The last two decades really and i will try to say what i mean as i did in the book today. So that the question is has bowing ever really admitted. Fault, i think it depends on the audience. They just this month as you reported. They admitted fault in a court filing said that their their unsafe design was the proximate cause of the the crash in other audiences. Theyve had a very hard time admitting fault. You saw immediate left the first crash that it was the pilots. He didnt follow the checklist. It was maintenance mistakes. You saw later. In a smallenberg even after the second crash saying that there was no technical slip or gap eventually there was a melee mouth we own it. And then finally there was an im sorry in public but even as recently as last year dave calhoun the current ceo was suggesting that it was something that american pilots could have handled so i think its an open question as to whether boeing has ever really truly accepted fault. Yeah, i think publicly boeing has said the design of emcast this system this software. That went wrong. That they fail to take into account the reactions of the pilots. Theyve said that which to me is is also pointing part of the blame out the pilots. But one thing that ive wondered about often and i think in the book you talk about previous generation of of boeing airplanes where somebody stands up an engineer or a pilot stands up in a room when theyre doing the design. And somebody has made a suggestion. And this guy stands up and says do you want blood on the seats . And nobody did that when did when when mcast was being designed we know the pilot who . Pull the wall over the faa and deceive the airlines and didnt let them know that mcas was. Existed but what about the actual design of emcast . How did that get past this tremendous Engineering Company where you get all the engineers in a room and you get these pilots who are there to to to stand in for Airline Pilots and at some point somebody didnt say a Single Thread a single sensor sits off the system. I dont think boeings ever addressed that. I think its a reflection of the way the checks and balances were broken down that there is an example set in the book on the 737 next generation where someone realized that there would be a single point failure introduced in a fuel tank design and he stood up in the meeting and said how much blood do you want on the seat covers and that got peoples attention over time partly because of this cost cutting you mentioned that started in earnest during the mcnerney years a lot of the experienced engineers were being laid off you had fewer people who had the clout to stand up and make that blood on the seat covers declaration and the people that i talked to on the max said that they felt those checks and balances were broken down they when they tried to raise concerns or try to say that more sophisticated flight controls for instance should be introduced. They were summarily shot down. Well, i mentioned this pilot who is the only one who has now been criminally indicted. Thats mark forkner. Who was the chief technical pilot on the max and he was indicted. His actions are clearly inexcusable he he convince the faa not to put this system in the manuals. He convinced airlines not to have Simulator Training when they asked for it including lion air. But my question for you is hes one guy. Is he a skip goat, who who where else does responsibility lie do you think . It clearly lies with management and that evidence shows. He is a convenient scapegoat as despicable as some of those comments might be theres a story i tell on the book a series of events and in october 2019 after the second crash Dennis Mullenberg was going to be brought in halt in front of congress. He would become the public face of this deadly blunder and it was a bit before that in that month that a staffer on the house transportation and infrastructure committee, which had been getting regular releases of documents from boeing got a release and and the call from boeing was take a look at the one on the top and the one on the top was the messages which became infamous where mark forkner this pilot appeared to already know about the potential problems with the software before the plane was delivered during those hearings Dennis Mullenberg. Showed some distance from mr. Forkner he was asked about this these messages ted cruz sort of confronted if you remember the scene where ted cruz is confronting Dennis Muellenberg over these messages and Dennis Mullenberg said were not quite at this point foreigner had left the company and he said were not quite sure what mr. Forkner met. We think he was talking about a simulator in development and my reporting shows that he had every reason to know exactly what mr. Forkner meant because mr. Forkners lawyer was paid by boeing through boeing zone director and officer liability insurance. So it was a bit of a double game where boeing was holding him at him out as a youre saying. And his Deputy Patrick gustafson was still a boeing at the time, right . And he was the other guy at the other end of the messages. Yeah, which proves astronom at the time said did you ask him and then a smallenberg had to say no. Well besides boeing your book. Documents a parallel decline within the faa in terms of the oversight that they were. That was their job. What went wrong within the faa do you think . Well, i tell that story through the perspective of the faa specialist on the on the ground and and they had their people who who talked about their managers as being people who were just as technically skilled as them going going back to the 80s and the nine and the early 90s people had great feelings about working on the triple 7 the which many people consider many people consider the last great airplane at boeing then things started shifting and this goes back to the to the reagan revolution and the idea that government is the problem not the solution agencies are starved for resources that played out in different ways and different agencies, but at the faa it was with an embrace of this extreme delegation of authority. So i interviewed lots and lots of engineers who who felt that their managers were no longer working to hold boeing accountable. Produce the safest design they were seeing their customer ultimately as being the manufacturer and that the goal was to help the manufacturer speed the product to the market. Right and you quote richard reed whos an faa safety engineer at the time. Do you remember what he he had a kind of a remarkable analogy . He said at the time he was seeing what was happening and and he was seeing that he his authority was diminishing and he saw it as as congress which hadnt which had intentionally dumbed down the agency and and he he thought of it as he thought of himself as like forrest gump and and him he imagined what he would say if anyone hauled in front of congress to say, why did you certify this plane so quickly and he thought hed say just like forrest gump when he put his his rifle together so fast hed say because he told me to congressman. Yeah, congress congress, of course did and about turn afterwards and demanded and held his hearings which were actually really good, but youre right before the crashes all the direction of congress was to push the the faa into treating boeing as a customer. Those were the words instead of applicant for several years customer was the preferred language for the manufacturer. By the way, steve dixon has appeared at a couple. Hes the faa administrator now former delta pilot. Steve dixon has appeared at several of these hearings since then he was appointed after the second crash, but hes been nevertheless pill read in the hearings by the politicians. What do you think of of dixon and his handling of things since since the crashes . Hes a former Airline Executive as you say hes trying to. Balance these competing demands right now trying to show that hes heated the message that the agency is reforming itself at the same time. Just this year the Michael Stumo the father of one of the victims on the ethiopian crash got a note from an engineer at the faa. Who who said that recently managers have been saying, you know that they can expect not much to change as a result of those rules and that one of these managers called it, you know quote posing for the cameras. Ive heard some of that too. Although ive also been impressed somewhat with with some of the changes we see publicly. You know just just before the first crash our local center to maria cantwell, actually. Helped write some clauses in in the faa reauthorization bill a month before the crash. Increasing the amount of delegation that would be done to boeing but cantrell then reversed completely after the crashes and so last december she helped pass this reform act. And then since then the faa does seem to be getting tougher. Theyve delayed certification of the triple 7x quite a lot. Its going to take four years it took one year from first light to certification of the triple seven. In fact, 10 months. And now its going to be 44 months for the for the new version of the triple 7x so they have got tougher and and ive written several stories about how theyre. Tightening up a little bit but i wonder do you think its gone far enough with the faa is is it really going to change . I think time will tell i i think it will depend on whether the cultural shift truly takes hold. I think you you reported recently that the faa was concerned about the experience level of the people that boeing was appointing as as deputies who are meant to represent the faa. Theres also theres a theres a brain drain thats taken place over. A generation really that that has to be addressed on both sides, right . Well, lets step back from the max just a moment and go back to that cultural shift that im talked about at the beginning. Lots of people as i said blame the Mcdonald Douglas merger, which was 1997 for this change in the in the culture of boeing but that began with phil condit. Who was the ceo at the time when phil condott is the guy who moved the headquarters to chicago from here. You write in the book that condit was drawn to the bold vision of capitalism presented by the corporate chieftains. He admired. Now actually content wasnt outstanding engineer at boeing before he became ceo. He was the top engineer in the triple seven, which was the last great airplane that boeing built. What happened . What happened . Condit after he became ceo he was a great engineer according to the people. I talked to he would have been a Great College professor. He was he was. He was this constituency of shareholders was very powerful and that became the group that he judged his own performance on and that if you remember at the time that was the days of jack welch of General Electric, which was the ultimate model for any manufacturer in the us and for a company like boeing it was services that meant Financial Engineering that meant finance so phil condott pursued the merger with Mcdonald Douglas. He pursued acquisitions the commercial Airplane Company was seen as a commodity business that could take care of itself. He would move to chicago and focus on the big strategic picture. Actually, i interviewed condit before i worked for the Seattle Times. I did one boeing interview. I interviewed condit at their Leadership Center in saint louis in 2000. Or the beginning of 2001 just before they announced the headquarters move and in that interview he talked about wanting to shift the idea of what boeing was. That we werent metal benders anymore. Of course all the plans were metal at the time, but he was talking about new connections Internet Connections to airplanes beaming beaming movies to cinemas via satellite. He wanted boeing to be high tech and plan making was metal bending. Really strange, but you mentioned General Electric the influence of ge on boeing has been incredible. I mean after. Conduit, we got stonecipher who came with Macdonald Douglas and he was a ge guy jack welch akalite. Then we had mcnerney. Almost jack welch is successor, was turned on. And now we have dave calhoun currency. It was also a ge guy. So this influence has been there for years. Theres this description in the book. Ill just read it ge was an american institution. It had pioneered inventions that dramatically improved Living Standards the light bulb the xray machine the diesel electric locomotive. The refrigerator the people who worked in its factories and labs and their in river towns and industrial birds