Boeing Corporation's Board of Directors and the Anticipation of Aviation Disasters

The English novelist and aviation engineer, Nevil Shute, wrote two books about air disasters. The first, his 1948 novel, No Highway, centered on the crash of a newly introduced British airliner, the Reindeer, a crash attributed to pilot error until an obscure aviation engineering researcher concluded, and ultimately proved, that structural failure due to metal fatigue was the cause. The story eerily foreshadowed two 1954 crashes of the deHavilland airliner named the Comet (after Santa's Reindeer?) due to structural failure.

Shute's second air disaster story comprised a major portion of his autobiography, Slide Rule, and concerned Britain's government-sponsored entry into airship aviation. Two ships were commissioned by the government, the R100 which was built by a subsidiary of the engineering firm Vickers-Armstrong, the other, the R101, constructed by the British Air Ministry. Shute, was the chief stress engineer and, in the final stages of construction, chief engineer, of the R100 project.

The R100 closely complied with the design specs and completed a successful round-trip flight from England to Canada in June, 1930. Shortly thereafter, the greatly overweight, Government-built R101 crashed and burned near Beauvais, France on the first night of its maiden voyage from England to India. The disaster led the Government to terminate the airships program and the successful, private-sector R100 was broken up.

Comparing the two programs, Shute concluded that the bureaucrats overseeing the Air Ministry program lacked the motivation necessary to make the tough decisions required to ensure that the R101 was developed and put into service in a prudent fashion. In contrast, Shute argued, a private company such as built the R100 has a board of directors who not only have a large financial stake in the viability of the business, but deep knowledge of the industry in which the business operates and hence the judgement necessary to ensure that the business is conducted in a prudent fashion.

But today, Shute's assumptions as to the competence and the financial commitment of the directors of a large company such as Boeing seem no longer valid. The only Boeing Board member with advanced engineering experience is Dennis A. Muilenburg, who has the titles of President, Chairman, and CEO. Muilenburg holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering and an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The rest of the talent appears to be in anything but aviation engineering:

Robert E. Bradway, BS Biol.;

D.L. Calhoun, BS Accounting;

A.D. Collins, Jr., who holds an MBA and is author of Childrens' book series: Adventures of Archibald and the Jackabeb;

K. Duberstein, Chief of Staff to President Reagan, graduate in Law;

Admiral E.P. Giambastiani, Jr., a graduate in Law, with good credentials in submarine handling;

 Lynn J. Good, a graduate in Systems Analysis and Accounting;

Larry Kellner, a former airline exec. with a degree in Accounting;

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, former US ambassador, and a lawyer;

Ronald A. Williams, a management consultant;

Mike Zafirovski, a Jack Welch protegé at GE and a swimming scholar at Edinboro U, (discipline? swimming perhaps);

and last but by no means least, Nikki Hailey, currently a board member nominee, who's done just about everything, from being a US Congresswoman, (former) Canadian, state governor, and most recently, Trump's ambassador to the UN.

That's a team I'd trust to do a cover-up of the 737MAX's inherent instability and the inept effort to fix it.

But who want's to risk their life as a passenger on a plane built by those guys?

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