[Bloombergで英語学習！]なぜボーイングは危機に直面している？[8分動画]

Once the pride of American aviation, Boeing keeps making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Yet another issue with the 737 Max jet. The problem now is misdrilled holes. A lot of questioning about the quality of Boeing's equipment right now. The many headaches for Boeing of late. Boeing is in utter crisis right now. It has challenges on all fronts. It has questions about its safety, questions about its management culture. It's a rudderless ship, so to speak. It's really a classic case of late stage capitalism.

Newest arrival in the Boeing family of airliners, a new queen of the sky. Boeing as a company has bungled its once prestigious brand identity, and its ongoing challenges are poised to make air travel even more of an ordeal than it already is. So I think what you're looking at is not necessarily a pricing crunch like what we saw last year, but just a massive travel nightmare for people trying to get anywhere because there's just not a lot of slack in the system right now.

When flying the friendly skies. We as customers have a variety of carriers to choose from. But when choosing the actual plane we fly in, the airlines aren't exactly spoiled for choice. You really just have a duopoly between Boeing and Airbus. It is just hugely expensive both to produce these commercial aircraft and to support them once they're in the air. To put a finer point on that experts estimate that creating a new plane from the ground up can cost upwards of $20 billion. The barriers to entry are so great that when new entrants have tried to come in the field, they've often disappeared. The Chinese have been trying to develop narrow-body planes that can compete with Boeing and Airbus. Those jets have not been certified in the US or in Europe and are unlikely to be anytime soon. Now, being the only game in town has its benefits. Revenue, profitability, and share price were all sky high.

But then two tragic accidents changed everything. A Lion Air Boeing 737, crashed into the sea this morning. An Ethiopian Airlines flight has crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa. Boeing's bestselling plane is coming under increased scrutiny. Over the space of five months in 2018 and 2019, 2 planes both 737 Max Eights crashed. 346 people died in the space of five months on an almost brand new airplane. And in both cases, a piece of software that Boeing had developed called MCAS was at fault and overwhelmed the pilot's ability to control the planes. They were trying to catch up to Airbus, which already had a more fuel efficient narrow body on the market. And so they instead tried to work with the design that they had, but to fit the great new engines on the plane, they had to put them further forward and hence the installation of the system to help guard against potential stall. But there was one big problem with this plan. Boeing didn't fully disclose or train pilots on the software and how to override it if necessary. In fact, the first time most aviators learned about it was after the Lion Air crash of 2018.

Finally, the max was grounded. It was ultimately grounded for 20 months while Boeing developed new software that wouldn't overwhelm the pilot's authority. The FAA took that opportunity to comb through every inch of the 737 max. These two crashes and the subsequent fallout showed how much Boeing had strayed from flight safety as a core mission to making profits. Boeing got here through changes to its culture that began as far back as the late 1990s when Boeing purchased McDonald Douglass. And McDonald Douglass had always been known as a company that put stockholders first. The focus was really on how do you make money, and it did very well at that. A series of CEOs gradually moved the needle a little farther toward stockholder returns. And in the period from 2013 to 2018, Boeing actually spent $41 and a half billion on stock buybacks, which went straight to investors and the managers themselves.

Responding to this backlash, Boeing's CEO stepped down and was replaced by Dave Calhoun. Under Calhoun's guidance, Boeing did manage to get the 737 Max back in the air, and everything was flying high, at least for a time. A door plug blew off of a 737 max Nine plane. The gaping hole forced the plane to make an emergency landing. It really wasn't a surprise. And what was more shocking is that it emerged that this piece had left the airplane because bolts had not been secured to keep it in place. It was a production mishap that was directly the fault of either Boeing or suppliers to Boeing. FAA inspectors reported that they had found multiple incidents where quality control procedures hadn't been found. They never really, and they still haven't, quite frankly, said that they have a culture problem. So the FAA took this unprecedented step of saying, we're not gonna allow you to increase your production rate until you satisfy us that you can do this safely and responsibly. The FAA has limited the number of 737 Max aircraft that Boeing can produce. All while Boeing has an order backlog of almost 5,000 planes. And this is really where the supply side hits the demand side of your summer vacation. And we're seeing pretty serious cuts to delivery expectations. Southwest is expecting to get 20 Max deliveries this year. In January, it expected almost 80. Some of them are flying older planes for longer, which then creates maintenance issues. Speaking of maintenance issues, hundreds of Airbus jets are being pulled out of service because of a recall for an engine made by Pratt and Whitney. This is compounding the supply Problem. In general, you just have a lot less capacity out there for the flying public. At the same time that demand is expected to be at a peak. But there's a silver lining in the friendly skies. Calhoun says Boeing is now a different company than back in January. Travelers have more confidence in airline safety and summer airfares may not necessarily go up- if you can get a seat. Prices have been coming down. In some cases, fairs may be down from where they were the year prior. But that may not necessarily feel like a huge relief for the consumer if you can't find the flight that you wanna take because there's just fewer seats available. And it also means that if you do have delays, there's just a lot less capacity to absorb those displaced passengers. And so you're more likely to see yourself perhaps pushed to the next day or sitting in an airport for, you know, a much longer period of time because there's just not a lot of places to put those passengers because the other flights are sold out.

All of this makes Boeing the scapegoat for your summer travel woes. And as Boeing's troubles linger, it's falling behind. Take a look at this chart. Before Covid, Boeing was about twice as big as Airbus. Now its market cap is currently around $12 billion smaller. If we slow it down and stick to the disciplines that will synchronize this supply chain with the insatiable demand for airplanes, and we will be way better for it. And there will be a moment later in life where someone will look back and say, this may have been the most important moment in Boeing's life. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has announced he's stepping down by the end of the year. Now, on the one hand, this is smart of Boeing. They're taking their time. They want to make sure that they find the right leader. But at the same time, it does create sort of this question of, well, who is going to take over? But despite all the hardship writing Boeing off completely could be shortsighted. Many would argue the company is simply too big to fail. It's hard to imagine that the US government would allow a situation where the country has no supplier of commercial airplanes. The president flies on a Boeing 747. Aircraft are essential to the military. In some ways everyone in the country is invested in Boeing getting this right.