Airline executives are looking
to meet with Boeing management, possibly as early as
this week, to discuss safety concerns and production delays.
So what do they think they can accomplish
that the National Transportation Safety Board and other government agencies
have been unable to do?
They can play a card that those entities
cannot use.
Let’s just say that money talks. And the airlines have a lot of it.
Future Business Is at Stake
In the immortal words of Vito Corleone,
the airlines can make Boeing an offer it can’t refuse. They can dangle money
and future business. That’s an enticement that nobody else can offer. Call it a
veiled threat, or call it what you will, but the airline can tell Boeing to
clean up its act or forfeit future business.
After all, there are really only two
horses in this race. There’s Boeing and there’s Airbus. When it comes to
airplane manufacturing, those two have the market cornered. And Boeing can’t
afford to lose any more business to its competitor.
So the airlines can come to any such
meeting with the upper hand and in a position of having a decided advantage.
They can play the role of the bully. They
can dictate the terms and the tenor of the meeting. And Airbus might end up as
the winner of this whole thing, the last man standing, if you will. Don’t think
there wasn’t a collective smile on the faces of Airbus executives when they
heard this news. A meeting between Boeing and airline executives can only
benefit Airbus.
But Boeing could end up as a stronger
company. Of course, having a door panel blow off one of your planes at 16,000
feet and then admitting, however partial it might be, some culpability in this
whole thing is about as rock bottom as you can get. There’s no place to go but
up.
But as has been written here before,
Boeing is a great American company. It helped put a man in space, for goodness sake.
Even more than 50 years later, that still buys a lot of equity.
But if a meeting is to take place, Boeing
will come in as the underdog in this one. As if it hasn’t done so already since
the January 5 incident with the door panel cast a brighter light on how the
company runs its business, it might have to put its tail between its legs.
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