Boeing’s Nightmare Year Keeps Getting Worse – The Full Accounting of What Went Wrong.

An Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 was scheduled to depart Portland International Airport on a routine flight to Ontario, California, on the evening of January 5, 2024. A door plug, a panel meant to conceal an unused emergency exit, blew out of the fuselage at about 16,000 feet shortly after takeoff. Suddenly, nearby passengers were staring up at the sky. Luck and the fact that the seats next to the opening were empty contributed to the fact that no one perished. In practically every situation, the incident would have been extraordinary. For Boeing, it was just the point at which a crisis that had been building for a while became unavoidable.

What followed through the rest of 2024 was a sequence of events that, taken individually, would each qualify as a serious institutional problem. Taken together, they describe a company that had lost control of its factories, its culture, its finances, and eventually its legal standing — all at once. A workers’ strike paralysed production at two of Boeing’s largest facilities in Washington state.

Two astronauts were left stranded on the International Space Station after the Boeing Starliner capsule developed a fault serious enough to make returning to Earth in it too dangerous. A congressional hearing in Washington produced the kind of testimony that tends to travel: Republican Senator Josh Hawley accused Boeing’s top executives of “strip-mining” the company for profit, cutting corners on safety in the pursuit of earnings. Then-CEO David Calhoun, sitting before the committee, said he didn’t recognise that depiction. He has since left the company.

If anything, the legal aspect of Boeing’s year was more detrimental to its reputation than the operational one. In July 2024, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud — a charge stemming directly from the two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people aboard Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. As part of the settlement, the company was required to invest at least $455 million in safety and compliance initiatives, pay up to $487 million, and have an impartial monitor oversee its operations for three years. A federal judge rejected the plea agreement in December 2024, citing concerns about the selection process for that impartial monitor. Boeing and the Department of Justice had not reached a new agreement as of early 2025. In a significant legal sense, the company is still unresolved.

Sam Mohawk, a 51-year-old quality assurance investigator, had been observing all of this from inside the Renton factory in Washington, where the 737 MAX is constructed along assembly lines that pass through a structure so big it has its own weather system. He came forward as a whistleblower earlier in the year, claiming that thousands of defective or non-conforming parts had gone missing due to production floor chaos in the years following the pandemic, possibly fitting aircraft that had already been delivered to airlines.

“The whole system was just in shambles,” he said. After looking into his allegations, Boeing discovered no proof that faulty parts had been installed on aircraft. Mohawk, who continues to work at the factory, claims that not much has changed. “Our executives talk to the press and say, ‘quality and safety is our number one priority,'” he told the BBC. “But it’s just the same.”

From the outside, it’s hard to tell which version of events is more accurate. However, Mohawk’s account is more difficult to discount than the company would like given the larger trend of Boeing’s corporate culture over the previous 20 years. The company’s current issues can be traced back much further than the 737 MAX mishaps, according to researchers and analysts examining the company’s decline.

These issues stem from decisions made by previous leadership that fundamentally changed Boeing’s internal priorities from engineering to financial performance. As one quality assurance worker at the Everett factory put it, the company that created the 747, which effectively ushered in the era of commercial jets, eventually turned into one where employees “don’t always follow the rules because they feel the pressure from their manager.” An engineering company does not have that culture. It is the production quota culture.

Observing Boeing handle all of this gives the impression that the company has been attempting to use diplomacy to get out of a situation that calls for alternative solutions. Kelly Ortberg, the company’s new CEO, came with promises to rebuild confidence and return the organization to its fundamental values. Veterans of the aerospace industry have observed significant changes under his direction, characterizing the largest cultural change at the organization since the 1960s.

That might be the case, and the modifications might be significant enough to withstand the commercial pressure that has historically led to their erosion. It’s also possible that the pattern is repeated, with the quarterly earnings targets subtly reiterating themselves and the safety language staying in the press releases while the factory floor follows a different logic.

For Boeing’s recovery to be anything other than essential, it is too important to the American economy and the international aviation sector. There are more than 150,000 direct employees, and the supply chain is even more extensive. A world where Boeing is permanently diminished is uncomfortable for airlines, regulators, and anyone who boards a commercial aircraft. Airbus is the only viable alternative at scale. The best assurance that Boeing will survive this time is probably that economic reality. The question that won’t be answered for a few years is whether it actually reforms or just learns to handle the appearance of reform better than it did before.