Boeing
Cutting Costs, Cutting Corners
$178B
Value Extracted
16
Key Initiatives
The Story
Boeing pioneered a revolutionary approach: what if we extracted value not just from customers, but from the manufacturing process itself? Spin off your own factories to private equity, buy the parts back at a markup, and let the suppliers absorb the liability when the planes stop staying in one piece. Twenty years later Boeing quietly reabsorbed Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7B — the rarest corporate achievement: admitting the enshittification went too far while still running -8% operating margins.
Key Achievements
Made safety features like angle-of-attack indicators optional add-ons
Outsourced critical manufacturing to cut costs, then blamed suppliers
Rushed 737 MAX to market to compete with Airbus, skipped proper testing
Had doors blow off mid-flight in 2024 (the speedrun continues)
Moved headquarters away from engineers to be closer to Wall Street (Chicago 2001, Arlington VA 2022)
Replaced engineering culture with 'shareholder value' culture
Spent $43B on stock buybacks instead of R&D between 2013-2019
Two fatal crashes killing 346 people (this one's not funny, just true)
Spun off Spirit AeroSystems in 2005 — sold the Wichita and Tulsa factories to a private-equity firm and then bought the parts back from them for 20 years, inventing the blueprint for turning your own quality team into a liability-shielded vendor
Alaska 1282 door plug departed over Portland in January 2024 because Spirit shipped fuselages with defective rivets, Boeing pulled the plug for rework, and reinstalled it without its four retention bolts — no paperwork exists for the reinstallation (NTSB finding)
Two whistleblowers exposing Boeing/Spirit quality died within two months of each other in 2024 — John Barnett (32-year Boeing QA, died mid-deposition in his retaliation case) and Joshua Dean (Spirit auditor who flagged mis-drilled holes in 737 MAX aft pressure bulkheads, died of a sudden MRSA infection at 45) (this one's not funny, just true)
Pleaded guilty in July 2024 to conspiracy to defraud the FAA about MCAS for $243.6M; the plea deal was then rejected by a federal judge in December 2024 over monitor-selection irregularities — Boeing couldn't even close its own settlement cleanly
Starliner stranded Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the ISS for nine months on what was supposed to be an 8-day mission; they came home on a SpaceX Dragon in March 2025 — the same culture, rendered in orbit
Reacquired Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7B in December 2025 — a 20-year tacit admission that outsourcing the manufacturing broke the manufacturing
Handed Spirit's crown-jewel A220 operations (Kinston NC, St-Nazaire, Casablanca) to Airbus in the unwind because no third-party buyer would take them — the competitor got the factories, Boeing got the liabilities
Early-2026 audits of the reintegrated Spirit facilities surfaced 25 in-service 737s requiring three days of rework each; Boeing Commercial Airplanes is running -7.5% to -8% operating margins and has pushed divisional profitability to 2027
We optimized for quarterly earnings. The planes were collateral damage.
Former Executive
Chief Optimization Officer (Retired)
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