CYCLE OF MISERY: The Business of Building Commercial Aircraft.

Predictably, the incident triggered a new round of discussion about the decline of Boeing as an aircraft manufacturer. Nearly every source points to the same instigating event: the 1997 merger with McDonnell-Douglas, which changed Boeing from an engineering-driven company focused on building the best airplanes possible to one which focused overwhelmingly on financials and stock price.

As far as I can tell, this characterization is accurate. And yet it misses a big part of the picture: the brutal structure of the commercial aircraft industry that drives companies like Boeing to create things like the 737 MAX (an update to a 50-year-old airplane) instead of creating a new model from scratch. By unpacking how the commercial aircraft industry works, we can better understand Boeing’s behavior.

Interesting analysis.