Okay folks, calm down. Boeing has a choice, take Washington’s money and cough up equity, or don’t. That’s their problem.
What is far more concerning is the fuel leak issue and the other quality-control problems they are having with the KC-46. Yes, the -46 is a kind of “Franken-Tanker” but it is basically a 767 at heart. There can’t be that much new tech in a 767 that fuel leaks would be an issue. The issue has to be with quality of the work. Boeing has been having tons of quality control issues on the 46 and it doesn’t seem to be abating. Quality control is one of the first issues when you start getting “money people” running the show and not operators / engineers. Money people focus on stock price to the total disregard of all else. There is no denying that. Hurry, hurry, hurry… get more out the door with the least amount of cost possible… even if it takes endless shortcuts to do it, don’t worry about that little smudge, it’ll buff out later. See how good we are doing there Mr Stock Buyer? We are doing the work of at least 10 people with only 4! Aren’t we just wonderful? Buy, buy, buy our stock so the price goes up and my next bonus is assured.
A little jaded sounding, yeah, probably, but still pretty much a fact. I flew classic 74 freighters for 16 years and loved them. They were solid and mechanically dependable, at least as far as the basic machine was concerned. No fuel leaks, no basis systems that wouldn’t work right, no debris in the fuel tanks, etc, etc. Boeing has sadly gone from a dependable engineering company to a Wall Street run debacle and joke.