Quality crashed: How greed grounded the Boeing dream

THE June 12, 2025 Air India (AI) flight 171 Boeing-787-800 Ahmedabad crash is the worst of the 13 major home-soil air disasters for an Indian carrier post 1947. The list tells its own story of regrettable flight safety failures.April 11, 1955 AI Super Constellation (Kashmir Princess) crashed, owing to a bomb blast, in the South China Sea, killing 16 of 19 aboard. January 24, 1966 AI-101 Boeing-707 (Kanchenjunga) killed all 117 on board while preparing to land at Geneva. May 31, 1973 Indian Airlines (IC)-440 Boeing-737-200 killed 48 while descending below the minimum decision height short of the Delhi runway 28.October 12, 1976 Mumbai-Chennai IC-171 French Sud Caravelle crashed while attempting an emergency landing 1,000 feet short of the same Mumbai runway 09 from where it had taken off three minutes earlier. All 95 persons perished. Mumbai again saw the January 1, 1978 AI 855 Boeing-747 crash within three minutes of takeoff from runway 27-09, killing all 213 on board. June 17, 1982, AI-403 Boeing-707 (Gauri Shankar) killed 17 out of 111 aboard and 24 on ground after the Mumbai runway 27-09 touchdown overshot in heavy rain.October 19, 1988, trying to land at Ahmedabad runway 23, IC-113 Boeing-737-200 undershot (meaning couldn't reach the concrete path), killing 125 of 130 aboard. Five passengers miraculously survived. February 14, 1990 IC-605 Airbus-320-231 crashed while attempting to land at the Bangalore airport; 92 died and 54 survived. August 16, 1991, IC-257 Boeing-737-200 crashed on the Imphal airport approach. All 69 passengers and crew perished.April 26, 1993 IC-491 Boeing-737-200 crashed within seconds after takeoff from Aurangabad runway 09, colliding with a full truck load at the periphery of the airfield; 55 died and 57 survived. May 22, 2010 AI Express 812 Boeing-737-800 made a failed landing at the Mangalore runway; 158 died and eight survived.August 7, 2020 AI Express 1344 Boeing-737-800 made a fatal landing at Kozhikode airport, resulting in 21 deaths, though 169 survived. And now comes the June 12 Boeing-787-800 disaster, killing 240 in plane and 35 on ground.Understandably, all the above mishaps constitute inglorious chapters for public, passengers, press, politicians and personnel of the affected airlines. Today, however, the stakes are too high for Boeing, which is bound to go all out to try and prove that it's crashed 787-800 Dreamliner, which killed 275 people, is an excellent machine and that the mishap could be owing to anything or anyone except the manufacturer of the ill-fated aircraft. That is understandable because Boeing is in the pits, facing brutal criticism and penalty from the American system and it no longer inspires the desired level of confidence in most customers and carriers. From all accounts, Boeing civil aircraft units aren't in the best of health as too many grave allegations, substantiated and unsubstantiated, are floating around the globe.Regarding the Ahmedabad crash, since the official investigation is ongoing one has to await the final report.But that certainly cannot stop a concerned and experienced air passenger to make his own bona fide points. Today's Boeing product is in trouble owing to misplaced priorities. Boeing used to be a marvel of engineering and tech quality and radiated automatic mutual trust, faith and confidence between the producer and buyer(s). No one would ever question either the flight safety or quality control mechanism of the 109-year old Boeing of Seattle.Regrettably, that formidable reputation, skill, capability, credibility and acceptability of the (now) Chicago-headquartered Boeing is past. Boeing appears high on cash, profit, shareholder and investor bonus and low on quality, professionalism, impeccable mechanics and probity.Ironically, the June 2025 Paris Air Show reveals the stark reality. Europe's Airbus received an order for 406 aircraft worth $ 21 billion. Boeing got a firm order for 41 aircraft and four options.How bad is that? The Boeing legacy of "value-based management" turned into "RONA" (return on net assets) when it took over McDonnell Douglas, a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation, on August 4, 1997. Boeing became a behemoth but its aura took a beating. The vertical descent from perfection to manufacturing mediocrity resulted in two 737 MAX crashes — the October 28, 2018 crash of Lion Air of Indonesia and the March 10, 2019 Ethiopian Airlines disaster, which together killed all of 346 aboard.Today, there exist innumerable reports, documents and records of the US government and its safety agencies which reveal that despite manufacturing defects and shoddy finishing in Boeing MAX planes, the company bosses tried to play unethical by blaming the dead pilots of non-American origin and ground staff of Afro-Asian nations. Boeing continues to be smug in its body language, if not its utterances. There are enough indications in the media that give the eerie feeling that the Ahmedabad crash was wholly and solely owing to the cockpit crew (who cannot come back to defend themselves) or ground maintenance staff.Well, everything or anything is possible today. But the reality cannot be denied or disputed: the sublime quality of Boeing products is a thing of the past, as proved by the June 2025 Paris Air Show aeroplane orders. The quality-to-performance ratio has plummeted.Contextually, let us, however, recall that there is one aircraft, Airbus-300, in the Indian sky which never killed a single passenger during its 26-year (1976-2002) service despite two machines being totally destroyed in accidents. September 29, 1986 Airbus-300 IC 571 on its Chennai runway takeoff, with 5 to 8 degree "nose-up attitude", at 278 km per hour, aborted being airborne without killing a single of 196 persons on board.Then, on November 15, 1993, Airbus-300 IC-440 made an emergency landing on an uneven field, 26 km short of the Tirupati airport runway after running out of fuel. Miraculously, all 272 aboard survived. As an aviation-interested passenger, one has faced at least three "situations" in Airbus-300, but that is the "wonder of wonders", for which the haunting humming tune, "Those were the days my friend", comes to mind, especially after seeing the deplorable decline of quality all around (to make money only) and the resulting spurt in/of aviation disasters.Abhijit Bhattacharyya is life member, Aeronautical Society of India.

Quality crashed: How greed grounded the Boeing dream

Abhijit Bhattacharyya

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