On January 5, 2024, a panel of Alaska Airlines’ Flight 1282 violently tore from the body of the aircraft shortly after takeoff. Oxygen masks deployed as passengers were greeted by a wave of terror and confusion. Fortunately, the pilots grounded the flight before any life could be lost. Yet, the impact of the affair was further reaching than the lives of the passengers, rekindling a debate over aviation safety culture, allowing Boeing’s rival, AirBus, to seize the title of top manufacturer. 

In 2018, a Lion Air flight departing from Jakarta, Indonesia, plummeted into the Java Sea twelve minutes after takeoff, ostensibly due to faults in the flying software. The flight model was a brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8, which had been cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Safety Agency a year prior. Not a single passenger was found alive. 189 lives were claimed, and over a hundred families were left in shambles. Yet it was not until a second, identical accident five months later that Boeing was finally placed under the scrutiny of officials. When the black boxes for both crashes were discovered, both recordings ended with the same, eerie computer dialogue. “Pull up. Pull up,” it told the pilots. 

In total, the 737 MAX crashes killed 346 men, women, and children. Across the globe, thousands of flights were grounded, and an intense investigation ensued. 2019 was the year of the Boeing Crisis, which lasted until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Boeing has claimed improvements in their technology, yet accidents such as that of January 5th continue to occur and reignite concerns. Most recently, the FAA conducted an audit of the manufacturing industry due to the Alaska Airlines incident. The New York Times wrote how “dozens of issues” were identified in the inspection. Boeing managed only to pass 56 audits, while 39 were failed, “with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance.” The FAA concluded that Boeing’s quality control practices were suffering, “confusing,” and “inadequate.” 

Perhaps one of the most concerning events regarding Boeing is the supposed suicide of Boeing’s whistleblower: John Barnett. Former quality manager Barnett was a courageous individual who called out the faults he witnessed that plagued the Boeing factory floor. He worked for the corporation for thirty years before resigning in 2017. According to Futurism, investigators have filed that Barnett was “harassed, denigrated, humiliated, and treated with scorn and contempt by upper management, which was calculated to discourage him and others from raising such issues and complying with the law.” He was entirely blacklisted from the company as well. Despite the treatment he faced, Barnett continued to speak out on the issues he saw in Boeing. On March 9, he was found in his truck with a gunshot wound to the head, which was called “self-inflicted.” Yet, a woman who called herself his friend shared how he once told her, “if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.”

Indeed, the company’s reputation has continued to deteriorate with time. Since 2019, the manufacturer’s revenues refuse to cease their decline, while stock values and sales remain lower than five years ago. Today, Boeing continues to make headlines with the dozens of conspiracies and issues surrounding their image. Despite it all, their planes continue to fly – including the 737 MAX 8. Ultimately, Boeing’s is yet another story of how powerful corporations still have the power to jeopardize the safety of innocent people and emerge unscathed by the consequences. 

Information retrieved from the British Broadcasting Corporation, Frontline PBS, National Broadcasting Company, and The New York Times.