Leeham News and Analysis
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Leeham News and Analysis
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Muilenburg remains an enigma for unions, commercial development
Jan. 21, 2015. c. Leeham Co. Dennis Muilenburg, vice chairman, president and chief operating officer of The
Dennis Muilenburg, vice chairman, president and chief operating officer of The Boeing Co. Reuters photo via Google.
Boeing Co., remains an enigma to Boeing’s largest unions a year after he was elevated to this position from his slot as CEO of Boeing’s defense unit.
Muilenburg assumed his current position Dec. 13, 2013. Boeing’s “touch labor” union, the IAM 751 here in the Seattle area, didn’t know much about Muilenburg then. It still doesn’t.
Neither does Boeing’s second largest union, SPEEA, which represents engineers.
Nor is there any understanding what Muilenburg’s view of future commercial airplane development is.
Odds and Ends: More from Airbus annual press conference; IAM focuses on wages
Jan. 13, 2015: More from Airbus: Airbus held its annual press conference today in Toulouse, reporting its full year 2014 orders and deliveries results. Our Bjorn Fehrm was there and filed a report from the event. He will have more this week. Here are some stories from other media.
Reuters: Airbus to juggle production, defense A380. Airbus says it will likely take A320 production about 50/mo. We reported months ago the supply chain has been notified to prepare for rate 54 in 2018. Airbus also said it will bring A330ceo production down after 2015. We predict 5-6. Decisions are to be made in the coming months.
Bloomberg: Airbus to add 20 passengers to A350-1000.
Aviation Week: Airbus formally launches the A321neoLR. You read this plan here first last October.
Seattle Times: Boeing is No. 1 by some metrics. Dominic Gates takes his usual thorough look at the bragging rights of Airbus and Boeing.
IAM on wages: Boeing’s touch-labor union, the IAM 751, says a Washington State study about aerospace jobs shows 58% of non-Boeing aerospace jobs in the state are paying less than $15 per hour.
Top 10 Leeham News stories of 2014
Dec. 30, 2014: This was a highly active news year. Airbus launched the A330neo and A321neoLR. Boeing firmed up more than 200 orders for the 777X. Emirates canceled 70 A350 orders, a record cancellation when no customer collapse was involved. Boeing and its principal union, the IAM 751, faced off in a bitter contract vote. And on the truly dark side, Malaysian Airlines lost MH370 and MH17.
The Top 10 stories read on Leeham News included all of the above but MH17. Others made the Top 10 list. Here it is:
Oct. 28, 2009: five years ago today, Boeing announced 787 Line 2 goes to Charleston; then, now and the future
This is about eight pages when printed.
It was five years ago today that Boeing announced it would locate the second assembly line for the 787 in Charleston (SC).
The decision was expected and, some say, had actually been made months before–as early as the preceding February. We take a look back at the events leading up to Boeing’s decision to put the second line in Charleston, what’s happened since then and where Boeing will be in five more years.
Odds and Ends: No to 757 MAX; Fallout from Boeing job transfer; 8,000th 737; Fire sale pricing on 777LR
No to 757 MAX: Steve Wilhelm of the Puget Sound Business Journal writes that Boeing has no plans to build a 757 MAX. This refutes the Motley Fool article we linked Tuesday. Then yesterday a different Fool write wrote why Boeing won’t build a 757 MAX. That may be, but as we wrote we had heard rumblings that Boeing was at least talking to the market about the prospect of such an airplane. But this could be nothing more than what we term, “Boeing being Boeing” exploring everything.
Fallout on engineer shift: The Seattle Times wrote that the fallout over Boeing’s plan to shift another 1,000 engineering jobs out of the Puget Sound area is pretty bad among the local work force. The morale at Boeing, The Times writes, is bad among its white collar engineers and technicians. We’re also told the IAM 751 membership continues to have poor morale in the wake of the Jan. 3 contract vote related to the 777X, with a major retirement expected among workers just in advance of the 2016 switchover to the 401(k) style pension plan. There seems to be a growing belief Boeing may face a workforce shortage just at a time when it’s ramping up production the following year on the 737NG, preparing production for the 737 MAX, in the early stages of production for the 777X and ramping up production again for the 787 as it prepares to introduce the 787-10 in 2018–as well as the KC-46A production ramp up and perhaps on the P-8A Poseidon.
And then there is the continued overhang of the potential NLRB action related to the 751 vote. Although a long shot, what happens if the NLRB requires a new vote and this time it fails? Boeing is already committed to building the 777X in Seattle: ground has been broken and the timeline too late to go elsewhere. Bonuses have been paid out. This could become a real mess.
8,000th 737: On the plus side, Boeing delivered its 8,000th 737, to United Airlines this week. It’s quite the accomplishment.
Fire sale pricing on 777-200LR: Air India, a financial basket case, plans to sell three more Boeing 777-200LRs, apparently for whatever it can get, in order to raise cash. It previously sold five 5-year old -200LRs for $335m–an average of a mere $67m each. According to the appraisal firm Collateral Verifications, a five year old -200LR should have a current market value of about $98m.
Inmarsat to offer free tracking: Inmarsat, the satellite company that proved key to tracking Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, will offer free tracking service, The Wall Street Journal writes.
Odds and End: ExIm fight, again; A350 interior; C-17 production ending early; 787’s longest routes; That’s no bull; MH370
ExIm fight, again: Republicans and the conservative Heritage Foundation are once again attempting to kill the US ExIm Bank, which providing financing support for Boeing airplanes.
This isn’t a sexy topic for our readers, but it’s an important issue we’ve written about many times. While the Republicans and Heritage call this corporate welfare (of which we’re generally disdainful), we disagree in this instance. It’s a matter of competitiveness.
Loren Thompson, with whom we’ve often disagreed, and whose institute is partly funded by Boeing, takes on the effort to kill ExIm in this column. His underlying facts are valid, though his tiresome shot at Airbus subsidies and Boeing’s innocence is laughable once more. The WTO found Boeing received illegal subsidies, too, and of course we just witnessed Boeing getting the largest subsidy in corporate history from Washington (State, that is)–all of which Thompson ignores.
But this National Review magazine (a conservative one) fails in its taking Thompson to task to even mention Airbus, the principal thrust of Thompson’s piece. This is as silly as Thompson’s continued Airbus bashing.
The reason we support ExIm’s continued existence has nothing to do with who gets what subsidies; it has everything to do with the fact that Europe’s export credit agencies fund Airbus airplanes and Boeing needs to have ExIm to compete. (We’d be less harsh about Thompson if he would stick to this topic rather than beating the subsidy drum with highly selective facts on an issue for which he was paid by Boeing to issue a study during the WTO dispute.)
National Review’s critique of Thompson totally ignores the Airbus export credit support challenge. There may be merit to many practices about ExIm to criticize, but these critics need to focus on the ECA competitive advantage for Airbus should ExIm go away. Boeing’s right on this one.
Odds and Ends: Coming soon–new Leeham News; Boeing v SPEEA; 86-seat Q400; Boeing 326; Budapest Air Show
Coming soon: We will be rolling out changes this month to Leeham News and Comment. We will expand our News and Analysis, providing the most insightful commentary of aviation issues of any on-line publication. Most on-line news resources either collate into one portal news from around the world, or report news without analysis, or offer superficial analysis. We’re famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) for providing insight in a no-BS manner.
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These changes include transformation into a combination paid and free content site. We’ll have paid content several times a week in addition to our free content.
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31 Comments
Posted on September 30, 2014 by Scott Hamilton
Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, IAM 751, International Association of Machinists, Leeham News and Comment, SPEEA
777 Classic, 777X, A330neo, A350-1000, Boeing, Boeing 314, Boeing 326, Bombardier, Budapest Air Show, IAM 751, International Association of Machinists, Leeham News and Comment, Q400, Q400 Combi, SPEEA