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I've only flown on one a couple of times. One was a "commuter" flight from east coast to west coast. The other time was just a few years ago as the wife and I flew to Hawaii. Both times it was by far the most smooth flying airplane I've ever been on.
All things must end but this one gives me a sad. |
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@Wings2Wheels
You are welcome in my Jumpseat anytime. I had two American pilots Jumpseat with us from JFK to ANC, and we gave them the VIP treatment. They were pretty amazed! Attached File |
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Sad moments, I hate to know that's happening, the 747 aircraft was a magnificent beast.
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Quoted: Damn 737 landing at T-38 ref speeds.... View Quote Speaking of T-38s…… Attached File Attached File Attached File … Boeing got some new (to them) chase planes. |
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Quoted: BIG PLANES BURN BIG COAL! TC View Quote I LOLed! The Gosht Ship. It's hard to be discrete in such a big bird. Attached File |
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Quoted: I keep wanting to fly Lufthansa just for the chance of getting on one View Quote In late 2018, the first leg of my trip to the sandbox was on a Lufthansa 74 in regular economy. Now, I've been crew on our 767s, including the ones with our Heathrow based flight attendants who do a fantastic job with what they're given to work with....and it didn't come CLOSE to the experience on Lufthansa. In retrospect I should have asked if I could have visited the cockpit, but as crew, I know how busy it can be prior to international flights and didn't want to bother them. In hindsight I should have. If U.S.-based carriers could provide service even half as good, we'd be king kong...instead, we are trying to lower costs, lower expectations, and compete with the likes of Spirit and Allegiant. The ride on the 74 was smooth, seat pitch a LOT bigger than the U.S. equivalent in coach, and service above and beyond. Totally worth it...even though I wasn't footing the bill! Now...the rotation back to the states is another story entirely, was also supposed to be on a 74 supplied by a shall-not-be-mentioned mil-air contract carrier who left nearly 300 of us stranded at Al Udeid because they were running behind, had crew duty issues, and their roller system wasn't working. They obviously didn't know the capability of 300 U.S. GIs to hand load and secure their trash when properly motivated to GTFO a shithole....we would have been loaded before they could have finished putting the gas on the jet! |
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Quoted: @TimeOnTarget You just moved up to one of my favorite posters here! Awesome photos and stories. View Quote Thanks Brother! It's been a wild ride for sure. I am blessed. This is the ladder that we climb to the upper deck. It can fold up out of the way for cargo loading. Attached File Descending into Afghanistan. Attached File The two massive outflow valves that control pressurization. Attached File Winglet Attached File |
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I had the pleasure of traveling by 747 on a few occasions.
The best was after missing a connecting flight and trapped at LAX, trying to get to D.C., I got put on a 747 that was being moved in an equipment transfer with only a handful of passengers (all missed connections) and one flight attendant. After take-off, she moved us all up to First Class on the upper deck to make her job easier. No food but she had a drink trolley with the seal already broken (so she wasn’t responsible for the inventory, she told me). Free drinks and everybody was just socializing like we were at a cocktail party. When the Captain announced we would soon be landing at Dulles, we were all pleading for them to just circle around for awhile |
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Its always cool seeing a shitload of 74s whenever we'd go into CVG. Sad they're going away but writing has been on wall for years.
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Quoted: Can't read the thread title without thinking of Dos Gringos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e9EDf5WVQ0 View Quote Saw Trip & Snooze perform at the pilot's O-club at Barksdale (yes, there was a separate one near the Qs for us debaucherous idiots) in 2002 when I was going through the A-10 B course and they were in for an Air Warrior II. It was fun singing along with them prior to their stuff blowing up (pun intended) after OIF. |
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Quoted: I am really surprised the military hasn't purchased more of them - the Looking Glass mission etc are still 707 based. And I always loved the Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft concept. View Quote The cruise missile carrier was doomed at the start. You can't take a jet that was designed as an oval or semi-oval and simply cut a bunch of holes in the bottom, put missile racks inside, and have any sort of structural integrity afterwards. Ask the engineers who had to design the P-8 torpedo launch bay into a 737 fuselage. That bird had all sorts of flex problems and cracking at the start. |
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Quoted: @Wings2Wheels You are welcome in my Jumpseat anytime. I had two American pilots Jumpseat with us from JFK to ANC, and we gave them the VIP treatment. They were pretty amazed! https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/432675/tempImagexP5zoA_jpg-2498593.JPG View Quote Appreciate that sir! I may take you up on that sometime. For the record, you're always welcome on my jumpseat as well...but you'll have to unfold it, lock it into place, and watch your knees if/when either pilot slides their seat back. I won't even get into the 2nd jumpseat they are putting in our MAXes. If you're not a 4' double leg amputee below the hip, you're not fitting. |
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Quoted: Speaking of T-38s…… https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2117/646E27FF-FDF3-403F-B093-0F75512ABBED_jpe-2498594.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2117/2DE12703-BB32-4477-AAB0-E53C7AEA2158_jpe-2498595.JPG https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2117/0981016A-887D-4198-9876-E7F6F5BE0696_jpe-2498597.JPG … Boeing got some new (to them) chase planes. View Quote NICE! I wonder if I have flight time in that bird. The -38 is gonna have to tap 'burner just to keep up with the stretched 73s in the pattern.... |
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T-38 has a 25 foot wingspan. B747's cabin is about 19 feet wide. So if the T-38's wings were able to fold about 3 feet from each tip, you could fit it in a 747
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Quoted: Is anyone taking delivery of 767s in pax configuration anymore, or are they all freighters? Are they -300 or -400 airframe? The KC-46...whoever took the boomer out of the tail should be drawn & quartered. Could the triple be the last true Boeing jet to have come off the line? View Quote Nope..just freighters and tankers |
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Quoted: ... Or they could just stay in Renton. But they have already shrunk the Renton facility’s geographical footprint over the years. I won’t surprise me if the upcoming machinists union labor negotiations and resulting agreement in 2024 might play a determining factor in those sort of decisions, too. View Quote I was in a professional development seminar, and one of the senior VPs was giving us a pep talk, ironically after admitting that first level manager in any of the factories was considered "the worst job in Boeing". He started down the road about how we needed to push the envelope on efficiency and pioneer new multi-use processes because demand for the 737 was so high and we were so space constrained. I asked him why the onus fell on the newest and least influential managers to overcome a critical obstacle when we'd had plenty of real estate, before Boeing had sold off good parts of Renton at a huge profit to commercial real estate developers. You could have heard a pin drop, the other firsts looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He looked at me pretty hard too, and then explained that Boeing used the limitation as a "forcing function" to "take managers out of their comfort zone and make them innovate". Not sure how close to the end that was for me, but it definitely helped shape my decision. |
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About every six months or so I think about applying at Atlas. I wanted to fly the 747 ever since watching Airport 75 as a kid. I wound up in a flying job that has me home nearly every day and pays enough to cover the bills. Too unmotivated towards flying to spend 16 days away from home at this point.
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Quoted: There will probably be a couple thousand dollars worth of tools lost in the fuselage and wings of that thing. Kudos to Boeing for killing one of their last viable product lines and fully committing to their legacy of obscurity as one of the last great American manufacturers. View Quote Lol...they're not all lost. When the customer did the first major inspection and depaneled the aircraft we'd get back a box of them. I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason they started forcing the managers to do the mechanics tool cart inventories, so they could go back to them and say "how did YOU sign off on this hammer being present in the toolkit, when you never filed a lost tool report and it was found, by customer, on tail XXXXXX." They knew damn well the real reason was because both the mechanics and the tool crib people that gave them the replacement hammer were union, but hell would have frozen over before they admitted it. Boeing cheated and lied through the FAA special inspection when the problem became impossible to hide, if they'd of gotten caught doing some of that stuff the FAA would have shut the line down and cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars. |
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If I still lived in WA I'd be there to see it roll out and fly for the first time
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Quoted: Lol...they're not all lost. When the customer did the first major inspection and depaneled the aircraft we'd get back a box of them. I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason they started forcing the managers to do the mechanics tool cart inventories, so they could go back to them and say "how did YOU sign off on this hammer being present in the toolkit, when you never filed a lost tool report and it was found, by customer, on tail XXXXXX." They knew damn well the real reason was because both the mechanics and the tool crib people that gave them the replacement hammer were union, but hell would have frozen over before they admitted it. Boeing cheated and lied through the FAA special inspection when the problem became impossible to hide, if they'd of gotten caught doing some of that stuff the FAA would have shut the line down and cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: There will probably be a couple thousand dollars worth of tools lost in the fuselage and wings of that thing. Kudos to Boeing for killing one of their last viable product lines and fully committing to their legacy of obscurity as one of the last great American manufacturers. Lol...they're not all lost. When the customer did the first major inspection and depaneled the aircraft we'd get back a box of them. I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason they started forcing the managers to do the mechanics tool cart inventories, so they could go back to them and say "how did YOU sign off on this hammer being present in the toolkit, when you never filed a lost tool report and it was found, by customer, on tail XXXXXX." They knew damn well the real reason was because both the mechanics and the tool crib people that gave them the replacement hammer were union, but hell would have frozen over before they admitted it. Boeing cheated and lied through the FAA special inspection when the problem became impossible to hide, if they'd of gotten caught doing some of that stuff the FAA would have shut the line down and cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars. |
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Quoted: Yes. I always ask my wife to take me. It’s probably pretty mundane for her after 36 years, but I still find the processes and the scale of everything interesting. The big birds never fail to impress. Glad I got to see the last 747 at the end of the assembly line. I am hoping they have some sort of celebration for its rollout or first flight. End of an era for sure. The wife has been told that she will be able work the program right into its grave sometime next summer, winding everything down, wrapping things up and making final dispositions for the remnants. Probably going to be an emotional time when that last day comes. I do also have limited access as a railroad employee. But would be really pushing it to do stuff like this. View Quote If you are up for it, the Renton family day is Sept 18. We are opening the P-8 line for walk through for the first time as well. Plus you can see where BNSF drops off all those fuselages. |
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Quoted: Time capsule so future generations can ooo and ahhh over what a great country this once was. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: What are they doing with all of the tooling afterwards? Scrap bin? Save it for spares production? Time capsule so future generations can ooo and ahhh over what a great country this once was. Beat me to it; my thoughts as well. |
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Quoted: T-38 has a 25 foot wingspan. B747's cabin is about 19 feet wide. So if the T-38's wings were able to fold about 3 feet from each tip, you could fit it in a 747 View Quote T-38s have large wingtip sections outboard of the ailerons (gotta be close to 3') that are affixed simply via a row of screws, and the spar does not carry all the way out through it. |
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What the hell is Boeing going to do? Is there a 797 or 808 in the works? they cant make 737s forever.
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Quoted: What the hell is Boeing going to do? Is there a 797 or 808 in the works? they cant make 737s forever. View Quote Attached File |
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My Guard unit got to fly NWA N601US from Wi to Idaho for a 3 week AT we went on back in the 90's . it was a contract flight, turns out it was the 27th Jumbo jet off the line in 1969.
Later the Nose was donated to the Smithsonian and the rest of it was scrapped in 2007. |
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My brother just made the hop across the pond and back on a LH 747 .
OP did you get to sign the last one? |
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Quoted: They closed the 787 lines in Everett and consolidated all production at Charleston, SC. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: It looks like this particular bay is going to be used for the 767/KC46. There are already 767 freighter forward sections behind this 747. I don't know if they are relocating the 767 final assembly line from the back of the building where it was relegated during the haydays or what, but they are already staging 767 parts where they used to keep 747 parts. Beyond that, with the loss of the 747, 787 and OG 777, there is going to be some empty real estate in that building. It's difficult to describe just how big it is. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/2117/7C0B0FC3-08DB-40CF-9E65-361D80610FAD_jpe-2498169.JPG It won't surprise me if when whatever replaces the 737 comes along they build it in Everett and close down the Renton plant. 787 Dreamliner - loss? I thought they had just finally worked out the kinks to resume production on the 787? The Last 747 - Truly History. Bigger_Hammer They closed the 787 lines in Everett and consolidated all production at Charleston, SC. |
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Quoted: Saw Trip & Snooze perform at the pilot's O-club at Barksdale (yes, there was a separate one near the Qs for us debaucherous idiots) in 2002 when I was going through the A-10 B course and they were in for an Air Warrior II. It was fun singing along with them prior to their stuff blowing up (pun intended) after OIF. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Can't read the thread title without thinking of Dos Gringos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e9EDf5WVQ0 Saw Trip & Snooze perform at the pilot's O-club at Barksdale (yes, there was a separate one near the Qs for us debaucherous idiots) in 2002 when I was going through the A-10 B course and they were in for an Air Warrior II. It was fun singing along with them prior to their stuff blowing up (pun intended) after OIF. They hit Nellis while I was there... but I was busy flying nights on the MQ-1. |
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Quoted: Well....not *all* the fuselages get dropped off there. https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2014_27/548951/140706-boeing-fuselages-jms-1758.jpg View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: If you are up for it, the Renton family day is Sept 18. We are opening the P-8 line for walk through for the first time as well. Plus you can see where BNSF drops off all those fuselages. Well....not *all* the fuselages get dropped off there. https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2014_27/548951/140706-boeing-fuselages-jms-1758.jpg gave rise to this scheme.... Attached File |
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Quoted: If you are up for it, the Renton family day is Sept 18. We are opening the P-8 line for walk through for the first time as well. Plus you can see where BNSF drops off all those fuselages. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Yes. I always ask my wife to take me. It’s probably pretty mundane for her after 36 years, but I still find the processes and the scale of everything interesting. The big birds never fail to impress. Glad I got to see the last 747 at the end of the assembly line. I am hoping they have some sort of celebration for its rollout or first flight. End of an era for sure. The wife has been told that she will be able work the program right into its grave sometime next summer, winding everything down, wrapping things up and making final dispositions for the remnants. Probably going to be an emotional time when that last day comes. I do also have limited access as a railroad employee. But would be really pushing it to do stuff like this. If you are up for it, the Renton family day is Sept 18. We are opening the P-8 line for walk through for the first time as well. Plus you can see where BNSF drops off all those fuselages. Thanks for the heads up. I kind of doubt my wife would want to go, but if I want to I could probably hit up a nephew of hers who is a senior manager somewhere down there. As far as dropping off fuselages, been there, done that. Played around with them quite a bit at Balmer Yard in Seattle, too. |
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Flown from SEA to LHR several times on -400's over the last couple of decades. On our last trip, was able to book seats (business class) in the hump. Never had the chance before, so I jumped at it. Glad I had the opportunity to do so, since British Airways scrapped their remaining 747's during the pandemic. Next trip over will be either a 777 or 787.
The Museum of Flight in Seattle has the first 747 ever built. Walked through it last time I was there. Unfortunately, it was turned into a test bed aircraft, with almost all of the interiors stripped out for test equipment. No access to the hump or the flight deck. End of an era. |
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Never flown on a 747....which is a bummer.
Been on a few long-range transoceanic flights, and they were either 787 or 777 aircraft. Possibly headed to Perth, Australia for work, and when I looked at the possible flights to get a travel quote for the customer, the aircraft was the 787 for the long legs. Don't get me wrong, I like the 787, I just want to experience the 747. |
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Quoted: Never flown on a 747....which is a bummer. Been on a few long-range transoceanic flights, and they were either 787 or 777 aircraft. Possibly headed to Perth, Australia for work, and when I looked at the possible flights to get a travel quote for the customer, the aircraft was the 787 for the long legs. Don't get me wrong, I like the 787, I just want to experience the 747. View Quote Fly to Germany on Lufthansa. |
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Quoted: I was in a professional development seminar, and one of the senior VPs was giving us a pep talk, ironically after admitting that first level manager in any of the factories was considered "the worst job in Boeing". He started down the road about how we needed to push the envelope on efficiency and pioneer new multi-use processes because demand for the 737 was so high and we were so space constrained. I asked him why the onus fell on the newest and least influential managers to overcome a critical obstacle when we'd had plenty of real estate, before Boeing had sold off good parts of Renton at a huge profit to commercial real estate developers. You could have heard a pin drop, the other firsts looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He looked at me pretty hard too, and then explained that Boeing used the limitation as a "forcing function" to "take managers out of their comfort zone and make them innovate". Not sure how close to the end that was for me, but it definitely helped shape my decision. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: ... Or they could just stay in Renton. But they have already shrunk the Renton facility’s geographical footprint over the years. I won’t surprise me if the upcoming machinists union labor negotiations and resulting agreement in 2024 might play a determining factor in those sort of decisions, too. I was in a professional development seminar, and one of the senior VPs was giving us a pep talk, ironically after admitting that first level manager in any of the factories was considered "the worst job in Boeing". He started down the road about how we needed to push the envelope on efficiency and pioneer new multi-use processes because demand for the 737 was so high and we were so space constrained. I asked him why the onus fell on the newest and least influential managers to overcome a critical obstacle when we'd had plenty of real estate, before Boeing had sold off good parts of Renton at a huge profit to commercial real estate developers. You could have heard a pin drop, the other firsts looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He looked at me pretty hard too, and then explained that Boeing used the limitation as a "forcing function" to "take managers out of their comfort zone and make them innovate". Not sure how close to the end that was for me, but it definitely helped shape my decision. There’s enough Boeing property around the CHS airport for BSC to fit two additional final assembly buildings. |
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Quoted: I was in a professional development seminar, and one of the senior VPs was giving us a pep talk, ironically after admitting that first level manager in any of the factories was considered "the worst job in Boeing". He started down the road about how we needed to push the envelope on efficiency and pioneer new multi-use processes because demand for the 737 was so high and we were so space constrained. I asked him why the onus fell on the newest and least influential managers to overcome a critical obstacle when we'd had plenty of real estate, before Boeing had sold off good parts of Renton at a huge profit to commercial real estate developers. You could have heard a pin drop, the other firsts looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He looked at me pretty hard too, and then explained that Boeing used the limitation as a "forcing function" to "take managers out of their comfort zone and make them innovate". Not sure how close to the end that was for me, but it definitely helped shape my decision. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: ... Or they could just stay in Renton. But they have already shrunk the Renton facility’s geographical footprint over the years. I won’t surprise me if the upcoming machinists union labor negotiations and resulting agreement in 2024 might play a determining factor in those sort of decisions, too. I was in a professional development seminar, and one of the senior VPs was giving us a pep talk, ironically after admitting that first level manager in any of the factories was considered "the worst job in Boeing". He started down the road about how we needed to push the envelope on efficiency and pioneer new multi-use processes because demand for the 737 was so high and we were so space constrained. I asked him why the onus fell on the newest and least influential managers to overcome a critical obstacle when we'd had plenty of real estate, before Boeing had sold off good parts of Renton at a huge profit to commercial real estate developers. You could have heard a pin drop, the other firsts looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He looked at me pretty hard too, and then explained that Boeing used the limitation as a "forcing function" to "take managers out of their comfort zone and make them innovate". Not sure how close to the end that was for me, but it definitely helped shape my decision. I think that’s just modern, MBA ran corporate America. Purposely run everything on too short of a shoe string to maximize asset utilization, hyper efficiency, squeezing every last possible penny of out of the place for the next quarterly report. No redundancy or ability to absorb inevitable problems. We’ll deal with the future when it gets here. Then expect the ground level managers to somehow make it work. I see it at the railroad. It’s infuriatingly frustrating and one of the reasons I decided not to continue on a management track. |
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Quoted: "We had a (buzzword) plan in place and this (buzzwords) opportunity allowed us to bring the team together to implement a (buzzwords and platitudes) solution." View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: There will probably be a couple thousand dollars worth of tools lost in the fuselage and wings of that thing. Kudos to Boeing for killing one of their last viable product lines and fully committing to their legacy of obscurity as one of the last great American manufacturers. Lol...they're not all lost. When the customer did the first major inspection and depaneled the aircraft we'd get back a box of them. I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason they started forcing the managers to do the mechanics tool cart inventories, so they could go back to them and say "how did YOU sign off on this hammer being present in the toolkit, when you never filed a lost tool report and it was found, by customer, on tail XXXXXX." They knew damn well the real reason was because both the mechanics and the tool crib people that gave them the replacement hammer were union, but hell would have frozen over before they admitted it. Boeing cheated and lied through the FAA special inspection when the problem became impossible to hide, if they'd of gotten caught doing some of that stuff the FAA would have shut the line down and cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars. Probably every corporate conference call in America. |
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My dad told me when he was a kid in the 50s and 60s there was no greater thing to aspire to than to be a Boeing engineer. It’s kind of interesting though because I think dudes got laid off and would shuffle back and forth to Douglas in Long Beach, get laid off and come back, etc.—almost like seasonal work. My granddad worked on the 727 and 747 lines and my great granddad worked for a Boeing contractor down in Tacoma.
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Quoted: My dad told me when he was a kid in the 50s and 60s there was no greater thing to aspire to than to be a Boeing engineer. It’s kind of interesting though because I think dudes got laid off and would shuffle back and forth to Douglas in Long Beach, get laid off and come back, etc.—almost like seasonal work. My granddad worked on the 727 and 747 lines and my great granddad worked for a Boeing contractor down in Tacoma. View Quote I'd argue that Boeing's problems can be directly traced back to its integration of McDonnell Douglass leadership into its leadership structure. Boeing used to be great engineers who built planes as a business. MD's culture was to focus on the business more than the engineering. |
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Upper deck on the freighter looking aft.
Attached File Looking forward. Attached File The galley. Attached File One of two bunks aft upper deck. Attached File |
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The nose door.
Attached File Attached File I always thought the polished aluminum looked great. Attached File |
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Quoted: I'd argue that Boeing's problems can be directly traced back to its integration of McDonnell Douglass leadership into its leadership structure. Boeing used to be great engineers who built planes as a business. MD's culture was to focus on the business more than the engineering. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted: Quoted: My dad told me when he was a kid in the 50s and 60s there was no greater thing to aspire to than to be a Boeing engineer. It’s kind of interesting though because I think dudes got laid off and would shuffle back and forth to Douglas in Long Beach, get laid off and come back, etc.—almost like seasonal work. My granddad worked on the 727 and 747 lines and my great granddad worked for a Boeing contractor down in Tacoma. I'd argue that Boeing's problems can be directly traced back to its integration of McDonnell Douglass leadership into its leadership structure. Boeing used to be great engineers who built planes as a business. MD's culture was to focus on the business more than the engineering. I vaguely recall my uncle, who also worked for Boeing, saying something similar during the merger itself. |
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