Emirates President calls for engineering focus at Boeing

Sharon Petersen

By Sharon Petersen Tue Mar 26, 2024

As the world's largest operator of the Boeing 777 and with over 200 orders for the 777X in the pipeline, Emirates is one of many airlines that needs and wants the situation at Boeing resolved quickly.

Emirates President Sir Tim Clark has spoken exclusively to AirlineRatings.com CEO, Geoffrey Thomas to share his views on the situation at Boeing.

He states:

"To fix Boeing’s issues the company needs a strong engineering lead as its head coupled to a governance model which prioritizes safety and quality. 

"It is little wonder that the Machinists Union wants a seat on the board, simply to ensure that the voice of the factory floor is part and parcel of the decision process and is fully integrated into the governance model’s risk management strategies.

"Whether, yet again, this changing of the guard will resolve Boeing’s issues only time will tell, but time, unfortunately, is not on their side. I would suggest that some serious lateral thinking kicks in as soon as possible."

This comment comes as Boeing announces a huge shake-up as a result of the problems with production glitches and quality control.

As Airlineratings.com shared last week, aircraft incidents happen every day. We did a survey of major incidents for 2023 and up to March 23rd 2024. We found that there were 515 significant incidents involving Airbus aircraft and 545 involving Boeing aircraft which is not surprising as there are slightly more Boeing aircraft flying than Airbus types.

In almost all cases the incidents had nothing to do with Airbus or Boeing but were airline or weather-related.

Despite this, the severity of the incidents such as an exit door blowing off coupled with the fuel of social media has turned the focus on Boeing's and highlighted concerns in their production system.

READ: Why I Would Happily Fly Boeing

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