Boeing
Boeing held 80% of the commercial aviation market in 1970.
Boeing held 80% of the commercial aviation market in 1970. By 2024, it had surrendered half that share to Airbus while two 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people and cost over $20 billion. This isn't a story about bad luck - it's a biology lesson about what happens when distributed systems lose coordination and competitive pressure drives lethal shortcuts.
The 737 MAX disaster revealed total coordination breakdown across Boeing's engineering organization. Aerodynamics optimized for fuel efficiency, flight controls optimized for cost, and nobody integrated the system-level risks. The MCAS system relied on a single sensor - a vulnerability that never propagated between teams because local goals trumped system integrity under timeline pressure. When you distribute decision-making without explicit coordination protocols, local optimizations create global failures. Boeing's House Transportation Committee report found a 'culture of concealment' stemming from the arms race with Airbus.
Boeing's vulnerability runs deeper than one failed plane. The company depends on Spirit AeroSystems for 70% of 737 fuselage production - a single-supplier dependency that paralyzed the entire production line when Spirit had quality issues in 2024. Meanwhile, Boeing can't replicate Airbus's coalition advantage: Airbus operates as a consortium with work-share reciprocity; Boeing operates as a hierarchy that must pay cash for partnerships. Fifty years of erosion teaches that even dominant incumbents fall when coordination fails and competitors build structural advantages you can't copy.
Cautionary Notes on Boeing
- Defended design and blamed pilots instead of taking responsibility
- 737 MAX crisis: MCAS relied on single sensor, wasn't disclosed to pilots, lacked safeguards
- 346 deaths from Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines 302 crashes
- Culture of concealment and management misjudgments from competitive pressure
- Distributed engineering without coordination protocols created catastrophic system failure
- Local optimizations (fuel efficiency, cost reduction) conflicted without system-level integration
- Information silos prevented critical safety information from propagating
- Aggressive timeline pressure deprioritized safety reviews
- 346 deaths, $20+ billion costs, 20-month grounding, lost market leadership
- 737 MAX pushed 1960s airframe past limits
- MCAS software compensation for aerodynamic changes failed catastrophically
- Prioritized iteration over clean-sheet development to avoid costs
Boeing Appears in 7 Chapters
After 2019 737 MAX crashes, initially defended design and blamed pilots - wrong chemical signal lost trust and cost $20B+.
See crisis signaling failures →Lost half its 80%+ 1970 market share to Airbus coalition over 54 years - can't replicate work-share consortium structure.
Learn coalition advantages →Decades-long destructive arms race with Airbus led to 737 MAX rush-to-market with flawed MCAS - 346 deaths from competitive pressure.
Explore destructive coevolution →737 MAX demonstrates distributed coordination failure: separation, alignment, and cohesion breakdowns across engineering teams.
Understand coordination protocols →Spirit AeroSystems manufactures 70% of 737 fuselage - dangerous single-supplier dependency that slowed entire production in 2024.
See supplier dependency risks →737 MAX crisis illustrates pushing past design limits - iterating 1960s airframe rather than investing $20-30B in new design.
Learn about design senescence →Dominated with ~75% market share through 1970s, now cycles with Airbus in duopoly - 787 delays and MAX crisis shifted share.
Explore competitive cycles →