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Comment by nocsi | Hacker News Reader

All the issues are systemic, so it can't be the responsibility of some low-level employees. But it is kind of curious that Boeing suddenly wants to buy Spirit Aerosystems.

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The curious things is that they divested Spirit Aerosystems in the first place, in a financial engineering move that seemed to serve no business purpose besides a PE pump and dump.

It kind ofnmade sense so: Tier one aerostructure suppliers are doing the easiest work, not like avionics and engine OEMs. By having those activities in-house, you have a cost center. Having that as a third-party turns it into a profit center. Also, a third party can theoretically work for other customers. Airbus did the same thing.

In practice so, there are only two aircraft OEMs. Hence those structure tier ones are kind of screwed. Automotive tier ones have much more choice regarding customers.

It only makes sense if your only metric is cost. There are a lot of reasons why Airbus owns the subsidiaries who do Spirit's type of work for Airbus (such as the airframe). Airbus does not do the same thing as Boeing.

Well, Airbus is a customer of Spirit Aerospace. And Premium Aerotec, well, they were very, very close to spin it out completely. Bavk the day, it was part of what today is Defence and Space. And Premium Aerotec is subsiediary of Airbus, it is not part of any of its divisions. So, somewhere between Spirit Aerospace and and being in-house.

Is airbus a customer for anything other than the A220? I haven’t been able to figure this out.

No idea. When it comes to bad quality controls and processes, the model doesn't matter much so. Also, I have no idea how Airbusbis surveilling and working with Spirit Aerospace compared to Boeing.

We might get the answers soon. If Boeing really wants to buy Spirit we might see Airbus’ exposure. That said, it wouldn’t be unheard them building for each other. Pretty sure Airbus manufactured parts for Boeing and vice versa in the past.

Airbus didn't spin them out. It doesn't matter if they thought about it, because they decided it was a bad idea. It's nothing like Spirit and Boeing. Even as a subsidiary, the relationship is much more vertically integrated.

Boeing spun off Spirit Aerosystems to create the appearance of better RONA,, fragment their unionized workforce, and substitute contract demands for price and quality for engineering.

sometimes I wonder if org charts are engineered to make sure misdeeds are attributed to diffuse cultural/systemic problems that can’t be prosecuted:

- you can’t blame the low level employees inhabiting the system be their powerless to change it

- the CEOs are hoping that they’ve installed enough layers of middle management that they can claim plausible deniability about any on the ground problems (and ignore that their job is to be the manager-of-managers)

Right, but it is nebulous as to who to pin it on. You can't arrest every employee of Boeing. "The buck stops here" won't work, their lawyers are too good. So the answer isn't criminality, the answer is huge fines, in terms of 5% plus of annual revenue and oversight.

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