Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Tuesday pegged Boeing Co‘s BA lack of engineers in its leadership as the prime reason behind its ongoing crisis.
What Happened: “The CEO of an aircraft company should know how to design aircraft, not spreadsheets,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Musk is CEO of SpaceX, a direct rival to Boeing’s space division.
Musk’s comment comes on the heels of reports that U.S. prosecutors are urging the Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against Boeing. The aircraft manufacturer allegedly failed to adhere to the terms of a 2021 settlement related to two fatal plane crashes involving its 737 Max jets. DoJ leaders have until July 7 to decide if they want to press charges.
If the DoJ presses charges, it would be yet another setback for Boeing whose commercial airplane segment has been swamped by crises since January when a door plug panel flew off an Alaska Airlines plane manufactured by the company soon after take off.
Several Boeing whistleblowers have since come forward with allegations of the company cutting corners with quality control.
Hardships Don’t Escape Boeing’s Space Division: The company’s space division, however, sent its Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this month with two astronauts on board. Though the spacecraft was supposed to return to Earth initially on June 14, it has been postponed several times since.
While a new date for the return of Starliner has not been ascertained yet, federal agency NASA said in a statement last week that it will only be after July 2 as it resolves several technical glitches identified with the spacecraft.
“We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking."
Musk Vs. Boeing: Last month, Musk pegged the delay in Starliner's first crewed flight on "too many non-technical managers" at Boeing. NASA awarded both Boeing and Musk’s SpaceX contracts to enable to and from transportation to the ISS after retiring its space shuttle. While SpaceX was awarded $2.6 billion, Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion. Despite the lower award amount, SpaceX sent its first crewed mission to the ISS in 2020 on its Dragon spacecraft and has since then undertaken multiple missions, overtaking its traditional rival.
"Although Boeing got $4.2 billion to develop an astronaut capsule and SpaceX only got $2.6 billion, SpaceX finished 4 years sooner," Musk wrote on X. "Too many non-technical managers at Boeing."
Though the space and aviation segments are different, Boeing's Starliner is also faced with immense scrutiny at the moment, making the successful return of the crewed test flight all the more important for the company.
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Photos courtesy: Shutterstock and NASA
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