2024 has really been a rough ride for Boeing so far. Last week, fifty passengers wereinjured in what the airline called a “technical event,” reportedly causing the plane to lose altitude suddenly, according to CNN (here and here). This incident comes after the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that lost its door in taxi earlier this year.

ICYMI: Just over a week into the year, a Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a fuselage panel mid-flight. A month later, pilots flying the same plane model reported jammed flight controls during landing, and two weeks ago, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a report that accused Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems (that make 70% of the Boeing 737) of a lack of safety awareness “at all levels of the organization” that caused the company to fail half of its safety audit. The FAA has given the industry giant 90 days as of March 4 to submit an outline to their action plan after their six-week audit revealed “multiple instances where these companies allegedly failed to comply with quality control requirements.”

Together, these events have weighed on Boeing’s shares, which are down 27% year-to-date, according to market data.Since the start of the year, the industrial giant has lost a whopping USD 35 bn in market cap, USD 30 bn of which is attributed to its fuselage incident in January. Their stock price has fallen from USD 251.8 at the start of the year to USD 182.53 as of today. Since 2018, Boeing has been found responsible for two fatal airplane crashes that killed 346 passengers and has paid USD bns in fines and settlements.

Boeing’s safety failures have triggered model groundings, production and delivery delays, and multiple federal investigations. Late last week, John Barnett, a former Boeing employee was found dead. He had been amid a deposition in his whistleblower retaliation case. Barnett, a quality manager who had been at Boeing for decades, had raised serious concerns about the company’s production standards.

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