Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

A complex story well told. Bare faced greed of senior management ends up in deaths. As usual, the worst part is lengths people go to engage in a cover up.

What a truly fascinating watch this was, a documentary that truly does not hold back. As someone that follows the news with interest, I remember watching news of both tragic crashes with horror, and in both cases, it was definitely the theory that both were due to pilot error, this gives you the true story.

It's almost brutal, it really does put Boeing, and its executives, indeed its company ethos to the sword, initially I thought the documentary focused too much on Boeing's history, but in hindsight it's all in context, it's all fully relevant, and all explained.

The eighties were amazing in so many ways, awful in others, definitely the era of greed, in The UK we had Thatcher, for The U. S. Wall Street, you will see here the consequences of a Company for whom the only focus is profit.

The camera footage of the worker being told about missing parts is on of the most shocking things I've seen for some time.

It's very well made, with some fascinating interviews, it's more on the factual side that the sensational side.

A fascinating documentary, 9/10.

This documentary should be shown to every new Airbus employee and executive, to learn how you should NOT do it.

Now on a more serious note: An interesting and sometimes even thrilling documentary, which was well-paced, had great interviews and outstanding music. It could've been a bit shorter, but if you like documentaries, it's definitely worth a watch.

The saddest story is that ... whole world runs like this.

In every single big corporation, especially after merges, there's literally not about a product you build, but about ... charts for shareholders.

Maybe ... if you are a corporate like Boeing, and if somebody dies, then maybe a CEO, maybe all of the shareholders should be questioned because it's actually them who are responsible. One by one. Not Boeing company. It's them. First shareholder, second, third, CEO etc.

Many companies lost it's reputation because of shareholders greed. It's so unfair that they have absolutely no responsibility. All they do is taking money, and actually ruining company values from inside, for the sake of their own profit.

In every newspaper there shouldn't be: boeing this, boeing that. Maybe if every newspaper would mention specifically shareholders by name, maybe this would change something. Public opinion would have chance to "meet" them. All the hate is targeted at Boeing, but it's NOT boeing. It's the people behind. They have name. They are human beings. Not giving documents fast enough is not Boeing. It's specific people. Name, by name.

I read a lot about this. One of the greatest articles is from a guy who was both a pilot and a software engineer. In short - what Boeing did with this 737max plane was that, they tried to fix hardware issues (plane they designed badly), with software. This plane should never fly.

"Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" (2022 release; 98 min.) opens with a clever montage of the good ol' days when Boeing enjoyed a stellar reputation for its safety record. We then go to "Jakarta, Indonesia" flight 160 is taking off, and things go horribly wrong, crashing minutes after takeoff. The widow of the flight's captain recounts the events of the day. At this point we are 10 min into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from veteran documentarian Rory Kennedy ("Ghosts of Abu Ghraib"). Here she reassesses what led to not one, but two Boeing 737 MAX crashes within months of each other. More in particular, we are shown how a company's culture started changing from "safety at any cost" to "profit at any cost" after Boeing merges with McDonnell Douglas in 1996. Along the way, we get a Boeing 101 history lesson on how a company so identified with Seattle lost the plot and moved its HQ to Chicago (in 2001). There are plenty of talking heads, none more so than Wall Street Journal airline industry specialist Andy Pasztor, who exposes it all, damning article after damning article. When Boeing finally settles the FAA defrauding charges for $2.5 billion dollars, we now know what the worth is of a human life for Boeing: you divide that by the number of people (349) killed in the 2 crashes, and you come to about $7 million per perished person. Bottom line: while this documentary doesn't contain any new revelation as such, it nevertheless is nothing short of a blistering indictment of Boeing and its management.

"Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" premiered on Netflix just the other day. If you are in the mood to witness firsthand how one of America's erstwhile most treasured companies falls from grace in its never-ending pursuit of "increasing shareholder value", I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.