Netflix's doc as ever a valuable insight in this case into regular oversights related to Boeing product, and specifically the 737. Introduced in 1967, or just ten years after the Trabant to put that into context, it would be possibly the most reliable airliner to be built until such time as Boeing appointed Jack Welch's proteges as CEOs... when it would become perhaps the least reliable.
Withdrawn from service after two fatal crashes within five months, it was described on its re-introduction by Michael O'Leary as the most reliable airliner ever: when a clown like that says so, you know something's amiss. As with the Air Alaska flight above, when the stargazers would be delighted once it had shed a door or two mid-flight.
Welch prided himself at GEC on sacking ten percent of 'least performing' employees on a regular basis, which made him something of a saint to financiers but a bit of a cunt to everyone else. His proteges, rather than design a new aircraft from scratch, decided to keep upgrading what they had, which is when the problems started. For example, imagine running with the Trabant but adding everything to it that we hope for in a modern car?
And the problem with the firing thing was that the bulk of those were sourced from the quality department... employees with decades of service sacked at a moment's notice and their tires slashed instead of the carriage-clock. They went better, driving one whistleblower to suicide in a hotel parking lot prior to testifying. Organisations do exaggerate evil besides excellence, though, as I've suggested here before.
So when you get on a Boeing, chances are nothing amiss is likely to happen but do bear in mind that unlike with Airbus, any number of the people who built it viewed the process as fairly shit, and the product they build not one they'd want either they or their family to use on their next holiday... as the documentary suggests.
Ed. Thatcher had her own Jack Welch in the shape of British Airways' Lord King, who was known as Baron King of Wartnaby to her and as the warthog to everyone else. For 'warthog' again, read 'bit of a cunt'.
