concept. that's the chapter from god, not government. it's this idea that it's the most important concept for a girl to understand knowing she is uniquely made and unconditionally loved by god will be a corner stone of conservativism. it's something that with the policy at the same time. this notion that the government can substitute. i would argue no. that's really not so. >> visit booktv.org to watch the rest of the episode. peter robinson served as a recipient of the ford best in business awards from the society for advanced business editing and writing.

a native of st. paul, minnesota. he lives in seattle with his wife and two children. a former math teacher, previous contributor to fortnight. he covered the aero space industry for the seattle times. they are here to discuss peter's book. please join me in welcoming dominic gates and peter robinson. [ applause ] >> okay. >> thank you all for coming. i'm domimic gates. this is peter robinson.

before i start throwing questions on him, let me say a few things about the book. i'd like to begin by since the subtitle of the book includes the fall of boeing. i'd like to begin by recalling the great legacy of boeing and what it means to this region and to the world. boeing gave the puget sound region a great part of its social fabric. all those blue collar jobs, very highly paid. all the advanced engineering work that was world class. it was all here for 100 years and generations of families have grown up with boeing and it's created the economy of the pacific northwest. it gives the world an iconic line of jet liners like the 747 that have just shrunk the world incredibly, in my lifetime. this is a company that has given

the world a very great deal. now, the fall from public favor recently, obviously began with the two crashes of the max in 2018 and 2019. since then, it seems like nothing has gone right for boeing. everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. right now the max is back in the air. obviously, the pandemic has really hit the airline industry and boeing. they've got all sorts of manufacturing problems. they have delivered 14 787s in the last year. they were supposed to be delivering 14 a month. it's definitely one of the low points in boeing's history. the question that this book sets out to answer is, as peter

wrote, p how did a company that prided itself on its engineering promise that had perfectionism in its dna go so wildly off course? that's the question he sets out to answer and i have to say that i think this is a great book. i think it will be the go to book for boeing. what i found -- i'd like to mention three things i find impressive about it. first of all, he really kneeled the cultural shift that's happened in the last two decades.nkneeled the cultural shift that's happened in the last two decades.nakneeled the cultural that's happened in the last two decades.ikneeled the cultural s that's happened in the last two decades.lkneeled the cultural s that's happened in the last two decades.neeled the cultural shi that's happened in the last two decades.eeled the cultural shif that's happened in the last two decades.naileled the cultural shift that's happened in the last two decades.led the cultural shift that's

happened in the last two decades.ed the cultural shift that's happened in the last two decades. the merger ruined it but that's not it. he maps out this cultural shift incredibly well. it's worth reading for that. he's a wonderful writer. there's so many arresting sentencing in the book. i'm going to read one of them. it refers to the airworthiness directives that the faa issued one week after the liner crashed. i remember reading that so well. when a plane crashes far away, it doesn't get a lot of attention here in the united states. bad weather, poor airline, old airplane, something like that is the usual picture. this was odd. this was a new plane and the weather was perfect but still, what had happened? nobody really knew. a week later boeing issued a bulletin and the faa followed with an airworthiness directive.

i remember reading and it said there's this system that pushes the nose down in the sensor goes wrong and telling pilots what to do if that happened. for me, and i'm sure every air supporter in the world is like what. boeing was telling us a week afterwards there's something wrong with the plane. here is what peter wrote. the faa airline directive was so pedestrian on its face, it's neutral wording like an iphone bug alert. it's so paradoxically earth shattering. i feel it was. i feel i, as an air space reporter, knew this was going to be a big investigation. we have to find out what happened here. finally, before i go to questions i will say the other thing i admire is the way he's unflinching in his conclusions.

he really documents it all. it's footnoted. he very succinctly says what he means. those of you know boeing will remember jim mcnerny who was ceo for ten years and solidiied the culture focused on the financials. before he came to boeing, he was at 3m for four years. 3m makes office products but was famous for lots of inventions, including the post it note. peter writes this, in just over four years, mcnerny doubled the company's annual profits. he did it go straight at 3m's future because he slashed jobs, he slashed rnd spending and that's how he got his profits but he destroyed the future of the company.

terrific story, terrific history and great writing. that's the book. now i'm going to give peter his chance to talk about it with a few questions and later on we'll come to your questions. peter, it seems to me a company can move past a great tragedy like this one that killed 346 people. without first admitting what it did wrong, do you think boeing has done so? >> thank you. i want to thank you for the introduction. it's high praise coming from you. every one in the room knows the esteem that dominic has held in the aerospace industry and his coverage over the last two decades. i will try to say what i mean, as i did in the book, today. the question has boeing every really admitted fault? i think it depends on the

audience. they, just this month as you report odd, they admitted fault in a court filing. their unsafe design was the proximate cause of the crash. in other audiences, they had a hard time admitting fault. you saw the first crash that it was the pilot who didn't bother checklist. it was maintenance mistakes. you saw later dennis mullenberg saying there was no technical slip or gap. eventually, there was a mealy mouth we own it and finally there was an i'm sorry in public. even as recently as last year, the current ceo was suggesting that it was something that american pilots could have handled. i think it's an open question as to whether boeing has really truly accepted fault. >> yeah, i think publicly boeing

has said that the design of the system, the software that went wrong, that they failed to take into account the reactions of the pilots. they have said that which, to me, is also pointing part of the blame on the pilot. one thing that i've wondered about and i think in the book you talk about previous generation of boeing airplanes where somebody standing up, an engineer or pilot stands up in room when doing the design and somebody has made a suggestion and this guy stands up and says do you want blood on the sets. nobody did that when m cast was being designed, we knew about the pilot who deceived the airlines and didn't let them know that it existed. what about the actual design of m cast. how did that get past this tremendous engineering company

where you get the engineers in the room and you get the pilots to stand in for airline pie lot -- pilots and someone didn't say a single thread or sensor tips off the system. i don't think boeing ever addressed that. >> there is an example set in the book that 737 next generation where someone realized there would be a single point failure introduced in a fuel tank design and he stood up and said how much blood do you want on the seat covers, and that got people's attention. over time partly because of this cost cutting you mentioned that started in earnest during the mcnerny years. you had fewer people that had

the clout to stand up. the people i talk to on the max said that they felt the checks and balances were broken down. when they tried to say more sophisticated flight controls should be introduced, they were shut down. >> i mentioned this pilot who is the only one not criminally indicted. that's the chief technical pilot. his actions are clearly inexcusable. he convinced the faa not to put the system in the manuals. he convinced airlines not to have simulaor training when they asked for it, including lion air. my question for you is, he's one guy. is he a scapegoat? where else does responsible lie, do you think?

>> it clearly lies with management and evidence shows he's a convenient scapegoat as despicable as some of those comments might be. there's a story i tell in the book, a series of events and in october 2019, after the second crash, dennis mullenberg was going to be brought in, hauled in front of congress. he could become the public face of this deadly blunder. it was bit before that in that month that a staffer on the house transportation and infrastructure committee had been getting regular releases of documents from boeing got a release and the call from boeing was take a look at the one on the top. the one on the top was the messages that became infamous where this pilot appeared to have known about the problems with the software before the plane was delivered. during those hearings, dennis mullenberg showed some distance

from mr. fortner. he was asked about the messages. ted cruz sort of confronted him over the messages. dennis mullenberg said we're not quite sure what mr. fortner meant. we think he was talking about a simulator in development. my reporting shows that he had every reason to know exactly what mr. fortner meant because his lawyer was paid by boying through boeing's own liability insurance. >> his deputy was still at boeing at the time. >> right. >> there was the other guy at the end of the messages. >> right. did you ask him and mullenberg

had to say no. >> your book documents a parallel decline within the faa in terms of the oversight that they were -- that was their job. what went wrong with the faa, do you think? >> i tell the story through the faa specialist on the ground. they were people who were technically skilled as them going back to the '80s and early '90s. many people considered the last great airplane at boeing. then things started shifting and this goes back to the reagan revolution and the idea that government is the problem, not the solution. agencies are starved for resources that play out in different ways and different

agencies. lots and lots of engineers who felt their manager was no longer working to hold boeing accountable and produce the safest design. they were seeing their customer as being the manufacturer and that the goal was to help the manufacturer speed the product to the market. >> right. you quote richard read who is an faa safety engineer at the time. do you remember what he said? >> yeah. he had a remarkable analogy. he said at the time he was seeing what was happening and he was seeing that his authority was diminishdiminishing. he saw it as congress that had intentionally dumbed down the agency. he thought of himself as like forest gump and he imagined what

he would say if anyone hauled him into congress. he thought he would say like forest gum when he put his rifle together so fast, he'd say because he told me to, congressman. >> congress did an about turn afterwards and demanded an held these hearings which are really good. before the crashes, all the actions of congress was to push the faa of treating boeing as a customer. >> those were the words. customer was the preferred language for the manufacturer. >> steve dixon has appeared at several of the hearings since then. he was appointed after the second crash but he's been in

the hearings by the politicians. what do you think of his handling of things since the crashes? >> he's a former airline executive. he's trying to balance these competing demands right now, trying to show that he's heeded the message and the agency is reforming itself at the same time just this year, the michael stumo, the father of one of the victims on the ethiopian crash. manager have been saying they can expect not much to change as a result of the rules and one of these managers called it quote posing for the cameras. >> i've heard some of that too. i've been impressed with the

changes we see publicly. just before the first crash, our local senator maria cantwell helped write some clauses in the faa re-authorization bill a month before the crash. increasing amount of delegation that could be done do boeing but cantwell reversed completely after the crash. last december she helped pass this reform act. since then, the faa does seem to be getting tougher if delayed certification of the triple 7x quite a lot. it's going to take four years. they have got tougher an written several stories about how they are tightening up a little bit. i wonder, do you think, it's

gone far enough with the faa is it really going to change? >> i think time will tell. i think it will depend on whether the culture shift truly takes hold. you reported recently that the faa was concerned about the experience level of the people that boeing was appointing as deputies who are meant to represent the faa. there's a brain drain that's taken place over a generation that has to be addressed on both sides. >> right. >> let's step back from the max just a moment and go back to that cultural shift that i talked about the beginning. lot of people, as i said, which was 1997 for this change in the culture of boeing but that began with phil condit. he moved the headquarters from

chicago to here. you write in the book that condit was drawn to the bold vision of capitalism. now condit was an outstanding engineer at boeing before he became ceo. he was the top engineer in the triple 7 which was the last great airplane that boeing built. what happened to him after he became ceo? >> he was a great engineer. he would have been a great college professor. he was the constituency of shareholders was very powerful. that became the group he judged his own performance on. at the times that was the days of jack welch and general

electric which was the ultimate model for my manufacturer in the u.s. and any company like boeing that meant services. that meant financial engineering. that meant finance. phil condit pursued the merger with mcdonald douglas. it was seen as a commodity business that could take care of itself. we would move to chicago and focus on the big strategic picture. >> i interviewed condit at their leadership center in st. louis in 2000 or the beginning of 2001 in that interview he talked about wanting to shift the idea of what boeing was. that we weren't metal vendors anymore. all the planes were metal at time but he was talking about a

new connection, internet connections to airplanes, beaming movies to cinemas via satellite. he wanted boeing to be high-tech and plane making was metal bending. really strange. you mentioned general electric. the influence of ge on boeing has been incredible. now we have dave calhoun who is also a ge guy. this influence has been there for years. it's a description in the book, i'll just read it. ge was an american institution. it had pioneered inventions that dramatically improved living standards. the lightbulb, the x-ray machine, the diesel electric

locomotive, the refrigerator. the people who worked in its factories and labs in river times and industrial bburbs around the country thought of themselves as family. welch said he wouldn't flinch from the hard decisions, whatever the human cost. when he took over, he laid off a quarter of the ge staff and got the nickname neutron jack. this was the era of ceos of corporate america being lionized on the cover of fortune magazine and jack was the top of the pile. can you talk a bit about how ge had such influence over corporate america general and boeing specifically?

>> he was the model of what a ceo should look like and what he should prioritize and phil condit knew him, had a personal relationship with him. it meant things like fix it, close it or sell it. you got to fire the bottom 10% every year. financial engineering during those years ge met or beat earnings expectations from '95 to 2004 which you can do if you have a finance unit where you can sell something and buy it back the next quarter. ge had bent the accounting rules beyond the breaking point was the wording. jack welch had this influence

throughout boeing. >> we get back to very specifically to boeing in a moment but one last thing, you actually broaden out the context of what is happened. even broader you cite the influence of milton friedman who wrote a company sole responsibility is to increase its profits. then you had this sentence, two generations later in any prosperous american city, the unequal effects are fleeing. tesla high-rises, avocado toast and tents.

sounds like seattle. it's academic, i could -- it would be less startling but it's coming from a business reporter. it's kind of a stunning judgment on the business world. do you think corporate america has lost its way. >> it's a big question for a business reporter, but i'm a business reporter who has seen the story over time. i've seen how it ends. when i moved to seattle in 1998, and i was eager to meet these great engineers that boeing was lionized in books like "built to last" and "in search of excellence." this was this period of shareholder primacy which was declared as part of its corporate governance statement.

the duty of business is to take care of its shareholders. the customers can take care of themselves. phil condit was a chairman at the business roundtable. you're seeing that shift. the business roundtable is recognizing companies have duty to all stakeholders. >> one of the saddest things is one stakeholder group that really lost out at boeing is the employees. just so anti-union and have this mentality they could get cheaper labor somewhere else. all the talent here, all this generations of skills in some ways was thrown away and making people here feel like that meant that they lost some pride in the company. let's get back to the specifics of boeing.

i've often heard people stay, boeing should be run by an engineer. the current ceo is not an engineer. dennis mullenberg was an engineer. when he came in following mcnerny i remember being full of hope, oh, it's an engineer taking over. he found a contract. they did a very quiet negotiations and came up with this new deal. i thought that's a great sign. in fact, otherwise, he just kept very strictly to the mcnerny way. he had taken him for 18 months to chicago to be under his wing to be groomed for the role. i think he strayed at all from the sort of financial focus that mcnerny had taught him.

mullenberg has come off badly. why do you think he failed? he was this energetic engineering guy. why do you think he failed so badly? >> i would have primacy in the company and everything i've been told that dennis is a great program manager. he's detailed oriented. he's driven. he rides his bicycle 140 mile a week. it could be the skills you need in the crisis like the max are not those of engineering. you need someone with broad judgment of what to do after something like that. a lot of ways people describe bill alallen, who was a lawyer,s being the best ceo in boeing's history. he wrote notes to himself like don't talk too much.

let others talk. be considerate, make a sincere effort to understand labor's viewpoint. that hasn't been happening at boeing. there's a story i tell in the book about a crash that took place of a 747 in 1985 in japan and it crashed in the side of the mountain. the vertical fin ruptured. within a month boeing came out and said it was our fault. it took the japanese authorities by complete surprise. i've talked to people who after the lion air crash thought if boeing just made a similar mea culpa, even though it's difficult to do, it's hard to admit fault, it would have diffused everything that happened afterwards. >> i should say that another great aspect of this book is the way peter pens pictures of these

personalities. he really gives you a lot of depth of what mullenberg is like as a person. it's all there in the book. the same for many of the other leaders. let me ask you about another one. allen, many, many boeing engineers said if only allen had stayed. if he had been the ceo then the company would have been saved. he was in charge of the 787 debacle. he left right before it fell apart. you write about he became disengaged in the months before he left. there's also news in the book that you would not have read anywhere else. you reveal a more sorted reason

why mulaley was not elevated to the ceo. tell us about mulaley. >> he's a revered figure at boeing. he's the person that brought the triple 7 home to great success. he really popular as the phrase working together at boeing and this idea that you really need to over communicate. he had a phrase that the problem with communication is the illusion that it happened. he brought people together. he was considered technically brilliant. he was forever boyish, smiling. it was held against him in some ways. when it became his turn to be considered for the ceo role

against jim mcnerny who was a board member, he was seen as more the cpo type. there are some people who look like an nfl quarterback and the same way mcnerny looks like a ceo. to them would pursue a more shareholder friendly, predictable strategy and allen was seen as excitable, quote excitable, cheerleadery, we're going to build that plane. there was a concern about his personal life. there had been two consecutive ceos who had resigned because of inappropriate relationships with subordinates. one person i talked to said the board couldn't afford the take the risk.

>> some of your sources, as in many of my stories, have to be anonymous because boeing employees cannot talk to me or you, probably, without a pr person beside them or they lose their jobs. can you talk about your sources and why some of them are anonymous and how you came to trust them? >> i trust them because they have direct knowledge of the events and just as in a newspaper or any other article, there are situations where people can't be named because it might affect their career, their livelihood but they have important information. >> you do incredible amount of research. you travel. did you travel to mullenberg's home no iowa? >> i traveled to the kitchen to make a sandwich. this was during the pandemic.

i really relied on the reporting i've done over the 25 years and having visited boeing facilities and having been to air shows and conferences. i did zoom interviews with the people over seas. >> we're running out of time. let me ask a couple of quick questions. as i mentioned, boeing is at a low point in its history. it almost seems like the churchilian leadership to get out and recover. are these the right leaders and what do you think is needed to save boeing?

>> i spend a lot of time reading about boeing over the last two years, really over the last 25 years. the theme that struck me is that investing in product. ultimately, planes like the 747, the 707, the 737 were not seen as harp at the time. when that investments were made, ultimately, there was a payoff. i don't know if that's something david calhoun is attuned to. >> it's really difficult decision for anybody who might be leading boeing. they are overwhelmed and probably should launch a new airplane. it's a bad time to do so and they don't have the money.

i'll ask two quick questions. the max is back in service. is it fixed? would you put your kids on board? >> the software has been addressed. the particular fault with the m cast software. there were other things that the specialist, the faa wanted. they wanted shielding around the row tor cables. they wanted an icast system which is electronic chest list. those have not been put on the plane. the statistic was 1 in every 3.7 million flights had a fatal crash and the max has had 200,000 or more than 200,000 at this point. i'm going to wait for my evidence for me for my kids. >> you're not going to fly on it? >> i don't have to fly anywhere

now. >> okay. one last question. we talked about ge and we've all heard the news that the house that jack built has collapsed. they're breaking up. other companies are thinking along the same line. toshiba in japan is doing the same. would bit a good idea for boeing to break up and move headquarters back to seattle? >> it seems appealing because it would turn back the clock pre-'97. boeing was at a high point at two-thirds of the market. the thing about being combined is you get so much synergy.

i think a break up of boeing could have other affects. you might be tempted to take the stable military and government contracts, put those in the cleanco and put the pension obligations and the risk here, commercial airline business. idealy for boeing it would come out of this end and be a combined stable company. >> okay. it's time for audience questions. i've got a little ipad do go through. let me see what we can do. which of boeing ceo should take

the mostplay blame for the 737 max crashes? >> dennis mullenberg was at the helm, at the very end of dwom. he had the opportunity the take into the troop at the first crash. >> does they learn from air bus at this point given the problems of the max and the new dream liner manufacturing issues? >> airbus has had -- their chief pilot has always had a lot of clout within the organization. i think boeing does have some things to learn from airbus. one thing i learned in reporting in the book is that there's a stereotype that europe with its strict labor regulations is at a

disadvantage to boeing. that became an advantage in some ways to boeing because it had to trap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force.trap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force.rtrap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force.atrap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force.itrap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force.ntrap its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force. its work force. i had to rely on a highly work force. that's one difference. >> i guess this is a airbus question. what role did the landscape play in the failures that led to the engineering problems with the max? i think boeing has said that the medium for cost cutting was because of the spectre of air buses. >> there were many opportunities during the past 20, 30 years where boeing faced this choice. airbus come out with plane that was about 20 years newer that airbus had a plane that had the

electronic technology. boeing didn't. exactly in the commercial airline business went around the room and said should we develop a brand new 737. he got a tick under the table from someone that wanted to go the other way. the vote was 5-3.ktick under th from someone that wanted to go the other way. the vote was 5-3.ick under the from someone that wanted to go the other way. the vote was 5-3. it could have taken steps to invest but it always was not because of the wide base the 737 had and the tooling was paid off. the factory was already paid off. >> then historically boeing made with the 747, i guess with the

triple 7 as well. it came time for the 87, the culture of cost cutting was already there in chicago and they came up with this global b have to pay for a lot of it which was a financial disaster. the main lesson i see is to listen to what your employees are telling you. managers had a prime directive to minimize training on the back. there were points in boeing's history when there was a wish to minimize training, but there was an understanding if that was permissible by the design. if we could design a way to make that ethically possible.

i think the dictate of management overrode what people on the ground were saying. >> the next question is about the faa. the leader of the process here was ali. he left to work an industry where the industry association aviation safety director in washington, d.c. for the faa. he was the faa's top executive in charge of airplane safety. how would you describe ali? >> he represented the revolving door at work. he saw boeing as his customer and he would tell specialists in the office, leave it to boeing.

they know what to do. they know the processes. he went to the industry lobbying group and made a $300,000 a year salary and came back to faa and allowed the max to keep flying after the first crash. >> somebody like ali in the public agency. the ceo rises to the top. he was an engineer but suddenly he's a ceo and he has to have the group think of what corporate america tells him what to do which is to cut costs and squeeze suppliers and get rid of unions and that's what you have to do. then this whole management level at the faa seem to think their job was to help boeing the compete against airbus and to

champion american industry by certifying more quickly and giving boeing the ability to do it itself. you've got a lot of group think. what does boeing need to do to build and sell the aircraft their customers want rather than have them buy airbus? >> well, what boeing did at the time of the last triple 7 was to come up with a gang of 8 of customers who told it what they wanted. listen to customers. >> all right. didn't they write down on a napkin what we're going to do. >> we're going to have a plane from the beginning, everything, we deliver it and everything works. it was in very plain language on a napkin.

>> during the early days of the max certification, ffa engineers would say when i'm hauled in front of congress and they asked why they did it this way, i'll say because you told us to mr. congress. i guess you've already addressed that. any further company on that? in the excerpt of your book, you released a huge segment focused on explcit racism in the country. why do you think the previous public investigations failed to bring this culture to light? i'm not sure what that's

referring to. maybe the view of the foreign pilots in indonesia and so on. is that what it's getting at? >> it's getting at the idea there was perhaps, unconscious culture bias that pilot overseas were not as skilled as pilots in the u.s. i looked at, that's part of the book that looks at the response after the first crash. i talk to a man who lost five family members, his wife, three children and mother-in-law. he said he felt if the first crash had taken place in the u.s. or uk or canada where lives matter more than other places, his family would not have died. after the first crash they were seen as quote, mere indonesians.

there was a close meeting pilots had with top executives at boeing. the american pilots said this could have happened to us on a flight out of miami and we would have dropped a plane in biscayne and the american pilots said i think you know what i mean. the boeing executive answered, i do. >> is there a chance the u.s. eventually gets left behind in plane building by europe and then possibly china? >> there is, although it's been such a strong duopoly for so many years. there are many analysts who are skeptical of another airplane builder including china entering the market. china does have the advantage of having a huge market. the max is not flying in china yet. and it also has the advantage of having loaned a lot of money to

a lot of countries that can buy airplanes. so over time, that may change over the next 10 to 20 years. >> mm-hmm. here's a question about the move out of seattle. was moving work -- i guess not just moving the headquarters to chicago, but also moving work out of seattle, because they have done a lot of that, was moving work out of seattle solely about busting the union, do you think? >> it was -- i think the cfo at one point said it was to move to more cost effective areas of the -- to move to more cost effective areas. i think there were moments where moving the flight simulators to miami, to the pilots who experienced that, that did feel like a move to bust their union because it happened right in the middle of contract talks. >> yeah, and i think the choice

of south carolina in 2009 was directly triggered by the machinist strike in 2008. >> right. >> that enraged mcnerney. he wasn't going to put it in washington state after that. though it's pretty extraordinary that after we gave all the tax breaks, we now don't have the 87 built here at all. it's all in south carolina now. do you see any correlations with boeing's issues with military aircraft, either the p-8, which is based on the 737, or the kc-746 tanker? i guess the question must be, any correlations with the max problems in those airplanes? >> the evidence is showing it is a widespread cultural problem,

that the diminishing, the focus on engineering has happened across the company. >> mm-hmm. well, i don't know if i got a clear answer to this earlier, so i'm going to ask it again. do you think boeing can be saved? it's at a low point now. can it recover? can it recover its glory? can it recover quality with airbus? the dubai air show just finished yesterday. and it was a remarkable performance by airbus, full of confidence. and boeing had one max order and that was it and then came home. their executive said very little. so can boeing get out of this? >> i think with investments, it can. it's at a very low point, especially in the narrow body market where it's basically

a reversal of where it was 20 years ago. it was two-thirds boeing. now it's two-thirds airbus. in some parts of the market, it's -- with the a-321, it's got a 5-1 gap. so it would take a very focused effort. that's the best way of putting it. >> well, i think people in this region can only hope that that will happen. should boeing rename the max? >> it's the 737-8, right? >> i still call it the max. >> that's a marketing question. >> yeah. boeing isn't officially renaming it, and i think it would be pretty pointless, but some airlines are leaving the max out, if you climb onboard some of them. i think we're almost out of

questions or out of time. let me see, i'll ask one more. mullenberg met with the families. i think this was after the annual general meeting in october of 2019. but he -- where is it, they had no mediator or conflict resolution specialist at the meeting with the families. how do you think boeing handled, i'll just widen the question, how do you think boeing handled treating the families of the victims of those crashes? >> they didn't meet with them for a long time. i know that the family members felt they should have met with them earlier. what i have been told is that there was -- at that meeting,

for instance, one point of concern afterwards was that at least one family member felt dave calhoun in public had exaggerated the amount of time that was spent with the family members. so it's an incredibly difficult situation, but in that situation, they felt it was compounded by the exaggeration of the amount of sensitivity that boeing had shown. there was a memorial held afterwards which boeing arranged. it was held in ethiopia. to some of the family members i talked to, they felt as if it was a commemoration of the bp oil spill staged by bp. there was at one point one of the top -- there was concern that boeing would be at the service at all, and one of the

top boeing executives answered well, if we're paying for it, we'll be there. which again, was felt as insensitive. so those are some of the things i cover in the book. >> yeah, and actually, let me just ask one final question. kind of related to this is how boeing communicated with those families. what do you think of boeing's communication with us now and the world? i mean, the ceo hasn't given interviews publicly except to cnbc or people like jim cramer who are going to say you're wonderful. they don't talk to me, they don't talk to the press. they don't even let me ask questions at the earnings -- at the earnings calls anymore. not just me, no press. no press questions. it seems like they have really clamped down, and the excuse they have given is oh well, we're waiting until the regulators give the okay to the max, we don't want to get in the way.

but everyone has done it now except for the chinese, basically. and i am just kind of mystified by the communication strategy of the company at the moment. >> it's something i have never seen. i think almost unheard of for a company to not give regular press interviews. i think the reason is that they don't want him to put his foot in his mouth. there was -- i'm sure you saw the shareholder suit that the judge in that suit said that dave calhoun had lied in public about the board having met immediately after or soon after the lion air crash, each of his public recompensations was false, so i think it's shell-shock from the backlash. >> all right, look, i'm going to

leave it there. and first of all, peter's book, i think it's available widely at the end of this month, november 30th. but elliot bay book store has it right now and it's out in the hall. the seattle times will run an excerpt in the pacific northwest magazine on sunday, december 12th. but don't let that stop you from buying the book. i highly recommend it. anybody who is interested in boeing should read it. thank you very much for coming. >> thank you. weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. america's story and on sundays book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including charter

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