Boeing

"IN SEPTEMBER ’86, in the opulent Revlon offices where he and “the Drexels” had arrived as hated interlopers and dropped ashes on Bergerac’s Persian rugs, Perelman now seemed at home. He and Drapkin had liked calling attention to Bergerac’s excesses, particularly the Boeing 727 outfitted with a gun rack for his safaris, and the Revlon offices in Paris which Perelman described as a “castle.” Now the company leased its corporate jet from a Perelman aircraft-leasing company. And now that the “castle” was his Paris headquarters, Perelman had decided not to sell it, after all. He was having the New York offices redecorated. And James, Bergerac’s butler, was now serving Perelman."

"IN SEPTEMBER ’86, in the opulent Revlon offices where he and “the Drexels” had arrived as hated interlopers and dropped ashes on Bergerac’s Persian rugs, Perelman now seemed at home. He and Drapkin had liked calling attention to Bergerac’s excesses, particularly the Boeing 727 outfitted with a gun rack for his safaris, and the Revlon offices in Paris which Perelman described as a “castle.” Now the company leased its corporate jet from a Perelman aircraft-leasing company. And now that the “castle” was his Paris headquarters, Perelman had decided not to sell it, after all. He was having the New York offices redecorated. And James, Bergerac’s butler, was now serving Perelman."

"Branson also precisely replicated Kirk Kerkorian’s policy of “keeping the back door open” in acquiring aircraft. The deal for the air¬ line’s first Boeing 747 allowed him to sell the plane back to the manufac¬ turer at nearly the original price if Virgin failed."

"Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua, China’s top science university. For his third term as the Communist Party’s general secretary starting in 2022, Xi filled the Politburo with executives from the country’s aerospace and weapons ministries. In the United States, it would be as if the CEO of Boeing became the governor of Alaska, the chief of Lockheed Martin became the secretary of energy, and the head of NASA was governor of a state as large as Georgia. China’s ruling elites have practical experience managing megaprojects, suggesting that China is doubling down on engineers—and prioritizing defense—more than ever."

"Most forms of low-end manufacturing aren’t as bad as that, but the United States was just as willing to let them go, with little understanding of how much it would hurt the country. It’s hard, I admit, to draw a straight line between the loss of, for example, television manufacturing in the United States through the 1980s to the stumbles by Boeing and Intel over the past decade. But if we think about technology ecosystems as communities of engineering practice, it makes sense that factory closures accelerated as process knowledge dissolved, prompting production problems and more job losses. And it also makes sense that Chinese workers went from merely assembling iPhones to producing some of their most valuable components as well. As one country lost its process knowledge, the other gained whole industries."

"Many of the United States’ most storied companies have been ailing. Detroit’s automakers, having limped along for decades, are now stumbling through the transition to electric vehicles. US Steel, General Electric, and IBM are shadows of their past selves. Intel, mired in cycles of blown product timelines and layoffs, went from a semiconductor trailblazer to a clear laggard behind Taiwan’s TSMC. After two of Boeing’s 737 MAX jets crashed in 2017, the company promised strenuous efforts to guarantee the safety of its aircraft. Then a door blew off midair in 2024. Boeing, like Intel, is constantly delaying the launch of long-planned products."

"Khashoggi had made his fortune mainly by collecting agent's commissions from aircraft and arms manufacturers who sold their products to Saudi Arabia. So Khashoggi’s agenda was to sell more Boeing airplanes or missiles to Saudi Arabia. Munk was concerned about the potential repercussions: “If his king or the defence minister of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia leaned on him, and said, I'll give you the contract for this jet or for these missiles, Adnan, but we know you control this big hotel company in Australia because you've got this large position in it, so would you just like to do me a favour and make them put up two hotels here in my country?—SPP could have gone bankrupt with Khashoggi in control. With us in control, he could say, Well, Peter Munk will get us out of the problem. He will build two hotels, sir, to get me the contract.” Munk refused to put himself and SPP in that position."

"Aviaco, Craig Dobbin believed, would open exciting new opportunities. He saw the company as a way to exploit his widening circle of contacts in and around the aviation business, and as the source of a potentially massive cash flow from long-term leases. Unfortunately, Aviaco never succeeded in cashing in on its inaugural deal, the one sending the Dash 8s to the Bahamas. At the time the deal was settled, de Havilland was owned by Boeing, the Seattle-based aircraft giant. In Dobbin’s view, Boeing reviewed the Aviaco/Bahamasair deal and decided to cut out the middleman—in this case Aviaco and Dobbin—arranging a direct sale between Boeing and Bahamasair for brand-new aircraft. That alone might have launched a civil suit against Bahamasair, but Dobbin charged that Boeing and de Havilland officials had retained Duncan Rapier, through Miami-based Sovereign Aircraft Ltd., as a “consultant” to close the deal."

"Pilots of fixed-wing aircraft often show disdain for helicopters; to them, a helicopter is essentially unstable (which it is) and decidedly more dangerous to fly (which it is not). Aside from the risk of total structural failure, which is rare, both types of aircraft are safest while travelling at cruising speed and altitude. The majority of incidents occur during takeoff and landing, procedures that a working helicopter may carry out far more frequently in a given time period than a scheduled fixed-wing aircraft. A Boeing 737, for example, may complete one takeoff and landing cycle every ten hours, and a long-distance Boeing 767 or Airbus 4340 might do two cycles every twenty-four hours. In contrast, working helicopters routinely perform a full takeoff and landing cycle every five or six minutes."

"CRAIG DOBBIN PLAYED hard and fair, at least as fair as was necessary to win the game. Hiding aircraft from Steve Hudson, failing to make lease payments on his helicopters for several months and dodging lien-happy bankers were necessary tactics for an entrepreneur building a global business from scratch. In his heart, however, Dobbin believed he never engaged in disreputable activities such as backroom deals that undercut your partners or put greed ahead of ethics and principle. That’s why few events in his business career disturbed him more than his civil suit against the giant Boeing aircraft company, which charged that Boeing had engaged in exactly those unethical acts."

"Can Michelin for that matter celebrate? Not at all. In 1976, François Michelin told his shareholders that his operations in the United States would bring profits within two or three years. “I am,” he said, “in the same situation as Boeing at the end of the fifties when Lockheed was raking in profits but Boeing had machines ready to roll out in its hangars.” In the early eighties, profits were still awaited (the MTC likely lost about fifty million dollars in 1980)."

"‘It’s the best business since the shopping centres,’ Bill Rayner would say later. Neville Owen agrees. ‘Caterpillar is one of the world’s great survivor US brands — better than Boeing, Harley or Levis,’ he declares. Stokes had picked up what would become one of the best Cat franchises in the world, and would eventually add two more. He would be far better known for media ventures, but the union with Caterpillar would be his greatest business move."