US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's plane was grounded in Switzerland after it suffered a "critical failure" related to an oxygen leak shortly after boarding.
Everyone was fine, and Blinken got another lift back to Washington following his cameo at Davos, the world's most insufferably wealthy summit of global leaders.
The drama of this story lies in the type of plane Blinken and Co. were set to fly on: A modified Boeing 737.
While the incident itself was relatively minor, it's Boeing's bad luck that it happened to occur on a plane packed with journalists and at least one VIP passenger at a time when the company's bestselling jet is under investigation, investors are fleeing and the press is reminding everyone of just how dysfunctional its management has been for the past decade-plus.
So, what happened to Boeing, the once mighty American manufacturer?
Aviation experts tend to point to the 1997 McDonnell Douglas merger as the beginning of the decline.
Before that, Boeing had built its brand on customer satisfaction and quality. "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going," was an actual motto on T-shirts and coffee mugs.
"For whatever reason, a lot of companies in Seattle had decided that if customers or employees come first, profits will follow," author and Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Peter Robison told New York Magazine in a 2021 interview. "And Boeing, at the time, was all about supporting customers in the field. They would have someone meet every landing of every new plane after they were delivered."
But with new managers post-merger came a new focus on the bottom line.
"At some point — and I feel like I watched it happen — after the McDonnell Douglas merger, there was a decision that shareholders come first," Robison told the magazine.
In his 2022 book on Boeing, Flying Blind, Robison describes a corporate culture so focused on pleasing shareholders above all else that it directly contributed to the 2018 and 2019 Max crashes, which killed 346 people.
What happens next in the Boeing saga isn't clear.
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded 170 Max 9 jets while it investigates why the door plug detached on the January 5 Alaska Airlines flight. The aircraft is banned from flying passengers until the investigation is complete.
On Wednesday, the FAA said it would expand its investigation to include Spirit AeroSystems, a contractor that builds the fuselage of the Boeing 737 Max 9. (My CNN colleagues have the latest on the investigation.)
Meanwhile, those investors that Boeing has been so keen on rewarding are expressing their displeasure. Boeing's stock is down nearly 20% since the January 5 incident, which shockingly didn't kill anyone because no passengers were seated by the door plug.
Of course, investors can take comfort in the fact that Boeing's latest crisis is not an existential threat. The company competes with only one other major plane manufacturer, Airbus, and both have a backlog of orders from airlines around the world. Airline customers have little choice about which plane they on, and there's almost no chance of any scrappy startups breaking into the industry and stealing the duopoly's market share.
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