Is this the year that Boeing turns itself around?

By Simon Wright, Industry editor, The Economist

Little has gone right for Boeing in 2024. The year started with a mid-flight blowout of a panel from the fuselage of a 737 max passenger jet. There were no serious injuries, except those added to Boeing’s reputation, just as it seemed to be recovering from two fatal crashes involving the same model of aircraft six years ago. The firm’s competence was put in question again in September when malfunctioning software meant that Starliner, a capsule designed to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, was forced to return to Earth empty. That left two spacefarers stranded in orbit awaiting a lift home in a craft from SpaceX, Boeing’s biggest rocketry rival. Then a strike by 33,000 workers halted production of most planes for nearly eight weeks.