On 5th January, the unused cabin door of a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane fell off mid-air, causing a stir across the aviation industry. Though no passenger on the Alaska Airlines plane was seriously injured, the incident sparked debate over safety on the Boeing planes. As the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the grounding of most Boeing 727 Max 9 aircraft for inspection, a separate debate about the company has been going on social media.
It has come to light that for the past two years, Boeing has been making changes in the company to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
For those unaware, DEI is an umbrella term for policies, strategies, programs, and practices implemented by a company in its mission to create a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment to accommodate the employees’ ethnicity and sexual orientation. Billionaire Elon Musk and Project 21 Chairman Horace Cooper are among those who openly criticised Boeing for prioritising diversity over security.
In a series of tweets on social media platform X, Musk suggested that the focus on diversity hiring could impact air travel safety.
In one of the posts, Musk wrote, “Do you want to fly in an aeroplane where they prioritised DEI hiring over your safety? That is happening.” Musk was quoting an X user, James Lindsay, who posted a portion of Boeing’s annual incentive plan for 2022 that talked about adding DEI as focus areas for deciding employee incentives. DEI was not part of the company’s plan in 2021.
Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening. https://t.co/FcTyzZD0uW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2024
Upon further research, and Fox News’ Laura Ingraham mentioned it on “The Ingraham Angle”, it came to light that Boeing had set a goal to achieve diverse interview slates for at least 90% of manager and executive openings. The company’s annual GEDI report suggested that they exceeded the target, with 92% of interviews slated being diverse. It resulted in a notable 47% diverse hires at the management and executive levels. The company has further increased the bar, expecting 92.5% of the interview slates to be diverse.
The report further suggested that there has been a spike in employees of different ethnic groups while White representation has decreased by 3%. Interestingly, Boeing was never a “White” company. The diversity among the employees was always there. However, since the pro-DEI movements in the US, it appears that the company has decided to focus more on the race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation rather than hiring the best candidate.
Boeing has already admitted to the “mistake” that led to the recent incident. On 9th January, Boeing’s president and chief executive, Dave Calhoun, said the company acknowledged the mistake. He said, “We’re going to approach this number one, acknowledging our mistake. We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.” He added that the company would work with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to investigate the matter and find out the cause of the accident.
Over 170 Boeing 737 Max-9s were grounded globally following the mishap where a door was blown off mid-air in an Alaska Airlines flight.
An Alaska Airlines flight was forced to return to Portland International Airport after a section of the fuselage suddenly blew out of the plane Friday evening with a big boom and a rush of air through a gaping hole.https://t.co/GxzCvAsNqD pic.twitter.com/WgAYEXqXTA
— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) January 6, 2024
According to a BBC report, United Airlines found during the inspection that there were installation issues with the door. The company said, “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug – for example, bolts that needed additional tightening.” Notably, most aircraft in question are operated by either United Airlines or Alaska Airlines.
However, it is too early to reach a conclusion on what could be the reason behind the issue with the aircraft. The Boeing 737 Max 9 involved in the recent incident was delivered to Alaska Airlines in October 2023. It was in service for only eight weeks. Following the incident, 170+ planes have already been grounded, leading to cancellations of several flights. Boeing is not new to controversies over safety concerns. Following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, the 737 Max series was grounded for around two years.
