Flight risk
Sky-high problems at Boeing
Good morning, captains of the clouds. This is your Stock Market Rundown for January 11th, 2024. Thanks for co-piloting with me. Let’s take off:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: ROUGH SKIES AHEAD
They say that every time a door closes, another one opens. But you don’t really expect it to do so in the middle of a cross-country flight.
A routine Alaska Airlines flight out of Portland turned into terror in the skies last week, when a door flew off at an altitude of 16,000 feet. Miraculously, none of the 171 passengers on board was hurt.
This wasn’t some worn-out wreck of a plane—the Boeing 737 Max that suffered the fuselage failure had only been in service for eight weeks. This is like the door flying off your brand new Kia while you’re cruising on the interstate.
Inspection of other 737 Max jets apparently uncovered “loose parts”. (I wouldn’t want a loose part on my office Aeron chair, much less the plane ferrying me from YYZ to LAX.) Now, airlines have grounded many 737 Max jets, waiting for regulators to give the green light to resume flights.
It’s just the latest in a string of scandals for Boeing. 737 Max planes were implicated in two catastrophic crashes in recent years. Boeing paid billions to settle a Justice Department probe into the deadly accidents, and admitted that employees misled regulators about the safety of the 737 Max.
Boeing’s market share in the narrowbody jet market trails rival Airbus, and it’s struggling under a $39 billion debt load. Did that pressure lead it to putting shareholder returns over safety? Maybe: investigations after the crashes revealed damning internal messages, such as an employee who quipped that the 737 was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Ouch.
If you happen to find yourself flying the friendly skies on a Boeing 737 any time soon, just remember: put your own oxygen mask on, before helping others. And keep your seatbelt securely fastened at all times.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
The boneheads at Comcast let a security vulnerability expose its network for nine days, allowing hackers to access password data of millions of customers. This is like leaving the keys in the ignition of your Audi when you park in the Best Buy parking lot… obviously somebody’s gonna take it for a joyride.
The Chinese government is cracking down on video games, which has Chinese-listed video game stocks plummeting. Apparently, authorities would rather see kids doing their math homework than leveling up in League of Legends.
As part of a restructuring push, Xerox is cutting 15% of its workforce, laying off thousands of employees. One day you're part of the machine; the next, you're just another paper jam they cleared out.
Love bubble tea, the trendy beverage with tapioca pearls? Now you can invest in it. Three of China’s top bubble tea makers are going public, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for expansion plans. Bubble tea is the only drink where chewing is encouraged… if you chew any other drink, people look at you weird.
Signing off for now, folks; let's continue our journey tomorrow morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe
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