Flying Blind

Flying Blind

The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing

Summary

'The astoundingly well reported and beautifully told story of the downfall of what was once a great American company. A must-read' Bethany McLean, bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room

'Compelling and richly reported, Flying Blind is about so much more than the sad decline of Boeing and the tragic mistakes that led to the 737 Max disaster. It's also the urgent story of how the almighty profit motive supplanted a culture of engineering excellence in boardrooms across America' Brad Stone, bestselling author of The Everything Store

The definitive exposé of how Boeing put profit before passengers, leading to the devastating loss of life in the 737 MAX crashes and the downfall of an American business giant

In examining the history of the 737, Flying Blind explores how Boeing's new management degraded a highly-regarded plane with cost-focused mandates and skimped on testing in the race to match a competing plane from Airbus. How Boeing outsourced software work to poorly paid graduates in India and convinced the US Federal Aviation Authority to put the MAX into service without requiring pilots to undergo simulator training, and how ultimately these failures resulted in the deaths of 346 Boeing passengers.

Framed around the 737 MAX crashes, Flying Blind is the definitive exposé that for the first time tells the larger, decades-long story of how a corrupt corporate culture paved the way for a cataclysm that cost lives.

'Vividly written and meticulously researched, Flying Blind is a story everyone - every consumer, every citizen, every worker in every industry - needs to read'
Diana B. Henriques, New York Times bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust

'A gripping narrative and required reading for anyone who wants to understand how one of America's mightiest corporations veered so badly off course'
Sheelah Kolhatkar, New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of Black Edge

Reviews

  • Vividly written and meticulously researched, Flying Blind is a story everyone - every consumer, every citizen, every worker in every industry - needs to read.
    Diana B. Henriques, New York Times bestselling author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust

About the author

Peter Robison

Peter Robison is an investigative journalist for Bloomberg News. He has reported from the U.S., Europe and Asia, and his work has appeared frequently in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. He is a recipient of a Gerald Loeb Award, the Overseas Press Club of America's Malcolm Forbes Award and four Best in Business awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Robison has an honors degree in history from Stanford University, where he was an editor of The Stanford Daily newspaper. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two sons.
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