Issues and Significance of Boeing 737 Max 8

This essay discusses the issues and significance of the Boeing 737 Max 8, including its impact on business and the actions taken by Boeing. Strategic analysis, identification of the issue, and responses are also evaluated.

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Introduction
In the current business scenario, there are different issues being emerged, which can have
huge adverse impact on the business operations. Moreover, these issues can get emerged from
different perspectives including operational, marketing and ethical dimensions. In the recent
time, one of the major issues being emerged is the number of crashes occurred involving the
Boeing 737 max 8 aircraft. Boeing is one of the top aircraft manufactures in the world with
having more than 40 percent of global market share and they are just behind the market leader,
Airbus (Napolitano et al. 2013). There are number of aircrafts models being sold by them and
Boeing 737 max 8 is the latest one, which is more focused on passenger comfort and fuel
efficiency. Based on the utilities of this new model, there are more than 1000 orders pending
with different airliners across the world. However, the latest few incidents of the crashed
involving this aircraft created huge stir in the market.
This essay will discuss about the issue that is being faced in terms of Boeing 737 max 8
along with its significance on their business. In addition, the actions or responses being initiated
by Boeing towards this issue will also be critically evaluated.
Strategic analysis
As per the reports, Boeing is the second largest aircraft manufactures in the world in
terms of market share. However, it should also be noted that Airbus is way ahead of Boeing only
in the single aisle aircraft market and in the wide body aircraft; Boeing is having the market
leadership position. Thus, it can be concluded that Boeing is the leading aircraft manufacturers in
the world (Mocenco 2015). However, the intense competition in this sector is also creating less
space of emergence of any issues such as this for Boeing.

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Identification of the issue
The first issue involved the Boeing 737 max 8 reported on 29th October, 2018, when the
Lion Air of Indonesia crashed just after taking off from Jakarta. It was perceived as a technical
snag of any forms but the recent plan crash of Ethiopian Airlines in the same manner and
involving same Boeing 737 max 8 models caused huge stir in the global airliner scenario. It
reported that both the cases are under investigations and it will be prematurity to conclude.
However, two aircraft crash in the last 6 months and that too involving the same models created
a negative publicity among the other users across the world (bbc.com 2019). It should also be
noted that apart from the damage in the reputation of the brand, this issue involving the Boeing
737 max 8 will have larger significance. This is due to the reason that Boeing 737 max 8 is the
latest and most improved iteration of their highly and commercially successful 737 family of
aircrafts (Taylor and Toh 2018). Thus, conclusion of technical or design issue with this aircraft
will prove the limitations for Boeing in developing new technologies. This will also create
negative impact on their other models and their long term potentiality.
Another major significance of this issue is the adverse impact on the pending orders of
Boeing 737 max 8. It is reported that currently Boeing is having backlog of more than 4000
orders of Boeing 737 max 8 with different airliners across the world and amplification of this
issue may put these orders on jeopardy as number of airliners are already considering the
cancellations. The backlog orders with Boeing are worth of $600 billion and this will affect
Boeing in huge (Xiaochuan et al. 2013). This issue will also have impact from the perspective of
the entire aircraft manufacturing industry also due to the fact that if a latest model such as
Boeing 737 max 8 is being discontinued for technical or design issue, then the entire
development process in this industry will face trust issues. Thus, it can be concluded that the

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entire aircraft manufacturing industry will face this issue to deal with. It is already reported that
the brand valuation got reduced by more than $25 billion within one week of the last crash. The
business viability of Boeing will be at stake for this issue.
Responses
There are different actions being initiated by different stakeholders against this issue. It is
reported that different governments including of the United States, China, India and some other
European countries already put the notice of grounding of all the Boeing 737 max 8 planes in the
country. Moreover, airliners using this model already started grounding of this model till further
notice. It is stated by Boeing that they are developing improved software following the crash of
Lion Air and this software will help in improving the maneuvering abilities of Boeing 737 max
8. However, after the fatal crash of Ethiopian Airlines, this statement of Boeing seems
ineffective. Moreover, the official statement of Boeing also states that they working with the
Federal Aviation Administration in investigating the issue and will cooperate in every way
possible (Schwin 2015). This can be concluded that the response as of now for Boeing is cliché
due to the reason that there are no steps of specific actions being named by them. Moreover,
what they have said will have impact in the long term rather than finding out the key causes for
the two fatal crashes. They have not stated about inspecting all the existing stock of Boeing 737
max 8 with different airliners to identify any potential snag.
Conclusion
This can be concluded that as of now, the response of Boeing towards this issue is not
effective and will also not have impact on the going trend. This is due to the reason that there is
no statement being given by them regarding the identification of snag. In this paper, it is also

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identified that this issue will have major significance on the business viability of Boeing in the
long term as well as adverse impact for the entire industry. Boeing will also face the challenge of
maintaining their market position after this incident.

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Reference
bbc.com. 2019. "Which Airlines Use The Boeing 737 Max 8?". BBC News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47523468.
Mocenco, Daniela. "Supply Chain Features of the Aerospace Industry. Particular Case Airbus
and Boeing." Scientific Bulletin-Economic Sciences 14, no. 2 (2015): 17-25.
Napolitano, Marcello, Younghwan An, Brad Seanor, Stelios Pispitsos, and David Martinelli.
"Application of a neural sensor validation scheme to actual Boeing 737 flight data." In Guidance,
Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit, p. 4236. 2013.
Schwinn, Dominik B. "Parametrised fuselage modelling to evaluate aircraft crash behaviour in
early design stages." International journal of crashworthiness 20, no. 5 (2015): 413-430.
Taylor, Ellis, and Mavis Toh. "Lion Air 737 Max 8 had'issues' before making fatal flight:
Indonesian investigators say aircraft was not airworthy and suffered sensor problems on four
occasions prior to crash." Flight International (2018).
Xiaochuan, Liu, Sun Xiasheng, Guo Jun, and Mou Rangke. "Crash simulation and drop test of
civil airplane fuselage section." In Proceedings 2013 International Conference on Mechatronic
Sciences, Electric Engineering and Computer (MEC), pp. 3017-3021. IEEE, 2013.