Boeing in ‘last chance saloon’, warns Emirates head

The head of Emirates Airline has warned Boeing was in the “last chance saloon” as he prepared to send his own engineers to oversee the plane maker’s production lines after witnessing a long decline in its manufacturing performance. Sir Tim Clark said he had seen a “progressive decline” in Boeing’s standards, which he put down to long-running management and governance mis-steps, including prioritising financial performance over engineering excellence. Clark, who has held senior roles at Emirates since the 1980s and has been president since 2003, is one of the most high-profile figures in aviation. His comments add to the mounting problems for the US plane maker following the mid-flight blowout of a section of the fuselage on a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft last month. Emirates is one of Boeing’s biggest customers, and in November placed an order for 95 wide-body Boeing 777 and 787 jets, used for long-haul flights, valued at $52b at list prices. “They have got to instil this safety culture which is second to none. They’ve got to get their manufacturing processes under review so there are no corners cut etc. I’m sure [CE] Dave Calhoun and [commercial head] Stan Deal are on that . . . this is the last chance saloon,” he said. Clark said that the airline would for the first time send its own engineers to observe the production process of the 777 at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems. “The fact that we’re having to do that is testament to what has happened. This would not have been sanctioned in the old days. You know, we trusted these people implicitly to get it done,” he said. Clark has regularly criticised manufacturers for delays in deliveries or poor reliability, but his comments represent his most pointed criticism yet of Boeing. Boeing declined to comment on Clark’s remarks but pointed to Calhoun’s message to employees earlier in the week in which he said “now is not the time” to share financial or operational objectives. <br/>