A new book from a veteran aviation insider takes readers behind the curtain of one of the world’s most turbulent industries.
A new book from a veteran aviation insider takes readers behind the curtain of one of the world’s most turbulent industries, with insights into Boeing’s decline and struggles to return to prominence.
Scott Hamilton’s new memoir traces five decades of airline deals, disasters and high-stakes decisions.
The book "50 Years in Commercial Aviation, Memories and Inside Stories" revisits the chaos of deregulation, airline collapses after 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
For readers in the Pacific Northwest, the most compelling chapters may be about Boeing.
Hamilton argues that the company’s push for shareholder value, as well as its reliance on updated jets instead of all-new airplanes, helped set the stage for its modern crises.
“Boeing had shifted its focus from being an engineering company to, as I put it, priorities that were shareholder value, shareholder value, shareholder value,” Hamilton said in an interview with KOMO News. “Everything else came after that.”
Hamilton believes that strategic failure helped shift the balance of power in commercial aviation and opened the door for Airbus. Boeing's struggle to launch all-new aircraft and the long shadow cast by the 787 and 737 MAX crises were low points, but Hamilton said the company is seeing a turnaround under CEO Kelly Ortberg.
“Kelly Ortberg is making progress, but he essentially has nearly 30 years of screw-ups to unravel, and it’s going to take more than two years or three years or four years for him to do that,” Hamilton said.
Airplane production levels are creeping up, helped along by the recently launched north line in Everett for the 737 MAX. Customer confidence has also returned.
“The customers, the airlines and the leasing companies that take delivery of the airplanes are now praising the quality of the finished product that comes out of the factory,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton’s book provides context for the latest round of contract negotiations between Boeing and SPEEA, the company's engineers and technicians union. SPEEA, which stands for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, rejected the initial offer.
“Part of that is because they looked at the IAM (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) contract, which was a richer contract than what was agreed to in July with SPEEA. And there was still about 10 years’ worth of resentment from outsourcing, and the war on SPEEA, the war on the IAM,” Hamilton said. “I really think that they will reach an agreement. Neither side wants to have a strike.”
Hamilton’s book offers an especially timely view from a longtime aviation journalist, consultant and former airline employee who has spent decades watching the industry’s power centers up close.
“Because it's a breezier writing style and I can tell anecdotes more than I would in historical books, I'm hoping people will get a little bit more of a smile out of this one,” Hamilton said.
"50 Years in Commercial Aviation: Memories and Inside Stories" is a highly personal account of the airline industry from someone who was there for many of its defining moments. It is available through Amazon.
