Boeing to Temporarily Shut Down 737 Max Production
By David Gelles and Natalie Kitroeff
Dec. 16, 2019
Halting production of the plane will most likely hurt parts suppliers and could have a broader effect on the American economy.
Boeing will temporarily stop making the 737 Max, its most popular passenger jet. The decision is the culmination of the worst crisis in the company’s 103-year history and follows two crashes that killed 346 people. Boeing had repeatedly signaled that the plane would be cleared to return to the sky before the end of the year.
Boeing’s decision could ripple through the American economy. The company is America’s largest manufacturing exporter and it views the 737 Max as critical to its future.
“It will have enormous ripple effects,” said Susan Houseman, director of research for the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “It will have very real effects on many people’s lives, and it’s never good for this to happen right before the holidays.”
Boeing said it intended to redeploy the roughly 12,000 workers building the Max in its factory in Renton, Wash., to other projects, avoiding layoffs or furloughs for the time being.
It will try to manage the disruption to suppliers, though it did not give details. It may continue to accept parts from major suppliers, so that when the company restarts the Max line production can be quickly ramped up. Other suppliers are likely to endure significant financial pain if Boeing’s shutdown halts part of their assembly line for a period of months.
Eexplain which one of the six decision rules (Utilitarianism, Rights, Justice, Objectivism, Integrative Social Contract Theory or Ethic of Care) that people use to make ethical decisions appears to have been used in this situation, and why.