What is Boeing

The Boeing Company was started in 1916, when American lumber industrialist William E. Boeing founded Aero Products Company in Seattle, Washington. Shortly before doing so, he and Conrad Westervelt created the “B&W” seaplane. In 1917, the organization was renamed Boeing Airplane Company, with William Boeing forming Boeing Airplane & Transport Corporation in 1928.^[14] In 1929, the company was renamed United Aircraft and Transport Corporation, followed by the acquisition of several aircraft makers such as Avion, Chance Vought, Sikorsky Aviation, Stearman Aircraft, Pratt & Whitney, and Hamilton Metalplane. In 1931, the group merged its four smaller airlines into United Airlines. In 1934, the manufacture of aircraft was required to be separate from air transportation. Therefore, Boeing Airplane Company became one of three organizations to arise from the dissolution of United Aircraft and Transport; the other two groups were United Aircraft and United Airlines. In 1960, the company bought Vertol Corporation, which at the time, was the biggest independent fabrication of helicopters. During the 1960s and 1970s, the company diversified into industries such as outer space travel, marine craft, agriculture, energy production and transit systems. In 1995, Boeing partnered with Russian, Ukrainian and Anglo-Norwegian organizations to create Sea Launch, a company providing commercial launch services sending satellites to geostationary orbit from floating platforms. In 2000, Boeing acquired the satellite segment of Hughes Electronics. Corporate headquarters were moved from Seattle to Chicago in 2001. After two fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX narrow-body passenger airplanes in 2018 and 2019, aviation regulators and airlines around the world grounded all 737 MAX airliners. A total of 387 aircraft were grounded. Boeing’s reputation, business, and financial rating has suffered after these groundings, questioning Boeing’s strategy, governance, and focus on profits and cost efficiency. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 5, 2019 that Boeing had known of the issue with the system for “about a year” before the crash in Indonesia. In December 2019, Boeing announced it will suspend 737 MAX production from January 2020. Soon after, on December 23, then CEO Dennis Muilenburg resigned and was replaced by David Calhoun.