Transcript of the above video: 

I have got to be honest with you, I am hesitant to make this video. I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, or right outside of Wichita, Kansas and Boeing was a big deal growing up. It employed a lot of folks where I was from, and it was a great company when I was growing up. Well, it's not so great now, quite frankly. I remember I went to Russia in 1999 with my late uncle and my aunt and it was like a running joke amongst the Americans - we flew in Delta I think - and it was a running joke in '99 amongst the Americans, Aeroflot. There used to be jokes like, "You know what happens when they land an Aeroflot? Everybody in the passenger corridor claps." Little jokes like that because at the time, it was viewed as they were sort of sub-par and they had problems and things. Well you know, candidly times they have changed and boy oh boy, never say never and never make fun of somebody for something and think it'll never happen to you. 

This article I am going to cite is sort of the culmination of I believe at this point 4 or 5 incidents in just the past I think 7 to 10 days involving a Boeing having some sort of significant problems associated with mechanical failure, all kinds of things that we have been hearing about and causing all sorts of problems. Again, I'm not, I'm hesitant to make this video. I remember the time when the name Boeing was nearly sacred, especially in Wichita. The people that worked there, they provided really good jobs but it was also a time when they cared about quality as much as they cared about making some money. And somehow they kind of got sucked - there's some documentaries about this out there and I don't want to go to deep into that - but they kind of got sucked into being overly driven by profits it seems like and they stopped really looking at the fact that, "hey at the end of the day, we need to make a high quality aircraft because oh, I don't know people fly on these things, and we don't want bad things to happen to them." 

That said, I thought of making this video, again it's sort of the culmination or amalgam if you will of like 5 or 4 different reports I've been reading over the past week, but this is from simpleflying.com, the article is titled: Another United Airlines Boeing 757-300 Mechanical Issue Prompts Return to Los Angeles. Quoting directly: "A United Airlines trans-pacific flight to Hawaii was recently diverted to his airport of origin due to a technical glitch with the aircraft. The flight was on a Boeing 757 plane, which is over 20 years old. While United's 757 fleet continues to reliably transport passengers across the US and on international flights, the carrier will gradually phase them out in the coming years, replacing them with new-generation narrowbody planes."

Well first off and the thing to note, it hasn't been the 757 that primarily has been having issues - and it sounds like this was a relatively minor thing - it's my understanding it has been the 737 that's been a real problem. A point though I think is worth noting, quoting this again: "While United's 757 fleet continues to reliably transport passengers across the US and on International flights, the carrier will gradually phase them out in coming years." Why? It works. All this “new tech” that you keep rolling out ain't so great, like we have seen discussion - again I'll call them allegations because I haven't seen anything to back it up - but there's some allegation that with like the software associated with the 737 they were outsourcing the coding for super cheap. Okay all this new great tech, well if the 757 is working, it's one of those 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it or why try to fix it'. I question the need to do this. 

Again, I'm not trying to make this video to just completely like denigrate Boeing but at a certain point like that recent Congressional hearing, I think it was Tom Cotton maybe who really got the CEO of Boeing on the hot seat and actually said, "I think you need to resign", and I kind of agree with him based on their track record up to that point. I would like to know what they think having come off this half dozen or so situations involving technical failures associated with Boeing. Again, this is important stuff; it's important to know from a travel standpoint. I have got to be honest with you, as a good old Wichita boy I'm sitting there thinking to myself, 'hey maybe I want to fly an Airbus back to the United States next time I go back.' I mean again it's just reasonable reactions to this stuff. 

Hopefully, I really hope in 2025 Boeing will get its act together and turn this thing around because again this is a real problem and I can see it becoming a real problem for Boeing as the days and weeks drag on, as folks say "hey maybe we are going to buy our next tranche of planes from someplace else".