Carmela McKellar

Stranded astronauts In June, Boeing finally launched a crewed mission with its Starliner spacecraft, taking NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station. The mission was long overdue, after years of development and test flight problems left it far behind rival SpaceX in carrying astronauts to the ISS.But the success proved short-lived: Soon after the Starliner’s arrival, kraken marketplace NASA disclosed that helium leaks and thruster outages meant it wasn’t safe for the spacecraft to return the two astronauts to Earth after eight days as originally planned. The Starliner eventually returned to Earth without anyone aboard, and Wilmore and Williams are still waiting for a ride home on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft sometime in early 2025. When Boeing’s Starliner will again be able carry astronauts and fulfill the company’s contract with NASA remains unknown. Crippling strike In September, 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists started a strike that halted production of the 737 Max and the company’s freighter aircraft. Union members had voted nearly unanimously to reject a tentative agreement that had been reached between the company and union leadership about a week earlier. Many union members were still angry over the loss of a traditional pension plan 10 years earlier, and they stayed on strike nearly two months. They rejected a subsequent offer before finally voting in favor of a third offer that gave them an immediate raise of 13% and raises of 9% for each of the next two years and then another 7% in the fourth and final year of the contract. Combined, that raised hourly pay by 43% over the life of the contract. Beyond the cost of the new labor deal, the work stoppage was the most costly American strike of the 21st century, costing the company, its workers and its suppliers more than $11.5 billion, according to Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm with expertise in estimating the cost of work stoppages. experts. And it took Boeing about a month to resume production once the strike ended. During the strike, Boeing announced it would be forced to cut 10% of its global workforce of 171,000 employees in a cost-saving move to limit losses going forward.