Emran Emon

On June 12, 2025, the skies over central India bore witness to another aviation tragedy. An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, minutes after takeoff, suffered a catastrophic technical failure and crashed, claiming the lives of at least 242 passengers. As investigations unfold, the world is once again asking a difficult question: What is happening to Boeing?

This is not an isolated incident. Over the past decade, Boeing—a brand once synonymous with American engineering excellence and safety—has found itself repeatedly under the microscope for fatal crashes, technical malfunctions, and troubling lapses in quality control. From the 737 MAX disasters in 2018 and 2019 to multiple whistleblower accounts in the years since, the company’s public image has shifted from a paragon of reliability to a cautionary tale in corporate mismanagement.

In this context, questions are being raised not only about Boeing’s leadership but also about its global workforce strategy, particularly the increasing reliance on overseas engineering and software labor in countries like India, China, and parts of Southeast Asia. However, it is critical to approach these issues with nuance. The goal must be to examine systems, structures, and cultures—not to scapegoat specific nationalities or communities.

To understand Boeing’s decline, one must first look inward—not at geography, but at internal philosophy. In its golden years, Boeing was led largely by engineers. Technical excellence was not only a goal but a guiding principle. Then came a decisive shift in the 1990s and 2000s: the ascendancy of financial executives, many from McDonnell Douglas after the 1997 merger, changed Boeing’s priorities.

As veteran aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia has noted, the shift was “from engineering-driven to finance-driven culture.” Shareholder value, quarterly profits, and stock buybacks began to dominate over design integrity, maintenance reliability, and rigorous testing.

This shift culminated in the development and rushed certification of the 737 MAX. The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a new flight control software, was introduced without adequately training pilots or informing airlines of its behavior. The result? Two catastrophic crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.

While outsourcing and offshoring played roles in these developments, the root cause lies squarely in corporate decision-making. That said, it would be a mistake to ignore the implications of outsourcing highly sensitive aerospace work to countries where oversight, training, and safety culture may not match those of the U.S. or Europe.

A 2019 Bloomberg investigation found that Boeing had outsourced critical software development for the 737 MAX to engineers in India earning as little as $9 an hour. These engineers were employed by third-party firms like HCL and Cyient. While cost-cutting was the primary driver, the report suggested that these subcontractors often had little knowledge of Boeing’s core systems and were under pressure to deliver code rapidly, leading to quality concerns.

Former Boeing engineers interviewed for the article said that they were repeatedly forced to fix “embarrassingly bad code” coming from offshore contractors. One senior engineer stated, “It was not the kind of work you’d expect for a $100 million plane.”

However, the failure here is not cultural. The failure is managerial. Boeing chose to value short-term savings over long-term safety by replacing experienced in-house engineers with lower-cost, third-party labor—without ensuring adequate training, integration, or quality control.

This is where the outsourcing debate becomes meaningful: not in questioning the ‘nationality’ of workers, but in interrogating the ‘systems’ by which they are recruited, trained, managed, and held accountable.

Let’s be clear: Indian engineers—just like American, European, Chinese, or Bangladeshi engineers—are not inherently better or worse. Their performance is shaped by education, professional development, company culture, and leadership.

What becomes dangerous is when companies like Boeing treat overseas workers as cost centers rather than as equal partners in mission-critical processes. This is the “global labor model” where intellectual labor is disaggregated and commodified, with engineering in Bangalore, testing in Shanghai, and final assembly in Seattle—all coordinated through time zones and cost spreadsheets.

This fragmented model is vulnerable to:

• Communication breakdowns

• Mismatched safety standards

• Delayed feedback loops

• Lack of ownership

Moreover, engineers working under third-party vendors may feel detached from the consequences of their work. Unlike Boeing’s legacy engineers, who lived and breathed aircraft integrity, many contractors see themselves as service providers with no say in design decisions. Thus, it’s not about who the engineers are; it’s about how much agency and integration they are given. Responsibility without authority is a recipe for disaster.

In aviation industry, safety cannot be allowed to differ across locations. Boeing’s greatest challenge now is not nationality, but standardization. It must adopt a unified, global safety culture where:

• Every engineer—regardless of country—follows the same protocols

• Every team has clear accountability and shared documentation

• Quality assurance is rigorous and not subject to cost-cutting

• Training and simulation are standardized across geographies

• Leadership values technical concerns over managerial expediency

If engineers in Hyderabad or Dhaka are working on the same systems as those in Seattle, Chicago or Virginia, they must be part of the same knowledge and quality ecosystem. There can be no “first-class” and “second-class” engineering tiers based on geography.

Some research shows that Boeing and similar firms engage in a new form of colonialism—extracting cheap intellectual labor from the Global South without offering the institutional infrastructure, empowerment, or working conditions necessary to uphold world-class safety standards. This isn’t just bad ethics—it’s bad business. And it is this model—not the nationality of workers—that needs to be dismantled and replaced with a truly integrated, accountable global engineering culture.

In the wake of the June 12, 2025 crash in India, Boeing and its airline partners must take urgent action. A few constructive steps include:

Reinvest in Core Engineering: Boeing must rebuild its internal technical teams and reduce overdependence on external contractors—regardless of location.

Audit and Overhaul Vendor Chains: The company must implement strict compliance audits for all third-party engineering firms, ensuring they follow the same safety protocols as in-house teams.

Safety Before Stock Price: Boeing’s board must adopt safety performance metrics as key executive performance indicators—on par with profit.

Transparency with Regulators: The FAA and international regulators must regain full oversight of certification processes and remove any loopholes allowing self-certification.

Cross-cultural Engineering Exchange: Boeing should promote rotation programs where engineers from India, Bangladesh, the U.S., and Europe work side-by-side, fostering shared values and standards.

The tragedy of the Air India Boeing crash is not a verdict on any nationality—it is a verdict on a corporate culture that lost sight of its core mission. Accountability, integrity, and excellence in engineering are universal virtues. When Boeing—or any aviation company—fails to uphold them across borders, the sky becomes more dangerous for everyone. It’s high time Boeing remembered that an aircraft isn’t just a feat of engineering. It’s a vessel of trust. And trust cannot be outsourced.

The writer is a journalist, columnist and global affairs analyst. He can be reached at emoncolumnist@gmail.com