Summary of Peter Robison's Flying Blind

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 Boeing’s president, William Allen, was a board member for fifteen years before becoming president in 1945. He never traveled without Triscuits and two pairs of eyeglasses.

#2 Boeing was just one of many airplane manufacturers in a business that was dominated by strong-willed founders. The young companies were controlled by dominant, strong-willed founders like Donald Douglas in Los Angeles, Glenn Martin in Baltimore, and James McDonnell in St. Louis.

#3 The vertically integrated juggernaut was not to be. Airmail contracts became an early target of President Franklin Roosevelt’s new Democratic administration in 1933, and congressional investigators probed allegations of collusion in awarding them.

#4 The British plane maker De Havilland thought it had the right combination. The maker of a celebrated World War II propeller-driven bomber called the Mosquito, De Havilland was already building the world’s first commercial jetliner. But the public was not willing to accept so many fatalities in case of an accident.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669357537

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights on Peter Robison's Flying Blind

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Boeing’s president, William Allen, was a board member for fifteen years before becoming president in 1945. He never traveled without Triscuits and two pairs of eyeglasses.

#2

Boeing was just one of many airplane manufacturers in a business that was dominated by strong-willed founders. The young companies were controlled by dominant, strong-willed founders like Donald Douglas in Los Angeles, Glenn Martin in Baltimore, and James McDonnell in St. Louis.

#3

The vertically integrated juggernaut was not to be. Airmail contracts became an early target of President Franklin Roosevelt’s new Democratic administration in 1933, and congressional investigators probed allegations of collusion in awarding them.

#4

The British plane maker De Havilland thought it had the right combination. The maker of a celebrated World War II propeller-driven bomber called the Mosquito, De Havilland was already building the world’s first commercial jetliner. But the public was not willing to accept so many fatalities in case of an accident.

#5

The task of testing the new Dash 80 was given to a onetime barnstormer from Kansas named Alvin Tex Johnston. He got his nickname in the 1940s when he showed up in cowboy boots for a job with Bell Aircraft in Niagara Falls, New York.

#6

The jet age had begun. In those days, the leaders of airlines and the makers of aircraft saw themselves as standing at the gates of El Dorado, a term used by John Newhouse in his book The Sporty Game to describe the era’s optimism.

#7

Boeing was also competing with Douglas, which was releasing its own planes. The company needed to match them, so