Boeing's New Problem Is Far From Its Crisis

Boeing's first crewed launch of its Starliner spacecraft on Monday was called off at the last minute, in what appeared to be the latest blow for the embattled company.

The launch was aborted because of a potential issue with the oxygen relief valve in the Atlas rocket, which is run by the United Launch Alliance, not an issue with the Starliner itself.

The aviation company has been dealing with a PR nightmare following a series of safety issues with its planes this year. There were 29 incidents, accidents and occurrences involving Boeing planes globally from January 1 to April 7, according to data available from the National Transportation Safety Board's online case analysis and reporting tool.

Despite Boeing's ongoing crisis, an aerospace expert told Newsweek that the scrubbed launch should not be conflated with issues with their airplanes.

"If you look back into the history of launch vehicles, there's also a long history of scrubbing launches for safety and other reasons. This is a normal thing that happens," said Ella Atkins, who is the head of the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech.

"It's not the case that this would be connected to Boeing's other problems, because this is a totally different team at Boeing. Boeing is a gigantic company, their commercial airplane business is quite separate from their launch vehicle business. Yes, they have the same CEO, but it's a different set of leaders top down that drive those business models," Atkins said.

A Boeing spokesperson pointed Newsweek to NASA's mission blog, which said the launch is now planned for "no earlier than 6:16 p.m. EDT, Friday, May 17."

Boeing's spacecraft launch, which has been years in the making, has faced multiple issues and delays, leading it to fall behind its competitor, Elon Musk's SpaceX.

In 2014, Boeing secured a $4.2-billion contract for its Starliner spacecraft, while SpaceX received $2.6 billion under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

However, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carried out its first crewed launch in 2020, while Boeing's first is yet to happen.

Musk criticized Boeing's launch in the hours before it was due to take place on Monday, pointing out in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that his company had carried out their first crewed launch years ago.

He added that he believed Boeing has "too many nontechnical managers," and also poked fun at Boeing whistleblowers, who have raised awareness about the company's practices in recent months.

Atkins pointed out to Newsweek that SpaceX, despite its successes, has also had its fair share of failures, and that it is unfair to hold Boeing to a different standard.

"Please be careful not to unfairly assume everybody at Boeing and everything that they do is more suspect than what other companies and people do," she said.

"Especially if there are people involved, we need to err on the side of safety, first and foremost. And delays often happen because we err on that side of safety."

Other analysts have noted that the stakes are high for Boeing, as it will want to secure a win following months of bad press.

"It's very important for [Boeing's] desire to be relevant to NASA, relevant to manned space flight and for confidence internally to turn around and execute a program that's had problems," Ken Herbert, a Boeing analyst at RBC Capital Markets, told science outlet Phys.org.

"This could be a big win for Boeing, if they can successfully pull this off, just in light of all the bad news they get from every other part of the business."

Last month, Boeing reported losses of $355 million in the first three months of the year, which was not as steep a loss as analysts had expected.

The company's CEO, Dave Calhoun, announced last month that he will step down at the end of the year following the safety issues.