Summary of Peter Robison's Flying Blind

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #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.