Not just merged but McDonnell Douglass took over their management and slowly drove out the Boeing engineers who used to run it. MD planes were notoriously pasted together POS and it took them about 20 years for that design philosophy to completely takeover Boeing. We’re now seeing the results of that mismanagement in the most spectacular ways.
Imo Boeing should just be federalized at this point, they manufacturer so much for our gov already it would be justified to ensure safety of our military and space programs.
Wait til you hear about Cambodia…