Following are edited excerpts from
a current NPR news report:
WASHINGTON — Concerns about quality control at Boeing are mounting, as new revelations from an alleged whistleblower suggest mistakes at the company's factory led to a fuselage panel blowing off an Alaska Airlines jet in midair earlier this month. The incident has renewed questions about Boeing's manufacturing processes, and whether the company is prioritizing speed and profit over safety.
Now a self-described Boeing employee claims to have details about how the door plug on that Boeing 737 Max 9 was improperly installed. Those new details, which were first reported by the Seattle Times, were published in a post on an aviation website last week.
"The reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeing's own records," wrote the whistleblower, who appears to have access to the company's manufacturing records. "It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business."
According to the whistleblower's account, four bolts that are supposed to hold the door plug in place "were not installed when Boeing delivered the plane, our own records reflect this."
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board have already raised the possibility that the bolts were not installed. The NTSB is still investigating the incident. If the whistleblower's description is accurate, investigators may be able to confirm it by looking at Boeing's records.
Boeing declined to comment on the whistleblower allegations, citing the ongoing investigation, but this person's explanation of problems in the manufacturing process that led to the door plug blowout seem credible to Ed Pierson, a former senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton, Wash.
"It definitely seemed accurate to me," said Pierson, who now directs the non-profit Foundation for Aviation Safety. "And it doesn't surprise me, because this is the kind of stuff that we had seen, I had seen in the past." "This is symptomatic of what happens when you rush production: people are put under this kind of pressure, and they're forced to take shortcuts. And that's where these mistakes are made."
"I'm more than frustrated and disappointed," Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told NBC News. "I am angry- it's clear to me that we received an airplane from Boeing with a faulty door," he said.
That is exactly what the Boeing whistleblower alleges. Their post describes in detail how the door plug was removed for repairs and then replaced at the Boeing factory: "The four bolts that hold the door plug in place should have been reattached... but they were not... because of communication problems between employees who work for Boeing and those who work for Spirit AeroSystems", the company that built the fuselage and door panel.
The whistleblower describes the safety inspection process at Boeing's 737 factory in Renton as "a rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen."
Comments
The big problem is probably going to be that the old timers with the culture of quality have all retired or been forced out by "efficiency" experts, like in health care.
Holy S*** / What did he know and when did he know it?
Boeing's Head Honcho sat next to the door plug on the re-authorized first flight.
I'm looking at Amer. Air for a trip back East. They show no 737 Max planes on one possible route; and one 737 Max on another. (But maybe not a Max-9?) All with 2-stops enroute. The only way around that is to take the Hawaiian Air nonstop flight to either NYC or Boston. Too much trouble getting to my ultimate destination from either of those, so I'll just fly to BDL. (Hartford/Springfield.) Closest to home.
"What class are you flying sir?"
"Peasant class" says I.
"Excuse me?" says she.
"You heard me", says I, with smile-
"Yes, sir- that would be this line right over here- have a great flight" says she, with big grin.
I’ve found that by holding an iphone a couple feet in front of me and pointing it back through the window wings & engine are easy to photograph from both 2A and 3A. (Not the best shot I’ve taken, unfortunately)
Sheds new meaning on ”BYOB”.
And I just booked on AA for a trip back East in late May. This trip will be in ECONOMY. Yux. Looking at my confirmation. It adroitly does not include an easy-to-find notation as to how many Max-9s I'll be sitting on. As I recall, however, most of the time, I'll be on Airbus products. Reassuring.
Up is down. True is false. 1984-speak. Voters (and the general public) dumb as a box full of rocks. Very frightening. Dreadful results coming out of the schools. My teacher-acquaintance is not ALLOWED to flunk any students, back in Ohio. In Hawaii, kids graduate and can't even put a proper sentence together. They justify it by saying it's a dialect. Feces.