Boeing's quality control & safety flops

The facts this article exposes are definitely not showing Boeing's Quality Control is even 'good' or adequate. This proves Boeing is not getting the basics right. This simple stuff that is not being done. It's actually inadequate, shameful, and unsafe aviation manufacturing.

And now this...

New Quality Problems Rock Boeing And Trigger FAA Probe

Sean Broderick Michael Bruno Guy Norris - January 12, 2024
aviationweek.com/air-transport/safety-ops-regulation/new-quality-problems-rock-boeing-trigger-faa-probe


Alaska Airlines 737-9 emergency exit plug loss damage - The Alaska 737-9’s door-plug loss and rapid decompression caused significant interior damage. Credit: NTSB

Mandatory inspections triggered by the nearly disastrous Jan. 5 inflight loss of a fuselage insert from an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-9 point to production problems traced to aerostructures supplier Spirit AeroSystems, creating both a plausible explanation of what happened to the Alaska aircraft and a deepening crisis at Boeing.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said preliminary findings of loose exit door-plug assembly hardware at Alaska and United Airlines are linked to a “quality escape” at Spirit.

- Production issues are being reviewed in Alaska Airlines accident probe
- Most 737-9s have been grounded as risks and response are assessed
- Issue ramps up pressure on Boeing and FAA

“That’s the description of what people are finding in their inspections,” Calhoun told CNBC in Boeing’s first media interview following the Alaska accident. “It’s something that escaped from the manufacturing process.”

Calhoun indicated the problems originated at Spirit’s Wichita production facility that supplies 737 program fuselage sections, including inserts, or plugs, that some carriers use to block unneeded emergency exits.

“We’re not going to point fingers,” he said. “Yes, it escaped their factory, but then it escaped ours, too. So we’re all in this together.”

The FAA on Jan. 10 opened a formal investigation into whether Boeing’s role in not flagging nonconforming assemblies violates its production certificate approval and agency regulations.

“Boeing may have failed to ensure its completed products conformed to its approved design and were in a condition for safe operation in accordance with quality system inspection and test procedures,” the agency wrote in a letter to Boeing, citing the accident and “additional discrepancies” on other 737-9s.

Alaska Flight 1282, 737-9 Line No. 8789 delivered to Alaska Oct. 31, departed Portland, Oregon, at 4:52 p.m. local time Jan. 5 on a routine run to Ontario, California. About 6 min. into the flight, as the aircraft was climbing through 14,800 ft., the plug covering the left side midcabin exit door (MED) opening tore free, preliminary information released by the NTSB said. The aircraft experienced an immediate rapid decompression. The flight crew declared an emergency and returned to Portland, where the aircraft, with 171 passengers and six crew members, landed safely 14 min. later.



Alaska immediately grounded its 737-9s. Regulators mandated the grounding in a Jan. 6 emergency airworthiness directive (AD) issued by the FAA and adopted by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency as well as other civil aviation authorities. The FAA said its order would integrate Boeing inspection and repair instructions for 737-9s with door-plug assemblies that have not been inspected during a routine heavy maintenance visit every 4,000 cycles. This, the agency said, amounts to 171 aircraft. Some 737-900ERs have the same plug assemblies, but those aircraft were not covered by FAA’s order. The aircraft involved in the accident had about 130 cycles.

The FAA said the checks would take a maximum of 8 hr. per aircraft, giving affected carriers hope that they would have their workhorse narrowbodies back promptly. But Boeing and the FAA have grappled over finalizing the needed instructions, creating major headaches for operators.

Alaska and United, with 65 and 79 aircraft, respectively, said their entire 737-9 fleets have been grounded—even though some airframes have gone through heavy checks that include door-plug service. Others, such as Indonesian low-cost carrier Lion Air, parked higher-capacity 737-9s that have functioning MEDs and are not covered by the AD.

The FAA said Jan. 8 that it approved Boeing’s compliance process, only to reverse course on Jan. 9.


An exit door-plug ripped off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, causing a rapid decompression and forcing an emergency landing. Credit: NTSB
Since door-plug assembly inspections are part of routine 737-9 maintenance, instructions should be easy to integrate into bulletins for complying with the FAA’s AD. One former FAA safety official tells Aviation Week that, given the possible link to the Alaska accident, the agency is likely focusing on the ramifications of dealing with any findings and demanding that Boeing justify its recommended protocols.

“The inspection is easy,” the former official says. “The problem is: What do you do when you find a loose part? Do you go back to the torquing? Is it sufficient as specified or does the design need to be improved?”

If investigators determine a single part, such as an incorrectly torqued bolt, started the chain of events that led to an exit plug departing a two-month-old aircraft while in flight, a more extensive fix may be required, the former FAA official suggests.

“What is the scope?” the official continued. “Is it limited to the 737-9, or does it extend to the 737-900ER? That’s some of the stuff I’m sure [Boeing and the FAA] are struggling with.”

The 737-9 has two so-called Type 1 MEDs, each measuring 26 X 51 in., located aft of the trailing edge of the wing on the left and right sides of the fuselage.When activated, the additional emergency exit doors enable higher-capacity configurations for up to 220 passengers. However, as Alaska does not operate the 737-9 in these denser seating arrangements, the MED exits are blocked off with plugs to save weight. The plug configuration limits capacity to 189 passengers; Alaska’s 737-9s have 178 seats.

The plug configuration—one of two options Boeing offers to deactivate MED exits on a 737-9—incorporates a standard window and is concealed behind a cabin interior sidewall panel section.

Space for the plugs is cut into every 737-9 fuselage, regardless of the intended customer’s planned cabin configuration. Most operators that do not need the extra exits opt for plug assemblies to deactivate them. Some, such as Iceland-air, choose a regular exit door that is then deactivated and covered with interior sidewall. The plug option is lighter and requires less maintenance—although significant modification would be necessary if an operator determines it wants to install a usable emergency exit.

Regardless of the chosen configuration, Spirit assembles the 737-9 fuselages, including any MEDs or plugs. The assembly is then shipped via rail to Boeing for final assembly. Between receipt and aircraft delivery, the fuselages are tested at least twice, sources with knowledge of the process tell Aviation Week. One test involves pressurizing the cabin.

Absent a problem detected during the tests, door-plug assembles are not supposed to be touched or modified.

“That’s standard operating procedure,” one source says. “They are considered part of the structure.”

Other fuselage openings, such as main cabin doors, are used to move seats and other interior components into the aircraft during assembly. But the plugs are not removed to aid in the final assembly process, the sources say. If followed, Boeing’s 737-9 manufacturing process means plug assemblies are last touched on Spirit’s factory floor.

As Boeing and the FAA unravel the scope of the 737-9 door-plug assembly problems, the NTSB is working to pinpoint what happened on Alaska Flight 1282. Initial examination of the recovered door plug and the hole it left in the airframe showed that two guide roller tracks, one on each side near the plug’s top, were fractured, NTSB engineer Clint Crookshanks said in a Jan. 8 media briefing. The fractures did not cause the plug failure but happened as the panel broke away, he added.

The plug is fixed in place during normal operations, but it is designed to move for routine maintenance inspections and to aid initial installation.

The plug’s design includes 12 “stop-fitting” device fittings that keep the insert from moving outward (see diagram, page 14). When the plug is in place, fittings on it match up with stop pads around the frame. Two hinges along the plug’s bottom and two guide roller fittings—one on each side of the plug near the top that fit into rollers attached to the frame—allow the plug to move up so its fittings can clear the pads and swing outward. But upward movement is possible only if four bolts are removed, effectively unlocking the plug. The bolts, secured by castellated nuts and cotter pins, are installed horizontally near each hinge and through each roller fitting.

“The exam to date has shown that the [door plug] did translate upward [and] all 12 stops became disengaged, allowing it to blow out of the fuselage,” Crookshanks said. “We have not yet recovered the four bolts that restrain it from its vertical movement, and we have not yet determined if they existed.”

Crookshanks said closer examination of the plug and other parts will reveal if each bolt worked itself free or failed—or if the bolts were never installed. Determining what happened to the four bolts is key to understanding the accident and ascertaining whether Boeing has one or multiple 737-9 problems. An initial examination of the MED on the accident aircraft’s right side found no anomalies.

Several fortunate variables limited the severity of the Alaska accident, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. The two seats in Row 26 right next to the plug that tore free were not occupied. The event’s timing—during climb, when passengers are often seated and belted in, instead of during cruise, when both passengers and cabin attendants are moving around—also minimized the risk, she suggested. Another lucky element in the accident sequence: The plug did not strike any part of the airframe or tail assembly.

Interior damage was significant, investigators reported. Ten rows of seats had some level of damage.

Spirit on Jan. 10 issued a statement confirming it “has been working closely with” Boeing since the accident and “is now supporting the NTSB’s investigation directly.” It did not address Calhoun’s comments.

Spirit’s role in the 737-9 groundings expands an already lengthy list of production problems that have affected both the 737 and 787 programs—its two largest—for several years. But the plug assembly problem stands out as the first production-quality shortcoming linked to a safety-of-flight issue, triggering a fleet grounding at least and leading to an accident at worst.

“We have not had safety-related” nonconformances, Calhoun said. “This one is, and it’s very important that we understand that.”

Calhoun stopped short of drawing a direct line from the fleet findings and the Alaska accident. But his comments to CNBC strongly suggest the manufacturer suspects the two are linked.

“This one is a horrible escape,” Calhoun said. “And we will tackle this one the same way [as previous issues]. We will engineer answers and be certain that can never happen again. We will look everywhere around the [737] MAX, around the Spirit factories, our own factories, our inspection processes.

“We’ll make sure that we take steps to ensure that it never, never can happen again,” he added.

Beyond the reputational damage both Boeing and Spirit have suffered from the new problems, Wall Street has two questions: What are the upfront costs that will be incurred this quarter? And what are the long-term risks to production forecasts?

Upfront costs to the manufacturers to make customers whole again seem manageable, assuming they are short-lived, many financial analysts say. Based on Alaska financials, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates a cost of $25,000-30,000 a day of lost profit and crew costs due to grounded 737-9s. The initial grounding of all 170-odd aircraft could cost $5-7 million a day.

Another estimate sees costs closer to $15,000 a day. Still, according to Jefferies analysts, a two-week pause in operations could lead to $36 million in concessions.

In the longer term, however, ramifications are harder to estimate. For starters, the new master agreement Boeing and Spirit reached last fall does not obviate issues beyond the tail fin and aft bulkhead pressure fixes identified last year. It is possible that Boeing could demand new payment from Spirit related to the plug issue.

The good news: Analysts believe firm orders remain secure. “Airlines are generally unlikely to cancel a firm order given the amount of money they have to spend when initially placing the order and subsequently as production progresses,” analysts at RBC Capital Markets said Jan. 9. With more than 6,200 unfilled orders, including nearly 4,800 737 MAX-family variants, RBC said the concern around Boeing should still be focused on production execution for deliveries.

Therein lies the rub. Monthly 737 production has remained volatile for years, despite stabilization being a primary goal voiced by Boeing and Tier 1 suppliers. If the plug issue is found to be a manufacturing issue, it will only cause more perturbation.

The 1997 merger that paved the way for the Boeing 737 Max crisis

Natasha Frost - Fri, Jan 3, 2020
finance.yahoo.com/news/1997-merger-paved-way-boeing-090042193.html


Dozens of grounded Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are seen parked in an aerial photo at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S. July 1, 2019.

Late in the summer of 1997, two of the most critical players in global aviation became a single tremendous titan. Boeing, one of the US’s largest and most important companies, acquired its longtime plane manufacturer rival, McDonnell Douglas, in what was then the country’s tenth-largest merger. The resulting giant took Boeing’s name. More unexpectedly, it took its culture and strategy from McDonnell Douglas—even its commercial aviation department was struggling to retain customers.

Reporting on the deal, the New York Times made an observation that now seems prescient: “The full effect of the proposed merger on employees, communities, competitors, customers and investors will not be known for months, maybe even years.” Nearly 20 years later, one such effect has become the aviation story of the year, or perhaps the decade—the crashes of two 737 Max jets and the loss of 346 lives, not to mention the still-rising associated costs of around $10 billion.

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In a clash of corporate cultures, where Boeing’s engineers and McDonnell Douglas’s bean-counters went head-to-head, the smaller company won out. The result was a move away from expensive, ground-breaking engineering and toward what some called a more cut-throat culture, devoted to keeping costs down and favoring upgrading older models at the expense of wholesale innovation. Only now, with the 737 indefinitely grounded, are we beginning to see the scale of its effects.

“The fatal fault line was the McDonnell Douglas takeover,” says Clive Irving, author of Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747. “Although Boeing was supposed to take over McDonnell Douglas, it ended up the other way around.”

A turbulent path to an uneasy union

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Since the start of the jet age, Boeing had been less a business and more, as writer Jerry Useem put it in Fortune in 2000, “an association of engineers devoted to building amazing flying machines.” For a time, this served it well: An engineers’ company made planes to make its engineers proud, whatever the cost. Employees enjoyed watertight contracts, thanks to an assertive, family-like union, and an attitude to aviation that put design and quality above all else. In the process, it produced some of the world’s greatest planes. The 707, for instance, was the first commercially successful jet; the 727, launched in 1963, allowed airlines to reach airports in the developing world or with shorter runways. The company’s philosophy, as one close observer described it to researcher Edward Greenberg, was “go-for-it-and-damn-the expenses—but not damn the quality.”

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the company, and the US aviation industry more generally, found itself in an especially sweet spot, Greenberg told Quartz. It was “the golden age,” he said, “because the airlines—since the government actually controlled where planes could go, (assigning) landing rights in a variety of places—didn’t have competition on those routes. Any costs that the engineers at Boeing wanted to add to the plane—because it was real cool engineering, or made the plane faster or safer—didn’t matter to the airlines and they could just pass on the costs of all of that in ticket prices.”

As engineers first, managers second, Boeing’s bosses answered to airlines: The plane that would become the 737, for example, was first ordered in 1964, after Lufthansa boss Gerhard Holtje found a need for a craft that could carry around 100 passengers on short, intercity European routes. By the plane’s third incarnation, in 1981, Boeing was onto a winner.

With the dawn of the 1980s, however, Boeing’s traditional way of doing things seemed increasingly out of touch. Deregulation under US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had changed the economics of the industry, Greenberg said. “The idea was that if you had more competition, it would drop prices for consumers. Suddenly, airlines are looking at this and saying, ‘Oh my God, we can’t pass on the cost by continuously raising ticket prices.’ That put pressure back on Boeing, and on Airbus eventually, to become cost-conscious.”

McDonnell Douglas was in an out-and-out nosedive. As costs climbed, the company’s stock price slumped. Everything seemed to point towards one solution: a leaner operation with more digitalization and a new openness to outsourcing and partnering. At the same time, management was desperately searching for more diverse ways to remain financially aloft.

If, figuratively speaking, Boeing was suffering from engine trouble, McDonnell Douglas was in an out-and-out nosedive. The Missouri-based aerospace company was formed in 1967 after the merger of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and Douglas Aircraft Company. By the 1990s, while its military wing remained robust, its commercial operations were waning. In 1996, Boeing took approximately 60% of the industry’s new commercial aircraft orders. Airbus, the European consortium, lingered far behind it, at 35%. McDonnell Douglas took the remaining 5%. Even its military operations had seen brighter days: The year before the merger, the Pentagon rejected its bid for new fighter jets, turning to Boeing and the Lockheed Martin Corporation instead. Boeing might have been struggling, but McDonnell Douglas seemed destined for failure.

In 1996, Boeing acquired Rockwell, a smaller aerospace and defense manufacturer, for around $3 billion. Now, it had its sights on McDonnell Douglas. These decisions, made by Boeing CEO Phil Condit, were made with a close eye on the company’s bottom line ahead of a hotly anticipated commercial-jet boom. An ambitious program of cost-cutting, outsourcing, and digitalization had already begun. For Boeing, acquiring McDonnell Douglas held many attractions. On the one hand, it would be a victory lap of sorts, to finally take over the remnants of its oldest rival. On another, it was a prime opportunity to pick up McDonnell Douglas’ valuable military expertise and diversify its own offerings away from the turbulent commercial aircraft market, with its cycle of booms and busts.

And then there was Airbus. In less than a decade, the European company had more than doubled its annual deliveries—an upwards trajectory Boeing executives feared meant the loss of its position as the foremost commercial plane manufacturer in an increasingly expensive world.



After the intended merger was announced, antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic considered their options. Airbus and Boeing were already one another’s only significant competitor. McDonnell Douglas’ very existence served a certain purpose—it appears to have made the market more competitive, in helping to drive down prices—but it remained in the doldrums. Regulators noted McDonnell Douglas “no longer [constituted] a meaningful competitive force in the commercial aircraft market,” and that, without a full line of large and small jets, it had no real plan to stave off the “grim prospect” of collapse. Without a takeover, there is every indication that the company might have failed all by itself.

The honeymoon period?

Eventually, after months of deliberation, regulators approved the match in August of 1997, with four out of five Federal Trade Commission members ruling that it would not “substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in either defense or commercial aircraft markets.”

Boeing bought the McDonnell Douglas for $14 billion. Shares of both enjoyed a slight bump. Boeing’s new acquisition allowed Condit to move forward on his other key project: diversifying Boeing’s revenue streams. With the lucrative government contracts it picked up with McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell, Boeing’s comparatively fledgling space and defense operations could flourish.

In the eyes of many Boeing employees, McDonnell Douglas executives seemed to do disproportionately well out of the merger: Many were given senior positions following the acquisition, with the company’s head, Harry Stonecipher initially appointed chief operating officer and holding more than twice the number of shares in the company as Condit, who remained CEO. Stonecipher and John McDonnell, formerly the chair of McDonnell Douglas’ board, were now the two largest individual shareholders of the merged companies.

Stonecipher eventually became Boeing CEO in 2003, but was pushed out in 2005, after an internal investigation revealed that he was having a consensual, but extramarital relationship with a fellow Boeing executive.

In a 2007 interview, Ron Woodard, the former president of Boeing’s Commercial Airplane Group, bemoaned the changes the merger brought with it. “We thought that we’d kill McDonnell Douglas and we had it on the ropes,” he said. “I still believe that Harry outsmarted Phil and his gang bought Boeing with Boeing’s money. We were all just disgusted.” More than that, he added, the company had “paid way, way too much money [for McDonnell Douglas] and we’re still paying for it. We wrote off so many tens of billions of dollars for that whole mess.”

“If you don’t perform, you don’t stay on the team.” Inside the company, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction. A formerly cosy atmosphere, in which engineers ran the show and executives aged out of the company gracefully, was suddenly cut-throat. In 1998, the year after the merger, Stonecipher warned employees they needed to “quit behaving like a family and become more like a team. If you don’t perform, you don’t stay on the team.”

Everything seemed to be changing—the leadership, the culture, even the headquarters, with a move from Seattle to Chicago in 2001. The new location seems to have been especially disorienting for Boeing employees. “There was something about the locus of the company which was unique, that its whole history had almost been written on the same runway from the beginning, at Boeing Field” in Seattle, says Irving. Even the company’s ethos seemed to have changed, he says: “There was a kind of inherent ethic about how you went about designing and manufacturing and flying planes that carried passengers, as opposed to flying military planes.” For the former, you were serving individuals and airlines, interested primarily in the best way to fly; for the latter, you were playing a small part in the US’ global military operations. Meanwhile, increasing shareholder value, once scarcely a consideration, grew to be more and more of a priority.

Many employees struggled to adjust, or resented what they saw as a changing of the guard, where investors took priority over passengers. “Many of the engineers happened to be the guys who pioneered the 707, and so took the company into the jet age and there was a kind of esprit de corps among them and an integrity of purpose among them,” says Irving. “And they had a collective sense of what the company was meant to do and what its responsibilities were.” Now, a passion for great planes was replaced with “a passion for affordability.”

Stonecipher seems to have agreed with this assessment. “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”

How a change in approach led to the 737 Max

Two decades on, perhaps the most lasting consequence of the change in culture has been in Boeing’s approach to aircraft building. Cutting costs and diversifying revenue ought to have served as an ideal way to subsidize the expensive process of plane development. Instead, with engineers now disempowered and management far away in Chicago, the actual building of new planes in Seattle all but stalled. Boeing would not actually announce even the plans for a new plane until 2003, with the 787 Dreamliner. Throughout this time, Boeing was led by its first chairman without a traditional aviation background: James McNerney had instead spent almost two decades in management at General Electric—now, he was following a tried-and-tested route of cutting, downsizing, and shifting.

That approach was applied to upgrading the 737, which had become the victim of its own success. In its five-decade history, airlines have cumulatively ordered more than 10,000 of the planes—an aviation rock star. But rather than retiring the plane, and replacing it with the next big thing, Boeing instead opted to keep costs down by tinkering and adjusting the model to fit still more passengers. The version it called the Max, writes Irving in the Daily Beast, was the alternative, cheaper solution. “The airlines went for it because the new engines promised higher efficiency and—so it seemed—pilots would find it very simple to move from the [1997 737 Next Gen] to the Max.”

“None of the above should have passed the ‘OK’ pencil.” Pilots have long been aware of the plane’s shortcomings. Writing in the engineering industry publication IEEE Spectrum, pilot and software developer Gregory Travis explains how these repeat redesigns have led to recent tragedies. The plane was designed for a time before machine-aided cargo loading and so sits low to the ground to aid ground crews hauling baggage. But as the planes grew larger, so too have their engines. Instead of being hung under the wing, as in earlier models, the engines have been moved forward and upward, potentially leading to an aerodynamic stall under certain circumstances. “Instead of going back to the drawing board and getting the airframe hardware right, Boeing relied on something called the ‘Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System,’ or MCAS,” he writes.

Put very crudely, this was a software fix for a hardware problem—and one that was far from perfect. In Travis’ estimation, the software relied on the wrong systems and sensors, without cross-checking them against other easily accessible information from the plane’s sensors. “None of the above should have passed muster,” he writes. “None of the above should have passed the ‘OK’ pencil of the most junior engineering staff.”

Light through the clouds?

For Boeing, here’s the good news: Airlines are mostly quite profitable—and profitable airlines buy airplanes. The global population able to afford to fly is growing at a staggering pace, which should also mean yet more airline purchases. Boeing may not be the absolute world number one any more, but it enjoys a duopoly with Airbus and is still a preferred supplier for a huge number of airlines.

But there’s no denying that the Max has damaged the company. Boeing has now halted production of the plane altogether; earlier this month, CEO Dennis Muilenberg was very publicly fired by the board. Some 400 planes orders are presently on hold, while 387 already-delivered MAX planes have been grounded for months. Early assurances that recertification by the FAA would be easy to come by are now looking decidedly hollow. In the months since the crashes, longtime Boeing customers, such as United Airlines, have turned to Airbus instead—particularly amid fears passengers will refuse to fly the 737 when it returns to service. Having slumped by about 25% after the initial crashes, Boeing’s share price has since scarcely moved. Meanwhile, progress on new planes, including the proposed 797, has slowed as it continue its efforts to work with the FAA on the Max.

There are no easy fixes for Boeing. A company that set the standard for jet-age manufacturing is now facing a crisis that goes to the heart of its identity: its ability to build airplanes. Scrapping the 737 altogether would mean the loss of untold billions—not scrapping it may yet cost even more. But if, as seems apparent, the company’s cost-cutters led it down the path towards this mess, its engineers may be the ones forced to bring it back out into the light.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect that airline deregulation began under US president Jimmy Carter.

So, I wonder how much money Boeing's stock-focused McDonnell Douglas bean-counters-over-safety management focus saved by outsourcing manufacturing rather than paying its homegrown safety-first-focused workforce the higher wages they asked for.

Excerpt from an article above:

In a clash of corporate cultures, where Boeing’s engineers and McDonnell Douglas’s bean-counters went head-to-head, the smaller company won out. The result was a move away from expensive, ground-breaking engineering and toward what some called a more cut-throat culture, devoted to keeping costs down and favoring upgrading older models at the expense of wholesale innovation. Only now, with the 737 indefinitely grounded, are we beginning to see the scale of its effects.



“The fatal fault line was the McDonnell Douglas takeover,” says Clive Irving, author of Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747. “Although Boeing was supposed to take over McDonnell Douglas, it ended up the other way around.”

And now this...

Boeing needs 'heightened level of oversight,' says top U.S. aviation regulator
Investigators reveal bolts were missing from panel that flew off Alaska Airlines flight in January
The Associated Press · Posted: Feb 06, 2024 6:01 PM EST | Last Updated: February 6
www.cbc.ca/news/boeing-us-aviation-regulator-1.7106926

The new chief of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said his agency is midway through a six-week audit of manufacturing at Boeing, but he already knows that changes must be made in how the government oversees the aircraft manufacturer.

FAA administrator Michael Whitaker suggested that Boeing — under pressure from airlines to produce large numbers of planes — is not paying enough attention to safety.

Whitaker said the FAA has had two challenges since Jan. 5, when an emergency door panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner at 4,800 metres over Oregon.

"One, what is wrong with this airplane? But two, what's going on with the production at Boeing?" Whitaker told a U.S. House transportation subcommittee. "There have been issues in the past. They don't seem to be getting resolved, so we feel like we need to have a heightened level of oversight."

Whitaker's testimony before the subcommittee was wide-ranging. Leaders of the panel had spelled out questions they wanted answered, but few lawmakers stuck to the script — they asked about everything from the Max 9 incident to raising the retirement age for pilots to migrants being housed at airports.

A former Boeing senior manager who flagged problems with Max series jets before fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 wasn’t surprised by the recent malfunction. Ed Pierson talks to The National’s Adrienne Arsenault about how it could’ve happened and what needs to be done to prevent more problems.
Whitaker said the investigation involved placing "about two dozen" inspectors in Boeing's 737 plant in Renton, Wash., and "maybe half a dozen" at a Wichita, Kan., plant where supplier Spirit AeroSystems makes the fuselages for 737s.

Whitaker said he expects the FAA will keep people in the Boeing and Spirit factories after the audit is done, but he said the numbers haven't been determined.

NTSB releases preliminary report
The comments from Whitaker, who took over the FAA about three months ago, came hours before investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a preliminary report on last month's incident.

According to accident investigators, bolts that helped secure a panel to the frame of the Alaska Airlines plane were missing before the panel blew off last month.

The report included a photo from Boeing, which worked on the panel, which is called a door plug. In the photo, three of the four bolts that prevent the panel from moving upward are missing. The location of the fourth bolt is obscured.

Two people with the National Transportation Safety Board hold the door plug from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
This photo released by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board shows the door plug from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Jan. 8, in Portland, Ore. Investigators say bolts that helped secure the panel on the Boeing jetliner were missing before the panel blew off the plane in mid-flight last month. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP, file)
Without the bolts, nothing prevented the panel from sliding upward and detaching from "stop pads" that secured it to the airframe.

The preliminary report said the door plug, installed by supplier Spirit AeroSystems, arrived at Boeing's factory near Seattle with five damaged rivets around the plug. A Boeing crew replaced the damaged rivets, which required them to remove the four bolts to open the plug.

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Investigators said they were still trying to determine who authorized the Boeing crew to open and re-install the door plug.

The NTSB did not declare a probable cause for the accident — that will come at the end of an investigation that could last a year or longer.

"Whatever final conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened," CEO David Calhoun said in a statement. "An event like this must not happen on an airplane that leaves our factory. We simply must do better for our customers and their passengers."

The FAA has barred Boeing from speeding up production of 737s until the agency is satisfied about quality issues.

Spirit AeroSystems, which is Boeing's key supplier on the Max, said in a statement that it was reviewing the NTSB preliminary report and was working with Boeing and regulators "on continuous improvement in our processes and meeting the highest standards of safety, quality and reliability."

A section of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which is missing a panel.
This image released by the National Transportation Safety Board shows a section of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 that is missing a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP, file)
Boeing, FAA under scrutiny
Boeing and the FAA have been under renewed scrutiny since last month's incident on the Alaska Airlines Max 9. Criticism of both the company and its regulator go back to deadly Max 8 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.

Whitaker vowed that FAA will "take appropriate and necessary action" to keep the flying public safe.

Regulator believes 'other manufacturing problems' exist at Boeing after in-flight cabin blowout
Canadian airlines say they don't fly Boeing 737-9 Max planes involved in Alaska Airlines in-flight blowout
This could involve closer monitoring of Boeing. For many years, the FAA has relied on employees of aircraft manufacturers to perform some safety-related work on planes being built by their companies.

Whitaker has said that the self-checking practice — in theory, overseen by FAA inspectors — should be reconsidered, but he stopped short of saying it should be scrapped.

"The current system is not working because it is not delivering safe aircraft," Whitaker said. "Maybe we need to look at the incentives to make sure safety is getting the appropriate first rung of consideration that it deserves."

John Oliver's team did a fantastic job of pointing out just how far Boeing has fallen and why. They drilled down on Boeing's problems much better than any financial news or even a 60 minutes segment. Oliver's team, correctly pointed out that Boeing's problems all started with the McDonnel Douglas merger and Douglas' team putting the stock price ahead of safety. Boeing was supposed to have control, but the Douglas crew took control from the safety & quality minded engineers that ran Boeing. They are still in control. 

Until Boeing gets better leadership at the top, and they don't have it now, I would not buy this stock. I will guarantee you there are more problems that will be exposed and Calhoun will be forced out or quit to spend more time with his family. He's part of Douglas problem and he's covering up all he can rather than truly fix the quality problems that would lower the stock's price.

One thing John Oliver pointed out was Boeing spent more on raising dividends than on improving safety, quality control, and, designing new aircraft to compete with Airbus.

And now this...

'Last Week Tonight' Soars as John Oliver Examines the Rise and Fall of Boeing

BY ERICK MASSOTO - PUBLISHED MAR 4, 2024
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John Oliver takes a closer look at safety concerns within the air travel industry. John Oliver holding his hands in front of him next to a sign that says airplanes on Last Week Tonight Image via HBO

THE BIG PICTURE

- The main story of the latest Last Week Tonight covered Boeing's decline in reputation post-merger with McDonnell Douglas.

- Boeing prioritized speed and cost-cutting over safety, leading to tragic incidents like a crash in 2018.

- New episodes of Last Week Tonight are available on Max every Sunday, and on YouTube every Thursday.

HBO is sticking to its decision to hold off on releasing new episodes from Last Week Tonight on YouTube until Thursdays. A couple of weeks ago, they announced that new episodes would only become available three days after they aired on HBO. Thankfully, they haven't done away with the practice entirely, and the latest episode is now available on the free platform. In the new episode, John Oliver takes a closer look at the history of Boeing and the shift in safety standards in the air travel industry.

However, before diving into the main story of the night, Oliver blazed through a couple of other key topics. This week, for example, he couldn’t ignore the massive shooting of civilians that took place in Gaza, as well as a pretty blatant conflict of interest for Clarence Thomas, and some very relevant information about dolphins’ genitals and twins’ fingerprints.

The main story was about airplanes – more specifically, airplane manufacturer Boeing, who earned a reputation for excellence worldwide ever since it came into existence, with its most famous plane (the Boeing 737) being made for airlines over 10,000 times. However, that perception has changed over the recent years, and one major contributing factor to that was the 1996 merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. According to Last Week Tonight, McDonnell Douglas had a “lousy reputation" for commercial airliners up until then.

'Last Week Tonight' Tackles The Weirdest "Marriages" In Boeing History

The episode goes on to explain that, after the merger, McDonnell Douglas’ cutthroat work culture of profit-first began to dominate Boeing. Of course, this didn’t go unnoticed by employees, who had to deal with “healthy" internal slogans such as “less family, more team.” The company went on to prioritize speed and cost-cutting measures over efficiency and safety, and there could have been only one result. You probably remember one of the tragedies: The Indonesian passenger flight that disappeared in 2018 and was later found to have crashed into the water.

It’s pretty clear what needs to be done in Boeing’s case, but the company doesn’t seem too inclined to change its internal policies. With that perspective, the only thing left for Last Week Tonight to do is what the show does best: A PSA that explains everything wrong with a certain company. But hey! Boeing’s stock value is still pretty sweet!

You can watch the full episode of Last Week Tonight on Max and check out the main story below: