Boeing's goings...

[Malcolm]

Ryanair CEO says airline found parts missing from Boeing planes

By Kathryn Mannie  Global News

Posted March 27, 2024 10:01 am

 3 min read

The CEO of Ryanair, one of the largest low-cost carriers in the world, said the airline has been voicing its concerns over the quality of Boeing aircrafts for the past 18 months, according to a video interview last week with CNN.

Michael O’Leary said that issues started arising in 2022 and 2023.

“We were finding little things like spanners under the floorboards, in some cases, seat handles missing, things like that,” O’Leary told CNN. (“Spanner” is another word for wrench.)

“This shows a lack of attention to detail, quality issues in Boeing,” the CEO added.

 

Ryanair’s fleet of over 1,000 aircraft is made up almost exclusively of Boeing airplanes, apart from 27 Airbus A320s.

 

O’Leary says the airline began noticing the issues with Boeing’s planes during the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns were easing. Ryanair has been consistently in contact with “Boeing at the most senior levels” to communicate its concerns, O’Leary added.

“We’ve been saying for 18 months, both publicly and privately to Boeing, that quality control post-COVID as they got back making aircraft has not been acceptable and needs to be improved.”

O’Leary added that Ryanair takes 48 hours to inspect newly delivered planes at the company’s hangars in Dublin.

“We’re not willing to put an aircraft into service at Ryanair unless we’ve fully satisfied that everything’s there and as it should be,” he said.

O’Leary echoed these same concerns about Boeing in an earlier press appearance.

In January, the CEO said a wrench was found under the floor of one plane during an inspection.

“It is not acceptable that aircraft get delivered at less than 100 per cent,” he said at the time.

The situation at Boeing seemed to improve, O’Leary said, adding that the 12 planes Boeing delivered to the airline between October and December were “the best deliveries we’ve taken from Boeing.”

O’Leary’s comments come as Boeing continues to be the subject of intense scrutiny from the public and transportation safety agencies after a series of high-profile incidents.

 

[Kip Powick]

What else is he ging to say re-- recent  good arrivals....???.."time for a better price Boeing cause I am, obliquely, backing you up"...

[deicer]

[IFG]

Well-written article, in non-flying-nerd-speak, for the nervous flyers you might meet seeking reassurance. There's a thread or two one could start tugging on, but generally, Tufekci is a pretty solid, balanced reporter\commenter.

Cheers, IFG - 

You Don’t Need to Freak Out About Boeing Planes (but Boeing Sure Does)

".... the fact that Boeing managed to cut as many corners as it did is testament to the layers and layers of checks, redundancies and training that have been built into the aviation industry. Aviation safety is so robust because we made it so ...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/opinion/boeing-plane-safety.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20240401&instance_id=118987&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=49978955&segment_id=162273&user_id=8ccecf3035088e379d1de9e79ae219b0

[Malcolm]

 

[Malcolm]

NTSB Looking Into More Door Plug Repair Instances At Boeing

Story by Rich Thomaselli

 • 45m • 2 min read

National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy told the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee that her investigators are looking at other instances in which Boeing employees removed and then reinstalled door plugs on airplanes.

The investigation stems from the January 5 incident in which a door panel blew off in Alaska Airlines plane in midflight.

 

Apparently, four critical bolts that were supposed to be reinstalled were not done so properly or not done at all.

Boeing previously said there is no documentation available regarding the work. That has angered Committee Chairperson Senator Maria Cantwell:“On this case, you’re saying in this case records don't exist, but you have other records that show when plugs were opened and closed? There are other instances where that kind of repair was documented?”

Homendy replied, “There are other instances where that work would occur. We still have to review all those instances to see if that was documented.”

Is documentation available if there were other incidents?

Whether or not other instances were found in which there was documentation available would deal a blow to Boeing and reflect poorly on the company, adding to the perception that Boeing is trying to impede the Alaska Airlines investigation.

Or worse, that Boeing has a history of undocumented repair work.

 

Homendy suggested that the missing documentation on the Alaska Airlines repair was an exception.

“The records don't exist that what we are looking for, but that is, what we would call, an escape from normal process,” Homendy said. “We are looking at other instances where a door plug was opened and closed, to make sure those records are available. We are looking at how this happened.”

In other words, if documentation was available for repair work on other planes, why isn’t it available for this particular incident involving Alaska Airlines?

Homendy said that NTSB investigators are back at Boeing’s headquarters this week.

“I don't think there is anyone from Boeing from (CEO) Dave Calhoun down that doesn't want to know what happened here,” Homendy told the Committee. “They want to know and they want to fix it. And we are there to help. But we are also there to look at what more can be done, what the safety culture is, what the safety management system is — it is relatively new – how that can be improved, and their quality management system. We do have a lot of work to do.”

[Malcolm]

 

[Malcolm]

Fact or fiction.......

All 787 Dreamliners should be grounded, Boeing whistleblower says

By Kathryn Mannie  Global News

Posted April 17, 2024 10:02 am

 4 min read

A Boeing whistleblower is urging the planemaker to ground all 787 Dreamliners currently in operation around the world after warning that the long-haul jets could “fall apart at the joints.”

Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, went public with his concerns about the Boeing 787 and 777 jets last week. In an exclusive TV interview with NBC Nightly News, Salehpour doubled down on his allegations and called for all Dreamliners to be pulled from service and checked for small gaps in the fuselage.

“It’s as serious as I have ever seen in my lifetime,” Salehpour told NBC’s Lester Holt, adding that he would not put his family on a 787 jet.

“The entire fleet worldwide, as far as I’m concerned right now, needs attention. And the attention is, you need to check your gaps and make sure that you don’t have potential for premature failure.”

Salehpour claims that Boeing took shortcuts while building the 787 and 777 jets to save money and reduce bottlenecks during the assembly process. He says sections of the main body, or fuselage, of the 787 Dreamliner are not fastened together properly and that little gaps exist where the parts are joined. Under the stress of repeated flying, the fuselage could break apart mid-air, he warned.

“The plane will fall apart at the joints,” he told Holt on Tuesday.

When Salehpour initially went public with his concerns, he said he saw Boeing mechanics using excessive force to push sections of the fuselage together “to make it appear like the gaps didn’t exist,” during 787 assembly. Under normal manufacturing procedures, small pieces of metal, called shims, are inserted into gaps to fill space. But Boeing allegedly cut corners by not always inserting these shims.

Allowing such gaps to be unfilled could, over time, allow sections of the fuselage to move relative to one another — drastically reducing the lifespan of the plane. As the aircraft undergoes thousands of trips, the stress on the joints could one day “cause a catastrophic failure,” Salehpour said.

The engineer claims that when he raised these issues internally with Boeing, they retaliated against him and moved him out of the 787 program to work on 777 jets. There, he says he witnessed similar unsafe assembly practices that he claims also jeopardize the safety of the 777.

“I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,” Salehpour said at the time.

Salehpour filed a formal whistleblower complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January, around the time Boeing came under intense public scrutiny when a door plug blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane mid-air during an Alaska Airlines flight.

The FAA said it is investigating his claims, as the agency does with all whistleblower complaints.nes plane mid-flight found in Oregon backyard

Boeing says it is fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner, adding that the claims “are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft.”

The company is also “fully confident in the safety and durability of the 777 family.”

Boeing held a media tour at its South Carolina manufacturing plant on Monday, where reporters heard from two top Boeing engineers who defended the structural integrity of its aircraft.

Production of the 787 had previously been halted by the FAA for nearly two years, starting in 2021, after this exact problem of small gaps existing where plane parts had been joined was raised to the agency. In order to regain FAA approval to deliver new 787 planes to customers, Boeing stress-tested the jet for 165,000 takeoffs and landings, far beyond the recommended lifespan of the plane, and found no evidence it would fail.

The company says it also inspected 689 of the more than 1,100 787s in service worldwide, NBC reports.

 

 

2:57Business Matters: FAA says Boeing can’t increase 737 Max production until quality, safety culture improved

But Salehpour contends that Boeing never fixed the fuselage issue, and instead concealed it from the FAA. Eventually, in 2022, the FAA allowed Boeing to continue delivering new 787s.

 

Lisa Banks, one of Salehpour’s lawyers, says she’s heard from half a dozen other potential whistleblowers who have similar concerns with Boeing’s safety practices.

“I think some of them will come forward, but frankly, they’re terrified,” she told NBC News.

As for Salehpour, he says he’s “at peace” with himself “because this is going to save a lot of people’s lives.”

Salehpour is set to address a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Wednesday to discuss his concerns about Boeing’s safety practices.

[W5]

Boeing unlikely to meet FAA’s 90-day deadline for new safety program

https://leehamnews.com/2024/04/18/boeing-unlikely-to-meet-faas-90-day-deadline-for-new-safety-program/

By Scott Hamilton

April 18, 2024, © Leeham News: Boeing appears unlikely to meet a 90-day deadline to submit a comprehensive plan to address safety concerns, insiders tell LNA.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Feb. 28 gave Boeing three months to address “systemic quality-control issues,” a move sparked by new safety concerns following the Jan. 5 accident of Alaska Airlines flight 1282. A 10-week-old 737-9 MAX was minutes into climb-out from the Portland (OR) airport when a door plug blew out, prompting explosive decompression of the cabin. Nobody died but there were injuries and damage throughout the cabin.

“FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told Boeing that he expects the company to provide the FAA a comprehensive action plan within 90 days that will incorporate the forthcoming results of the FAA production-line audit and the latest findings from the expert review panel report, which was required by the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act of 2020,” the FAA said in the Feb. 28 press release.

“The plan must also include steps Boeing will take to mature its Safety Management System (SMS) program, which it committed to in 2019. Boeing also must integrate its SMS program with a Quality Management System, which will ensure the same level of rigor and oversight is applied to the company’s suppliers and create a measurable, systemic shift in manufacturing quality control.”

Now 45 days later, LNA is told Boeing is unlikely to meet the deadline. Furthermore, Boeing’s engineering and technicians union has had no outreach from Boeing seeking its input into the plan.

 

Collaboration Needed

“The current status of safety culture issues at Boeing underscores the need for collaboration between the company and its labor unions. This collaboration is necessary to elevate an unfiltered voice for safety experts who have been ignored and employees who have been silenced,” SPEEA said in a memo reviewed by LNA.

SPEEA proposed several steps to improve safety and quality assurance, but so far with little progress, according to the memo.

Boeing’s touch-labor union, the IAM 751, has not heard from Boeing.

Boeing did not respond to a request for comment.

What happens if Boeing fails to meet the deadline?

What happens if Boeing fails to meet the deadline set by the FAA? One former Boeing employee whose duties included safety compliance told LNA at the time the FAA issued the mandate that Boeing would be unlikely to meet the deadline due to the complexities of the task.

On the one hand, the FAA could extend the deadline. On the other hand, the FAA could take the extreme step, if unlikely, of suspending Boeing’s PC 700 production certificate for the troubled 737 line. (It could also suspend the production certificate of all 7-Series airplanes, including the 737- and 767-based military aircraft. This seems highly unlikely.)

[W5]

Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/boeing-corporate-america-manufacturing/678137

Somewhere along the line, the plane maker lost interest in making its own planes. Can it rediscover its engineering soul?

By Jerry Useem

 

The sight of bill boeing was a familiar one on the factory floor. His office was in the building next to the converted boatyard where workers lathed the wood, sewed the fabric wings, and fixed the control wires of the Boeing Model C airplane. there is no authority except facts. facts are obtained by accurate observation read a plaque affixed outside the door. And what could need closer observation than the process of his aircraft being built? One day in 1916, Boeing spotted an imperfectly cut wing rib, dropped it to the floor, and slowly stomped it to bits. “I, for one, will close up shop rather than send out work of this kind,” he declared.

When David Calhoun, the soon-to-be-lame-duck CEO of the company Boeing founded, made a rare appearance on the shop floor in Seattle one day this past January, circumstances were decidedly different. Firmly a member of the CEO class, schooled at the knee of General Electric’s Jack Welch, Calhoun had not strolled over from next door but flown some 2,300 miles from Boeing’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. And he was not there to observe slipshod work before it found its way into the air—it already had. A few weeks earlier, the door of a Boeing 737 had fallen out mid-flight. In the days following his visit, Calhoun’s office admitted that it still didn’t know quite what had gone wrong, because it didn’t know how the plane had been put together in the first place. The door’s restraining bolts had either been screwed in wrong, or not at all. Boeing couldn’t say, because, as it told astonished regulators, the company had “no records of the work being performed.”

The two scenes tell us the peculiar story of a plane maker that, over 25 years, slowly but very deliberately extracted itself from the business of making planes. For nearly 40 years the company built the 737 fuselage itself in the same plant that turned out its B-29 and B-52 bombers. In 2005 it sold this facility to a private-investment firm, keeping the axle grease at arm’s length and notionally shifting risk, capital costs, and labor woes off its books onto its “supplier.” Offloading, Boeing called it. Meanwhile the tail, landing gear, flight controls, and other essentials were outsourced to factories around the world owned by others, and shipped to Boeing for final assembly, turning the company that created the Jet Age into something akin to a glorified gluer-together of precast model-airplane kits. Boeing’s latest screwups vividly dramatize a point often missed in laments of America’s manufacturing decline: that when global economic forces carried off some U.S. manufacturers for good, even the ones that stuck around lost interest in actually making stuff.

The past 30 years may well be remembered as a dark age of U.S. manufacturing. Boeing’s decline illustrates everything that went wrong to bring us here. Fortunately, it also offers a lesson in how to get back out.

In bill boeing’s day, the word manufactory had cachet. You could bank at the Manufacturers Trust. Philadelphia socialites golfed at the Manufacturers’ Club. Plans for the newly consecrated Harvard Business School called for a working factory on campus. The business heroes of the day—Ford, Edison, Firestone—had risen from the shop floor.

There, they had pioneered an entirely new way of making things. The American system of production—featuring interchangeable parts, specialized machine tools, moving assembly lines—was a huge leap beyond European methods of craft production. And it produced lopsided margins of victory for the likes of Ford, GM, and Boeing. To coordinate these complex new systems, two new occupations arose: the industrial engineer, who spoke the language of the shop floor, and the professional financial manager, who spoke the language of accounting.

At first the engineers held sway. In a 1930 article for Aviation News, a Boeing engineer explained how the company’s inspectors “continually supervise the fabrication of the many thousands of parts entering into the assemblage of a single plane.” Philip Johnson, an engineer, succeeded Bill Boeing as CEO; he then passed the company to yet another engineer, Clairmont Egtvedt, who not only managed production of the B-17 bomber from the executive suite, but personally helped design it.

After the Second World War, America enjoyed three decades of dominance by sticking with methods it had used to win it. At the same time, a successor was developing, largely unnoticed, amid the scarcities of defeated Japan. The upstart auto executive Eiji Toyoda had visited Ford’s works and found that, however much he admired the systems, they couldn’t be replicated in Japan. He couldn’t afford, for instance, the hundreds of machine tools specialized to punch out exactly one part at the touch of a button. Although his employees would have to make do with a few general-purpose stamping presses, he gave these skilled workers immense freedom to find the most efficient way to run them. The end result turned out to be radical: Costs fell and errors dropped in a renewable cycle of improvement, or kaizen.

What emerged was a different conception of the corporation. If the managerial bureaucrats in the other departments were to earn their keep, they needed a thorough understanding of the shop floor, or gemba (roughly “place of making value”). The so-called Gemba Walk required their routine presence at each step until they could comprehend the assembly of the whole. Otherwise they risked becoming muda—waste.

When the wave of Japanese competition finally crashed on corporate America, those best equipped to understand it—the engineers—were no longer in charge. American boardrooms had been handed over to the finance people. And they were hypnotized by the new doctrine of shareholder value, which provided a rationale for their ascendance but little incentive for pursuing long-term improvements or sustainable approaches to cost control. Their pay packages rewarded short-term spikes in stock price. There were lots of ways to produce those.

Which brings us to the hinge point of 1990, when a trio of MIT researchers published The Machine That Changed the World, which both named the Japanese system—“lean production”—and urged corporate America to learn from it. Just then, the Japanese economy crashed, easing the pressure on U.S. firms. In the years that followed, American manufacturers instead doubled down on outsourcing, offshoring, and financial engineering. This round of wounds was self-inflicted. Already infused with a stench of decay, manufacturing was written off as yesterday’s activity.

At GE, which produced three of Boeing’s last four CEOs, manufacturing came to be seen as “grunt work,” as the former GE executive David Cote recently told Fortune’s Shawn Tully. Motorola—founded as Galvin Manufacturing and famed for its religious focus on quality—lost its lead in mobile-phone making after it leaned into software and services. Intel’s bunny-suited fab workers were the face of high-tech manufacturing prowess until the company ceded hardware leadership to Asian rivals. “Having once pioneered the development of this extraordinary technology,” the current Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, wrote recently, “we now find ourselves at the mercy of the most fragile global supply chain in the world.”

Phil Condit, the talented engineer who had overseen design of the hugely successful 777, was atop Boeing when I visited the company in late 2000. He was no stranger to the shop floor. Traversing Boeing’s Everett plant in a golf cart, he pointed out the horizontal tail fin stretching above us. Hard to believe it was larger than the 737’s wing, he marveled. Waiting back in his office—still located on the bank of the Duwamish River but greatly swollen by the recent merger with McDonnell Douglas—was a different sort of glee. “Wow! Double wow!” his mother had emailed him, referring to Boeing’s closing stock price that day. And, it would soon emerge, he wanted to get some distance from what he described to the Puget Sound Business Journal as “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff.” The next year, he moved Boeing’s headquarters to Chicago, pulling the top brass away from the shop floor just as the company was embarking on a radically new approach to airplane assembly.

Its newest plane, the 787 Dreamliner, would not be an in-house production. Instead Boeing would farm out the designing and building to a network of “partner” companies—each effectively its own mini-Boeing with its own supply chain to manage. “It used to be you’d have some Boeing people develop the blueprints, then march over and say, ‘Hey, would you build this for me?’” Richard Safran, an analyst at Seaport Research Partners and a former aerospace engineer, told me. “Now, instead, you’re asking them to design it, to integrate it, to do the R&D.”

The allures of this “capital light” approach were many: Troublesome unions, costly machine shops, and development budgets would all become someone else’s problem. Key financial metrics would instantly improve as costs shifted to other firms’ balance sheets. With its emphasis on less, the approach bore a superficial resemblance to lean production. But where lean production pushed know-how back onto the shop floor, this pushed the shop floor and its know-how out the door altogether.

Beyond that were the problems that a Boeing engineer, L. J. Hart-Smith, had foreseen in a prescient white paper that he presented at a 2001 Boeing technical symposium. With outsourcing came the possibility that parts wouldn’t fit together correctly on arrival. “In order to minimize these potential problems,” Hart-Smith warned, “it is necessary for the prime contractor to provide on-site quality, supplier-management, and sometimes technical support. If this is not done, the performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers.”

Boeing didn’t listen. Wall Street dismissed Hart-Smith’s paper as a “rant,” and Boeing put each supplier in charge of its own quality control. When those controls failed, Boeing had to bear the cost of fixing flawed components. Most troubling was the dangerous feedback loop Hart-Smith foresaw. Accounting-wise, those fixes, which in reality are the costs of outsourcing, would instead appear as overhead—creating the impression that in-house work was expensive and furthering the rationale for offloading even more of the manufacturing process.

In the short term, this all worked wonders on Boeing’s balance sheet: Its stock rose more than 600 percent from 2010 to 2019. Then the true folly of this approach made its inevitable appearance when two strikingly similar crashes caused by faulty software on Boeing planes killed a total of 346 people.

Today, if you stand along the Seattle waterfront long enough, sooner or later you’ll catch sight of a train headed south carrying the distinctive shape of a Boeing 737. Though it’s colored a metallic green and missing its tail—clearly not the finished product—it’s the kind of thing you point to and say, Look kids, a Boeing plane’s on that train! Not so. The logomark on the side spells it out: Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kansas, has built this fuselage, which isn’t coming from Boeing. It’s going to Boeing.

A plane is a complex system in which the malfunction of one piece can produce catastrophic failure of the whole. Assembly must be tightly choreographed. But now—especially with Boeing continually trying to wring costs from its suppliers—there were many more chances for errors to creep in. And when FAA investigators finally toured the premises of Spirit AeroSystems—maker of the blown-out door as well as the fuselage it was supposed to fit in—they did not find a tight operation. They found one door seal being lubricated with Dawn liquid dish soap and cleaned with a wet cheesecloth, and another checked with a hotel-room key card.

Adark age doesn’t descend all at once. The process of emerging from one also takes time. It must begin with a recognition that something has been lost. Boeing’s fall just might have provided that rush of clarity. You could be from the 12th century and still know that soap and cheesecloth aren’t for making flying machines. Boeing’s chief financial officer recently admitted that the company got “a little too far ahead of itself on the topic of outsourcing.” It is in talks to reacquire Spirit AeroSystems and is already making the composite wings of its next-gen plane, the 777X, in-house at a new, billion-dollar complex outside Seattle. “Aerospace Executives Finally Rediscover the Shop Floor,” Aviation Week declared on the cover of a recent issue.

As for the rest of corporate America, one of the strongest signals may be coming from the company Boeing has striven so hard to emulate: GE. Under operations-minded boss Larry Culp, the company is finally—only 40 or so years late—pushing itself through a crash course in lean manufacturing. It is belatedly yielding to the reality that workers on the gemba are far better at figuring out more efficient ways of making things than remote bureaucrats with spreadsheet abstractions.

In the crucial field of semiconductors, meanwhile, Intel has recognized that Moore’s Law (the doubling of computing power roughly every 18 months) flows not from above but from manufacturing advances it once dominated. It has undertaken a “death march,” in the words of CEO Pat Gelsinger, to regain its lost edge on the foundry floor. The CHIPS Act has put a powerful political wind at his back. Green and other incentives are powering a broader, truly seismic surge in spending on new U.S. factories, now going up at three times their normal rate. No other country is experiencing such a buildout.

Add all the capacity you want. It won’t reverse the country’s long decline as a manufacturing superpower if corporate America keeps gurgling its sad, tired story about the impossibility of making things on these shores anymore. It’s a story that helped pour a whole lot of wealth into the executive pockets peddling it. But half a century of self-inflicted damage is enough. The doors have fallen off, and it’s plain for all to see: The story was barely bolted together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[W5]

Interestingly, lean manufacturing and Quality Assurance were brought to Japan by an American:

W. Edwards Deming.

 He is known as the father of the quality movement and was hugely influential in post-WWII Japan, credited with revolutionizing Japan's industry and making it one of the most dominant economies in the world. He is best known for his theories of management.

Edited April 22 by W5

[J.O.]

16 hours ago, W5 said:

Interestingly, lean manufacturing and Quality Assurance were brought to Japan by an American:

W. Edwards Deming.

 He is known as the father of the quality movement and was hugely influential in post-WWII Japan, credited with revolutionizing Japan's industry and making it one of the most dominant economies in the world. He is best known for his theories of management.

Indeed. Before he worked with Japan, Deming tried to convince the American auto industry that they needed a similar strategy, but the industry told him to pound sand. The first real effect of his work was seen in Toyota's shift from being builders of crap that noone in North America wanted to making cars that were the envy of the Big Three.

[Malcolm]

Boeing threatens to lock out its private firefighters around Seattle in a dispute over pay

Boeing is threatening to lock out its private force of firefighters who protect its aircraft-manufacturing plants in the Seattle area and bring in replacements beginning Friday night unless the workers accept the company's last offer on wages.

The company said the two sides were far apart in negotiations. It described the lockout as a precautionary move because the union could go on strike at any time once the current contract expires at midnight local time.

Each side accuses the other of bad-faith negotiating.

The labor showdown comes as Boeing deals with mounting losses — more than $24 billion since the start of 2019 — and increased scrutiny over quality and safety in its manufacturing since a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max flying over Oregon in January.

On Friday, Boeing dismissed any safety concerns about the dispute with its industrial firefighters. The company said it has made arrangements with “highly qualified firefighters” to replace the union workers, and the lockout will not affect operations at plants where it builds planes.

Boeing has about 125 firefighters in the Seattle area and a facility about 170 miles (275 kilometers) away in central Washington state. They serve as first responders to fires and medical emergencies, and can call in help from local fire departments. The union says their constant presence lets Boeing get much lower insurance rates.ell, time is running out for Boeing and its union

 

The company says firefighters were paid $91,000 on average last year.

Casey Yeager, president of Local I-66 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said Boeing was proposing raises of 18% to 20% that would still leave crews earning 20% to 30% less than firefighters in the cities where Boeing plants are located. He said the union is seeking raises of 40% to 50%.

A major sticking point is Boeing's demand to make firefighters wait 19 years to hit top pay scale, up from 14 years. The union is proposing five years.

“If they keep pushing it out, you'll never get” to top scale, said Kjel Swedelius, a Boeing firefighter for more than six years. “Our turnover rate is super, super high."

Swedelius said he needs financial assistance to cover care for his autistic 7-year-old son.

“I really like working at Boeing, but it's getting harder and harder,” he said. “They don't want to keep up with inflation."

In a letter to the union this week, Boeing said the union had rejected two previous proposals, and the company “has gone as far financially as it is willing to go and will not add any more money to its offer.”

The company, which is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, said it proposes to pay firefighters four hours of overtime in every 24-hour shift, which would increase their pay $21,000 a year on average.

Boeing has lodged a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the union of bad-faith bargaining during more than two months of negotiations and several meetings with a federal mediator.

“With a potential for a strike, we have activated our contingency plan that includes the use of highly qualified firefighters,” a company spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “If a contract is not ratified by 12:01 a.m. (Saturday), we will lock out all members of the bargaining unit.”

David Koenig, The Associated Press

[Kip Powick]

 a company spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “If a contract is not ratified by 12:01 a.m. (Saturday), we will lock out all members of the bargaining unit.”

 

The company said Saturday that it locked out about 125 firefighters and a facility about 170 miles (275 kilometers) away in central Washington. The firefighters serve as first responders to fires and medical emergencies and can call in help from local fire departments.

[Malcolm]

Boeing Lost $32 Billion Over Last Five Years

Story by Rich Thomaselli

 • 3h 

Boeing has taken a massive financial hit, and this started well before the Alaska Airlines door panel issue earlier this year.

Simply put, Boeing has been hemorrhaging money for the better part of the last five years.

How much? Try $32 billion. With government investigations, safety protocol questions, and delivery delays, one wonders how long Boeing will last.

But remember that the company maintains a bit of exclusivity. It is one of only two manufacturers in the world that build full-service commercial jets. Few companies could handle that kind of financial hit, meaning Boeing could survive for several more years just on that alone.

But the January 5 Alaska Airlines door panel incident exacerbated the financial woes.

“Given the dynamics of their place in the industry and the industry itself, they have the luxury of time,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace and defense industry consultant. “It’s an industry with the highest possible barriers to entry and very strong demand for its products. But they’ve wasted a lot of that time.”

A Good News, Bad News Situation

Boeing is in a good news and bad news situation. The company has more than 5,000 airplane orders, but it can’t fulfill them fast enough to make a profit.

“Can the current situation go on forever? No, it can’t,” said Ron Epstein, aerospace analyst for Bank of America. “That being said, they have some leeway. They’re not going to be in trouble tomorrow.”

 

 

Management said it is now concerned more about safety and quality issues than profitability.

“It is important that our people and our stakeholders understand how promising Boeing’s future looks,” CEO Dave Calhoun said. “Demand across our portfolio remains incredibly strong. Our people are world-class. There’s a lot of work in front of us, but I’m proud of our team and remain fully confident in our future.”

Still, he and several other executives said they would step down by year’s end. 

The company has a staggering $48 billion in debt right now, and may have to issue more debt this year to avoid falling into junk bond status.

Chief Financial Officer Brian West recently told investors that Boeing is handling its debt load.

“We’re committed to managing the balance sheet in a prudent manner with two main objectives,” he said then. “One, prioritize the investment grade rating; and two, allow the factory and supply chain to stabilize for a stronger trajectory as we exit this year.”

[Malcolm]

Beleaguered airline manufacturer Boeing faces at least ten more ‘safe and sound’ whistleblowers after two men who had publicly spoken out against the troubled aerospace company died in recent weeks.

Boeing is facing ten more ‘safe and sound’ whistleblowers after two die suddenly

Joshua Dean, who worked as a quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems, died last week, according to his family. The 45-year-old who had an active lifestyle and was believed to be in good health, passed away in the hospital following the onset of a fast-moving infection. He suffered from Influenza B and MRSA, and developed pneumonia, according to Fox59.

 

John Barnett, 62, a quality control engineer at Boeing for 32 years, was found dead at a hotel in March, reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

There remain at least ten other Boeing whistleblowers out there, both former and current employees, who are “safe and sound” lawyers for both Dean and Barnett told The Independent.

Attorney Brian Knowles described the two men as “heroes” who wanted to “help the company do better.”

He told The Independent: “What I don’t want to see is, these two unfortunate circumstances, what happened with Josh or John, is to make them fearful to speak up. [But] there are other people out there... there are others.”

 

In January, a door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 travelling for Alaska Airlines blew off in mid-air, leading to the grounding of all 171 MAX 9 jets by the FAA and instigating an investigation (AP)© Provided by The Independent

He added that he would not “speculate” on the multiple conspiracy theories being spread online surrounding the two men’s deaths.

“These men were heroes. So are all the whistleblowers. They loved the company and wanted to help the company do better,” Mr Knowles previously told The New York Post. “They didn’t speak out to be aggravating or for fame. They’re raising concerns because people’s lives are at stake.”

 

It comes after a string of incidents related to Boeing over the past year. In January, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9’s door plug blew off in mid-air, leading to the grounding of all 171 MAX 9 jets by the FAA and instigating an investigation.

On Monday the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) announced it had launched a new investigation into Boeing after the manufacturer “voluntarily” informed it that inspections of a number of its 787 Dreamliner models “may not have been completed.”

In a statement to NPR, the FAA said it’s also investigating “whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.” The agency also said Boeing is re-inspecting “all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet.”

Monday’s announcement comes in the wake of several previous Boeing controversies.

 

Four people came forward — including Dean and Barnett, alleged that corner-cutting in the manufacturing process of the MAX 9 was causing safety risks.

Dave Calhoun, Boeing CEO, announced in March that he would step down at the end of the year while the company reported a $355m net loss for the first quarter of 2024.

Meanwhile, Dean’s family posted moving tributes to him on social media.

“My handsome brother Joshua passed away this morning and is with our baby brother. I don’t know how much more my family can take. I don’t know how much more I can take honestly,” his sister, Taylor Rae Roberts, wrote in a Facebook post.

He had gone public with claims that Spirit’s leadership ignored manufacturing defects in Boeing’s 737 MAX, in a complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in December 2023, as part of a lawsuit filed against the company by shareholders in December 2023.

 

He told The Wall Street Journal in January that he had been fired in April 2023 for pointing out that holes in jet fuselages had been drilled incorrectly.

Barnett was found dead at a hotel in March in Charleston, South Carolina.

The former Boeing worker had alleged that the company intentionally used defective parts in its planes and warned that passengers on its 787 Dreamliner might face a lack of oxygen if a sudden decompression occurred.

 

John Barnett, 62, was found dead in a hotel room in March from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after beginning testimony in a lawsuit against Boeing (@Megatron_ron/Twitter)© Provided by The Independent

He was found dead just days after beginning testimony into another lawsuit against Boeing.

Mr Knowles said Barnett had developed PTSD through working for the company, having faced push back against issues he had raised to his superiours.

“That stuff weighed on him,” Mr Knowles told The Independent.

 

“When you’re complaining up the chain about serious quality and safety issues you should be taken seriously, you dhouldn’t be harassed for doing that. And he faced that constantly.

“That’s a pretty heavy load to take on and then to raise issues and be told not to worry about it, to work in the grey area... there is no grey area.”

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.

 

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

[Malcolm]

Boeing Under Investigation After ‘Several’ Employees Failed to Perform Required Wing Attachment Inspection (msn.com)

[deicer]

[Malcolm]

Boeing at Risk of Prosecution for Breaking Deal Over Crashes

The Boeing logo on a building at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, US, on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. Boeing Co. is scheduled to release earnings figures on July 26.© Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. faces possible criminal prosecution after the US Justice Department found the company violated a deferred-prosecution agreement tied to two fatal crashes half a decade ago, intensifying the crisis engulfing the embattled US planemaker. 

The company breached the $2.5 billion settlement “by failing to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations,” according to the filing late on Tuesday.

 

Boeing, whose shares were down more than 1% shortly after trading began on Wednesday, now has four weeks to respond with its analysis and comments, which will be taken into consideration with regard to any next steps. The Justice Department said it’s still determining how to proceed, including whether and how to punish the company.

The decision escalates the legal risks facing the planemaker in the wake of a near-catastrophe in early January, when a fuselage panel blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 mid-flight after workers failed to install critical bolts. The accident took place two days before the expiration of the deferred-prosecution agreement, in which Boeing agreed to comply with the settlement and cooperate with the government for a period of three years, after which the charge would be dismissed. 

“We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue,” Boeing said in a statement after the Justice Department filing. 

 

Related video: Boeing whistleblower, aviation group launch safety reporting system (KOIN Portland)

New at 5:00 tonight, Boeing could be prosecuted for breaking

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Under the terms of the accord, the company adopted a compliance program designed to prevent it from deceiving regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration. The deferred-prosecution agreement, reached in the waning days of the Trump administration, appeared to give Boeing the equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card despite the two crashes that took the lives of 346 people.

Public Outrage

Boeing shares were down 1.1% to $178.85 at 9:38 a.m. Wednesday in New York. The shares fell less than 1% following the department’s decision in after-hours trading Tuesday. The stock has tumbled about 31% so far this year, the second-worst performance on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 

Boeing also faces another ultimatum, that one from the FAA, to devise a plan to fix what the regulator called “systemic” quality-control issues. Those 90 days, issued in late February, are set to run out at the end of this month. 

 

Read More: Boeing Gets 90-Day FAA Ultimatum to Fix Its Quality Woes (2)

US prosecutors in Seattle have already sent subpoenas seeking documents and communications from Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., which made the door plug that blew out. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is also scrutinizing Boeing’s comments about its safety practices after the Alaska Air accident.

The 2021 agreement not to prosecute Boeing over the two 737 Max jetliner crashes sparked intense criticism, including from victims’ families. Members of the victims families were outraged that prosecutors had not reached out to them before cutting the deal with Boeing, which agreed to pay a criminal fine of $243 million, but was allowed to dodge a fraud charge for withholding important information about the 737 Max from the FAA.

Presiding Judge

In 2022, the families were able to convince the presiding judge in the case that the Justice Department had improperly excluded them, in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. Even so, the judge declined to alter the terms of the Boeing agreement.

 

Scrutiny of Boeing has ramped up in the months since the Alaska Airlines accident, the February FAA report, and amid a wave of new whistleblower allegations pertaining to the planemaker’s manufacturing processes. Congressional panels, including the Senate Commerce Committee, have already held hearings on some of these issues with plans to have both the FAA and Boeing executives testify in the near future.

Lawyers for families of crash victims hailed the Justice Department’s findings.

“This is a positive first step, and for the families, a long time coming,” said Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing the crash victims’ families. “But we need to see further action from DOJ to hold Boeing accountable, and plan to use our meeting on May 31 to explain in more details what we believe would be a satisfactory remedy to Boeing’s ongoing criminal conduct.”

 

‘Egregious’ Acts

Erin Applebaum, a partner at Kreindler & Kreindler LLP who also represents families, said her clients “hope that DOJ will continue to pursue justice for Boeing’s victims and move forward with a prosecution against Boeing for its egregious criminal acts that resulted in the deaths of 346 innocent people.”

The Justice Department said it plans to confer with the families and their lawyers on May 31 and inform the court of its decision for any punishment against Boeing no later than July 7.

Boeing took steps to improve safety following the two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, including creating a chief aerospace safety officer and changing the management structure so its engineers reported to chief engineer Howard McKenzie rather than business leaders. But the measures didn’t go nearly far enough, according to scathing report issued by the Federal Aviation Administration in February.

 

The yearlong study found that many Boeing employees didn’t know how to flag potential safety issues and didn’t trust the “Speak Up” program the company put in place to flag wrongdoing. The planemaker was also faulted for ineffective procedures and training.

The case USA v. The Boeing Company, 21-cr-00005, US District Court, Northern District of Texas (Fort Worth).

--With assistance from Allyson Versprille.

(Updates with share price Wednesday morning.)

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[deicer]

The hits just keep coming...

Now 777's have problems.

https://www.news18.com/world/boeing-faces-fresh-safety-concerns-over-electrical-flaw-in-777-aircraft-that-could-cause-fuel-tank-explosion-8901092.html

Boeing Faces Fresh Safety Concerns Over Electrical Flaw in 777 Aircraft That Could Cause 'Fuel Tank Explosion'

Embattled US aircraft maker Boeing has identified a big flaw in its 777 aircraft fleet that could lead to onboard fires. The problem arises from inadequate electrical insulation near the fuel tank, according to a proposal from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in March.

If left unaddressed, the flaw could trigger ignition within the fuel tank, resulting in fires or explosions, the New York Post reported. The affected aircraft include nearly 300 Boeing 777s across the US, spanning various models such as the 77–200, –200LR, –300, –300ER, and 777F series. After Boeing disclosed the issues, the FAA proposed a $14 million solution to rectify the issue across all 292 affected US-registered airplanes.

This solution entails installing electrical bonding and grounding components in the center fuel tank, as outlined in the proposed Airworthiness Directive (AD) issued by the FAA. The proposed repairs involve thorough inspections, lasting approximately 90 hours per aircraft, followed by the installation of Teflon sleeves and cap fasteners in specific areas of the fuel tanks.

This fix comes after a similar directive issued by the FAA in 2017, aimed at addressing electrical issues in several Boeing 777 models. The goal is to prevent arcing inside the main and center fuel tanks, which, when combined with flammable fuel vapors, could lead to explosions and aircraft losses. The US regulator’s report prompted Boeing to respond by May 9. If approved, Boeing would have up to 60 months to complete the necessary repairs.

Boeing has expressed its support for the FAA’s proposal, stressing that the issue does not pose an immediate safety-of-flight concern. Despite being an older aircraft, the Boeing 777 is widely used worldwide. The Boeing 777 fleet has been operational for nearly 30 years, transporting over 3.9 billion passengers. However, in recent months, Boeing’s aircraft have faced heightened scrutiny due to various safety issues, including a January incident where a door plug blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight. Earlier, Boeing said its leaders are committed to cooperating with the FAA probe.

[Malcolm]

Boeing faces 'long road' on safety issues, US FAA says

Story by David Shepardson

 • 1d • 2 min read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. planemaker Boeing faces a "long road" to address safety issues, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday as it prepares to receive the company's plan to address concerns.

In late February, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker gave Boeing 90 days to develop a comprehensive plan to address "systemic quality-control issues" and barred it from expanding 737 MAX production.

 

Boeing has faced mounting questions after a door panel detached during a Jan. 5 flight on a new Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9, forcing pilots to make an emergency landing while passengers were exposed to a gaping hole 16,000 feet above the ground. An FAA audit also found serious issues.

Whitaker told ABC News the 90-day plan, due next week, "is not the end of the process. It's the beginning and it's going to be a long road to get Boeing back to where they need to be making safe airplanes."

He said the FAA has been working closely with Boeing over the last 90 days on "what that plan is going to look like if it's to bring the quality back where it needs to be at their factories".

"It's to bring the safety system where it needs to be and bring the culture where it needs to be so that employees can speak up when they see something that is concerning."

 

Related video: Whistleblower's lawyers blame Boeing for client's suicide (FOX News)

 

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The National Transportation Safety Board has said the plane was missing four key bolts, and Boeing has said it believes required documents detailing the doors during production were never created.

Whitaker held an all-day meeting with Calhoun in February and the FAA plans a new round of meetings with Boeing next week. Boeing faces an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the door plug blowout as well.

Calhoun, who has since announced he plans to step down as CEO later this year, said earlier the planemaker "will develop the comprehensive action plan with measurable criteria that demonstrates the profound change that Administrator Whitaker and the FAA demand".

Separately, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday that Boeing is "saying the right things, they're taking encouraging steps, but we need to make sure that we see it on the shop floor, that we see it in terms of the quality of the product that rolls off the line".

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Christina Fincher and Jan Harvey)

[W5]

This week Boeing must deliver on safety–again

https://leehamnews.com/2024/05/28/todays-the-day-boeing-must-deliver-on-safety-again/

 

By the Leeham News Team

Analysis

May 28, 2024, © Leeham News: Boeing’s FAA-mandated plan to improve its safety culture is due this week.

Following the Jan. 5 accident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and a year-long safety study commissioned by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing was given 90 days to come up with a new plan to improve safety procedures.

Boeing’s been down this path before. Following the 2018/19 crashes of two 737-8 MAXes in which 346 people died, Boeing implemented several safety studies and procedures. Flight 1282 demonstrated a shocking lack of results from the earlier efforts.

The FAA on Feb. 29 gave Boeing 90 days to make a realistic plan for addressing the path forward to an acceptable level of quality. This is an exceptionally tall ask given all that has gone wrong in the recent past. It’s unclear if the FAA will release Boeing’s proposal publicly. But LNA’s reporting team, which includes retired Boeing employees whose duties included safety and production, thinks that whatever plan is put forth to the FAA will all boil down to one point, execution. That’s Boeing’s problem today: Failure to execute its production plan as documented in its operation command media.

 

Failure has been an option

The Execution Failure shortlist looks like this:

• Boeing’s Organization Designation Authority (ODA) is limited;
• 737 production has been capped at 38 aircraft due to quality problems;
• 787 fuselage splice gap rework continues;
• Numerous whistleblowers have stepped up with stories of retaliation and retribution;
• Alaska Airlines sustained a 737 in flight plug door departure;
• Lufthansa has delayed a 777 delivery over multiple quality escapes;
• 737 spoiler wire chafing has caused flight control problems;
• 777 fuel tank inerting grounding faults; and
• 787 titanium floor beam fittings are suspect on more than 400 aircraft.

In all fairness, one has to remember that transport aircraft are one of the most complicated products in the world to produce. They are incredibly tightly regulated when you look at all the boxes you must check to gain certification.

The FAA is completely correct in asking Boeing for a plan to reverse course and return to building a quality product again. But it seems to be a nebulous request. This appears to be a time when the FAA is being whipsawed between Congressional action, internal limitations, and a regulated entity that repeats the mantra, that this isn’t an immediate safety of flight concern.

So where do you start?

Quality Management Systems

Let’s look at the command media. ASQ/ANSI/ISO 9001:2015: Quality Management Systems. The Quality Management System, which is often referred to as a QMS, is a collection of policies, processes, documented procedures, and records. This collection of documentation defines the set of internal rules that will govern how a manufacturing system deals with defining and monitoring a Quality System. This is the Parent Spec; AS9100 is the upgraded Aerospace Industry version of the QMS Spec. The following description is from the Modus Engineering group.

AS9100

AS9100 takes all of the requirements of ISO 9001 and adds to them to make them more applicable to the unique requirements of the aerospace and defense industries. While not as widely applicable across industries as ISO 9001, AS9100 is the gold standard of quality manufacturing certifications in the aerospace industry.

Apart from AS9100’s focus on the aerospace industry, the requirements and focus areas of AS9100 and ISO 9001 are largely similar. However, there are a few key differences to pay attention to.

Risk Reduction

Because quality management systems can become a literal life and death concern in aerospace manufacturing, one of the most important components of AS9100 is reducing the ability of manufacturers to introduce risk as they produce parts for the aerospace and defense industries.

The basic risk identification procedures called for in ISO 9001 remain the same, but AS9100 adds to them. For example, AS9100 calls for the responsibilities associated with risk management during manufacturing to be assigned to a specific employee or department.

Information Verification and Counterfeit Parts

Another primary addition of AS9100 is required inspection and testing to account for risk factors inherent to the aerospace industry, such as counterfeit parts. While ISO 9001 calls for test reports and similar quality information from external providers of components, AS9100 requires manufacturers to actually verify that information through their own testing, inspection and audits.

Quality of Production Equipment

Where ISO 9001 remains more general about the storage and inspection of equipment used to manufacture various parts, AS9100 gets extremely specific. Under AS9100, everything used in the production process, from automated machinery on the production floor to the software that controls these devices, has to have defined storage protocols, as well as a hard schedule for maintenance and inspection.

Source: Modus Engineering group.

Production System 9001 has a few key differences from AS9100

From this internationally recognized standard, Boeing captured all the elements needed to certify its Boeing Production System with the FAA with respect to how quality would be defined, measured and monitored. This is a solid starting point in that nobody has implicated any failings in Boeing’s actual QMS. Boeing has written a great set of processes and procedures, and if they were followed, life would improve quickly.

People Parts and Processes

People, Parts, and Processes all need to be in place to deliver a quality aircraft. The processes are there, proven, and exceptionally robust. Parts are somewhat problematic in that the supply chain woes affecting the industry causing late deliveries of components don’t look to have an answer soon. Boeing’s supply issues seem to involve more reported quality problems than Embraer or Airbus. Spirit’s problems are so severe that Boeing may be better off buying back their old Wichita facilities.

Partnering for Poverty

Boeing had a program in place called Partnering for Success. Our understanding of it was that ultimately, Boeing was reclaiming supplier margins by applying a learning curve rationale to decreasing payments over time. The justification was that the more a vendor performed a task, the better they got at it and the less it cost them.

Boeing’s arguably arrogant point was that if it cost a vendor less to build their parts, they were entitled to pay less. This is seen by some as the reason Boeing’s vendors seem to have more reported quality issues than Airbus in that you may be getting what you pay for.

Boeing may have created financial incentives for vendors to widen their goalposts and accept non-conforming parts as good to reduce their losses. Recently, reporting has indicated that Boeing may be softening this position as it seems to recognize the unintended consequences of financially squeezing suppliers.

The changes needed

People are the issue inside Boeing and where change needs to occur. There are a few reasons.

First is the loss of skills as the older experienced folks left all levels of the company. This skill vacuum contributed to many of the issues we note today. Loss of institutional knowledge accelerated the offload of Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering work packages. Critically, the loss of Ukrainian Engineering personnel due to the war with Russia as well as the inability to continue to source Boeing Moscow for offload work has dramatically restricted Boeing’s ability to get their work done on schedule.

The impact of these losses creeps through the entire Engineering workforce.

Second, there seems to be a lack of focus on doing the right thing. Rate became king and Boeing by its admission focused on delivery first. This was a top-down failure starting in upper management and winding its way down to the shop floor.

Notably, each year there is an ethics commitment exercise where senior Boeing leadership “teach” rank and file to do the right thing first, without fear of repercussions while managing the company to focus on delivery rates above all. Boeing’s leadership gave their employees two distinctly different messages. The public relations face of Boeing said to always do the right thing while managers were tasked with moving the birds through the factory.

Past complaints

Look at the ODA issue as an example of this phenomenon. Boeing’s ODAs have complained bitterly that their management pressured them to approve FAA designee work when it was against the better judgment of the ODA members. This is a people problem caused by management chasing deliveries while ODA members chase compliance with requirements. This isn’t easily solved until there is an actual shift in priorities in the management of the enterprise.

The Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines plug door loss is another example of chasing deliveries over following the process. The plug door removal/opening fiasco involving finger-pointing between Spirit and Boeing resulting in the loss of the plug door in flight highlights just how broken the system is today. It was more important to blame somebody for the defect than it was to do a good job putting the airplane together. The cause is a mixed message:  do a good job, but don’t get in the way of delivering the airplane.

The Message

Years ago, the overarching rule for quality in everything that was done was simple: Perform to the requirements or cause the requirements to be officially changed. That should be today’s message. It isn’t. There seems to be an inability for something this simple to be embraced again. Until Boeing puts this into place as the prime directive, any plan offered to the FAA will fail, no matter what the plan looks like.

Last week, Boeing issued this message about its safety progress since flight 1282:

 In late February, we paused training for our new Manufacturing and Quality hires for about six weeks to assess how we could better prepare teammates. We then made substantial improvements to our training program based on feedback from employees, and the FAA, as well as a review of industry best practices.

 Here are some of the changes we’ve made for employees across Commercial Airplanes:

Expanded workforce training and proficiency

• • New hires in Manufacturing and Quality continue to start in our Foundational Training Centers. Now, each new employee receives 10 to 14 weeks of foundational skills training before moving to the production floor, which is one to two weeks more on average per teammate. We provide more time and support for those who need it.
  • New hires are then paired with a workplace coach or peer trainer on the factory floor for structured on-the-job training and won’t work on their own until they demonstrate established proficiency measures.
  • Teammates already on the production floor prior to these improvements are required to take proficiency assessments.

Investments in training

• • We’re transitioning to a digital record-keeping platform for new employees. This paperless system helps trainees track and formally document their progress while allowing leaders to verify who’s ready for a particular job and who needs more attention and training.

In our Renton Foundational Training Center, we installed a section of 737 fuselage for employees to practice various skills including wiring installation and identifying potential defects.

Given the safety improvement plans adopted after the 2018-19 MAX crisis, Boeing has yet to explain why those failed and the current effort is necessary.

 

[deicer]

If you're into baseball, you know....

[Kip Powick]

Put that in the pile with those that believe Trump was NOT guilty 

[deicer]