If It's Boeing, I Ain't Going

We now have a leak from what appears to be an inside source at Boeing that it was Boeing, and not Spirit AeroSystems that misinstalled the screws. (Original source is a commenter at Leeham News)

Going into great detail on the nature of the work, and the specifics of the various manufacturing and quality systems at the plant, he notes that the plugs and doors are routinely removed at the Renton facility for either access or repair:

The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times.

If verified by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, this would leave Boeing primarily at fault for the accident, rather than its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which originally installed the panel into the 737 MAX 9 fuselage in Wichita, Kan.

That panel, a door plug used to seal a hole in the fuselage sometimes used to accommodate an emergency exit, blew out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 as it climbed out of Portland on Jan. 5. The hair-raising incident drew fresh and sharp criticism of Boeing’s quality control systems and safety culture, which has been under the microscope since two fatal 737 MAX crashes five years ago.

Last week, a different person — an anonymous whistleblower who appears to have access to Boeing’s manufacturing records of the work done assembling the specific Alaska Airlines jet that suffered the blowout — on an aviation website separately provided many additional details about how the door plug came to be removed and then mis-installed.

“The reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeing’s own records,” the whistleblower wrote. “It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business.”

The self-described Boeing insider said company records show four bolts that prevent the door plug from sliding up off the door frame stop pads that take the pressurization loads in flight, “were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane.” the whistleblower stated. “Our own records reflect this.”

NTSB investigators already publicly raised the possibility that the bolts had not been installed.

As an aside, major props to the writer of this story, Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, for crediting the online source of this revelation, and providing a link further down in the article.

You rarely, if ever, see this in papers like the New York Times or Washington Post.rarely acknowledge online reporting.

The account goes on to describe shocking lapses in Boeing’s quality control process in Renton.

The work of the mechanics on the door plug should have been formally inspected and signed off by a Boeing quality inspector.

It wasn’t, the whistleblower wrote, because of a process failure and the use of two separate systems to record what work was accomplished.

Boeing’s 737 production system is described as “a rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen.”

If that account of what happened is indeed fully documented in Boeing’s system it should be readily verified by the investigation.

This is huge if true.

Hell, if even only the underlying processes and procedures are largely as described, and no smoking gun is found, this is huge.