FAA’s Actions in Light of COvid-19, and the Alaska Airlines Airline Accident, have Solved an “Ethical” Motion

The agency’s latest actions come a day after the FAA announced a formal investigation of Boeing’s manufacturing processes. The company has pledged to cooperate “fully and transparently” with the investigation.

The aviation industry was in the midst of the COvid-19 pandemic when the MAX was allowed to fly again in late 2020.

As Boeing’s Max 9 aircraft remain grounded, Alaska and United airlines have canceled hundreds of flights a day. Both airlines say they’re still awaiting final approval of guidelines from the FAA so that they can officially inspect the grounded planes.

“The public deserves a comprehensive evaluation of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems to strengthen production quality and aviation safety,” Cantwell said in a statement.

Documents filed as part of the suit include internal company emails and an ethics complaint filed with Spirit’s human resources department dating back as far as February 2022. They were filed with a federal court in December, but they’re drawing interest now after an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 jet that Spirit worked on suffered a calamity over Oregon.

Following through on a shift to third-party oversight could be a challenge for the FAA and aviation industry it regulates.

The impact of the talks here is so big, they’re taking their time doing it. “It’s large.” Every US manufacturer that makes aircraft will be affected by it.

The FAA was asked to provide records from their oversight of Boeing and the company’s Kansas-based supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, in connection with the Alaska Airlines incident.

“This is a very smart move by the FAA” to consider moving safety oversight to an independent third party, he said in an interview with NPR. “The drive for profitability may just be overriding this ability to have an independent delegation within the organization.”

Since the near catastrophe, the FAA has grounded all Max 9 jets for safety checks. The agency also sent Boeing a letter on Thursday to inform the company of an investigation into the incident, saying the circumstances “indicate that Boeing may have failed to ensure its completed products conformed to its approved design and were in a condition for safe operation,” citing testing and inspection requirements.

No one was killed during the Alaska Airlines incident, but investigators say it could have been much worse if the plane, which was at 16,000 feet when the door plug blew out, had violently depressurized at a higher altitude.

A recent lawsuit alleges ‘excessive’ defects at Boeing parts supplier: NPR‘s comment on the 737 Max 9 plane

A quality-control inspector working at a key supplier for Boeing’s 737 Max plane reported finding an “excessive amount of defects” at a plant in Kansas, according to documents filed in federal court last month.

This week, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the only U.S. carriers that use the Max 9, reported finding loose bolts on 737 Max 9 aircraft, and inspections are continuing. There are other versions of the737, such as the Max 8, that have not been affected. And some airlines use a configuration of the Max 9 that doesn’t have door plugs like the one that blew out.

The lawsuit isn’t specific about the defects that caused the door plug to blow out. When asked about the lawsuit’s allegations by NPR, a Spirit representative declined to comment.

“This included preparation for completed fuselages to be shipped to Boeing, and oversight for the ‘final shake,’ which is what Spirit called its final inspection before shipment,” the lawsuit states.

The court filing states that an internal quality auditor who was fired said thatauditors occasionally found bolts in mechanics’ toolboxes that weren’t properly adjusted. The structural integrity of parts could be at risk due to over tightening or under-tightening of the wrench that is out of calibration.

The former employee said that managers and mechanics were angered bySpirit’s requirement for auditors to seize wrongly aligned tools and lock them up to stop the audit.

Source: A recent lawsuit alleges ‘excessive’ defects at Boeing parts supplier

The 20-Month Breakout of the Alaska Airlines Airliner Blowout on Dec. 19, 2018: The Spirit Aerosystems Investigative Team

Spirit’s customers include both the EU-based Airbus and Boeing, but the company has longstanding ties to Boeing: Spirit was spun off from the U.S. aircraft maker in 2005, and in 2020 it said the 737 Max accounted for more than 50% of its annual revenue.

Its headquarters are in Wichita, Kan., where Spirit is listed as the city’s largest employer, with some 9,500 workers. Its global reach spans to Malaysia, France, Northern Ireland, and Morocco.

But Spirit AeroSystems has faced a string of challenges in recent years, and last November the company reported a net loss of $691.6 million in the first three quarters of 2023. It also said it was $3.87 billion in debt.

The 20-month grounding of the popular plane rocked Spirit financially: As orders for the Boeing airliner dried up, production and deliveries halted, and Spirit laid off some 2,800 employees.

The first commercial flight of the Max was in late 2017, the fourth generation of Boeing’s737. The Max 9, the model currently under scrutiny, has a longer fuselage than the Max 8. The first iteration of the Boeing airliner was among the most popular in the world.

NTSB head Homendy said on Monday that her agency asked Spirit AeroSystems to be a party to its investigation of the recent blowout on the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9. The aircraft, with tail number N704AL, had been certified as airworthy and entered into service only months before Friday’s incident.

That means Spirit can contribute technical information and expertise to the investigation and submit its own “proposed findings of cause,” according to the NTSB. But the agency itself would be responsible for the analysis and final report.

A large chunk of the suit focuses on how executives allegedly handled a problem that made headlines last summer. It was at this time that it was announced that Spirit had put holes in some of their planes, which were a critical piece of the structure around the cabin.

Managers at several departments were warned about a defect after Joshua Dean, who was a quality auditor at Spirit at the time, reported it to them.

The suit claims that the issue was “hidden from investors until it was revealed by independent reporting ten months after Spirit found it.”

That problem became public knowledge as Spirit was already dealing with another issue: Last April, Boeing revealed a defect in the way tail fin fittings were joined to the aft fuselage on some models of the 737 MAX, resulting in a production slowdown.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants hid from investors that Spirit suffered from numerous quality failures. “These failures included defects such as the routine presence of foreign object debris (‘FOD’) in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality.”

The jury trial the plaintiffs want would seek compensation for all damages that were sustained as a result of Defendants’ wrongdoing.