Behind the Alaska blowout, a habit Boeing can’t break
completing certain tasks. Those stations are equipped with tooling, platforms and crews trained to do the jobs designated for the site. Planes advance to the next station roughly every 24 hours.
Sometimes, a missing part prevents workers from finishing the designated job. Leaving the plane sitting in place would slow the entire production line. So it moves ahead and the part gets added or repair is completed somewhere down the line.
In some cases, the work isn’t done until the plane leaves the factory for what is known as the flight line, a spot outside the factory where planes are parked as they await delivery.
Doing a job away from the intended workstation can be problematic. The proper tooling may not be on hand, leaving workers moving back and forth to get the necessary equipment. And the station may not be set up for the job.
“You’re performing work later in the process, in a different location that wasn’t engineered ergonomically for the work,” said Jon Holden, president of an IAM chapter representing 32,000 Boeing workers in Washington state. “Now I’m out on the flight line and I’m on a ladderoronacontouredsurface.
“It’s something you want to avoid, but you gotta move that airplane out of that position because another one is coming,” Holden said.
Workers say traveled work makes their jobs harder and increases the likelihood for mistakes, but phasing out the practice is tough because it helps keep planes rolling off the line. Keeping production lines moving even when certain parts aren’t available for a given job helps avoid costly slowdowns.
Pressure on Boeing to keep the planes coming has been especially high in the past year.
Airlines, following years of depressed travel amid the pandemic, scrambled to meet growing post-Covid demand.
Once people started flying again, Boeing faced a supply chain that was slow to restart following shutdowns during both the pandemic and the nearly two-year grounding of Boeing’s bestselling MAX jets because of the crashes. Compounding the problem: a series of quality mishaps at Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier, that slowed 737 production to a crawl last fall.
The company also is in talks to take over Spirit, whose quality problems have resulted in fuselagesarriving at Boeing’ s factory with defects. Last month, Boeing began refusing to take shipments of any Spirit part not completed to specification. Doing so will slow 737 production, which will give workers a chance to catch up on unfinished jobs, commercial chief Stan Deal said in a memo to employees.
Traveled work emerged as a problem during a review of Boeing’s safety culture on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration. Employees are told that safety is the top priority “but then they see airplanes being pushed out with work not being finished,” said Javier de Luis, who was part of an independent panel that conducted the review. He teaches aerospace engineering at MIT and his sister, Graziella de Luis, died in the second MAX crash in Ethiopia.