FAA audit of Boeing jet’s production finds issues
The agency also reported problems with a key supplier
WASHINGTON — A sixweek audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.
The air safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency said the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.
The presentation reviewed by the Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.
For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the FAA conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.
The FAA also conducted 13 product audits for the part of the inquiry that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades, and seven resulted in failing ones, the presentation said.
At one point during the examination, the agency observed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document that describes some of the findings. That action was “not identified/ documented/called-out in the production order,” the document said.
In another instance, the FAA saw Spirit mechanics apply liquid Dawn soap to a door seal “as lubricant in the fit-up process,” according to the document. The door seal was then cleaned with a wet cheesecloth, the document said, noting that instructions were “vague and unclear on what specifications/actions are to be followed or recorded by the mechanic.”
Asked about the appropriateness of using a hotel key card or Dawn soap in those situations, a spokesperson for Spirit, Joe Buccino, said the company was “reviewing all identified nonconformities for corrective action.”
In late February, the FAA gave the company 90 days to develop a plan for quality control improvements.
In a related development, documents and a series of interviews revealed that a day before the door plug blew out of the Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, engineers and technicians for the airline were so concerned about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening and undergo maintenance.
The airline chose to keep the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, in service with some restrictions, carrying passengers until it completed three flights that were scheduled to end that night in Portland, the site of one of the airline’s maintenance facilities.
Before the plane could complete that scheduled sequence of flights and go in for the maintenance check, the door plug blew out at 16,000 feet, minutes after embarking on the second flight of the day, from Portland to Ontario International Airport in California.
The scheduling of the maintenance check on the plane has not previously been reported. It demonstrates that the airline chose to keep the plane in service rather than flying it to Portland without passengers.
Alaska Airlines confirmed the sequence of events. But the airline said the warnings it had on the plane did not meet its standards for immediately taking it out of service.