We now have a good picture of why the door of the Alaska Airlines 737 blew off mid-flight. The answer is speed and sloppiness every step of the way. Here are the details.
Out of Sequence Production
Out of sequence production to keep production lines moving and sloppy work procedures and Behind the Alaska Blowout.
Months before a piece of a Boeing 737 blew out midflight, leaving a door-sized hole in its side, the plane spent nearly three weeks shuffling down an assembly line with faulty rivets in need of repair.
Workers had spotted the bad parts almost immediately after the plane’s fuselage arrived at the factory. But they didn’t make the fix right away and the 737 continued on to the next workstation. When crews completed the repair 19 days later, they failed to replace four critical bolts on a plug door they had opened to do the job, leading to the Jan. 5 accident on an Alaska Airlines flight.
At Boeing, there is a term for situations such as this one, when work is completed out of the production line’s ordinary sequence: traveled work. Four years ago, in the aftermath of a pair of fatal MAX crashes, Boeing laid out five values central to improving safety. Number three on the list: eliminate traveled work.
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.
Spotting Bad Parts
“Workers had spotted the bad parts almost immediately after the plane’s fuselage arrived at the factory.”
Questions Abound
- Why is it that no one can spot bad parts and rivets before a fuselage arrives at the factory?
- Why was the door removal not properly logged?
- Who is it that is supposed to double or triple check everything done out of sequence?
- If it takes 19 days to do a repair what else is suspect on the plane?
- Is there no quality control in building the fuselages?
Spirit AeroSystems makes fuselages for Boeing’s 737 Max jets.
If Boeing can spot the bad parts immediately, why couldn’t or didn’t Spirit AeroSystems spot bad rivets?
Is there no one at Boeing on sight at Sprit checking anything?
Boeing is in Talks to Buy Back Fuselage Maker Spirit AeroSystems
On March 1, CNBC reported Boeing is in Talks to Buy Back Fuselage Maker Spirit AeroSystems After Spate of Quality Defects
Boeing in 2005 spun off operations in Kansas and Oklahoma that became the present-day Spirit AeroSystems. About 70% of Spirit’s revenue last year came from Boeing, and roughly a quarter came from making parts for Boeing’s main rival, Airbus, according to a securities filing.
“We believe that the reintegration of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems’ manufacturing operations would further strengthen aviation safety, improve quality and serve the interests of our customers, employees, and shareholders,” Boeing said in a statement on Friday. “Although there can be no assurance that we will be able to reach an agreement, we are committed to finding ways to continue to improve the safety and quality of the airplanes on which millions of people depend each and every day.”
Explaining Quality Control at Spirit AeroSystems
Spirit has struggled financially, and was last profitable in 2019, before the pandemic. In October, Spirit appointed Pat Shanahan, who spent about three decades at Boeing, as its new, interim CEO.
Spirit has lost money since 2019. That explains why Spirit AeroSystems would rush things. In turn, Boeing rushed things.
Boeing Door Blowout Reveals Cockpit Security Problems As Well
Also recall Boeing Door Blowout Reveals Cockpit Security Problems As Well
The jet cockpit door is designed to open during decompression. This is a mistake for two reasons. The door blowoff incident at Alaska airlines exposed both issues.
How Doors Blow Off Mid-Flight
Everyone is rushing things, doing things out of order, not properly logging things done out of order, and not rechecking things done out of order.
In short, speed is the #1 priority.
That is the bottom line story of how airplane doors (where there isn’t even supposed to be a door), blow off mid-flight.
we know nothing will change!!
they(=boeing) just will pay off MORE WYA MORE to politicians and lobbysts in DC!
so 1-2 air crashes per year is baked in!
Keep in mind that this company is NOT BOEING. Its McDonnell Douglass. They make crap and they always were crap. After the merger(thanks to scummy Defense Dept procurement laziness) McDonnell’s Dirtbags actually run this company. Boeing was a tech and engineering company that had some defense contracts. McDonnell were cockroaches making bad planes (DC-8,9). They haven’t made a good product since the DC-3
saw recently neflix docemantary
First, Milton Friedman would remind us that making a profit comes first. He would add that that is contingent on making a product that the customer accepts. Fail at that, then fail to make sales, then go out of business.
From this we conclude that the airlines are partly at fault, for buying “such pieces of junk” from Boeing. At the least the airlines have a responsibility to report and complain to the FAA about the junk they are getting.
(Many people propose, let us consider, Josef Stalin’s remedy for such problems: the CEOs of Boeing, Spirit, et al., guilty of such mistakes go to prison.)
———————
Looking from some different viewpoints at this:
Ralph Nader back in 2018, 2019, said that the FAA should revoke, permanently, the air-worthiness certificates of Boeing’s 737 MAX airplanes and force Boeing to redesign and construct a replacement airplane from scratch. (He never had an appreciation of what that would cost.)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Sen. Ed Markey propose going further. Under the Green New Deal there would be, pretty much, no more air flights, hence no airplane safety issues.
Boeing built a cool plane from scratch. The 787. It also has a ton of issues and little order interest. Its actually a very nice fly-if it stays up in the air! Cool stuff, very quiet and fast
🤡
This philosophy is why I now drive a Toyota. My first domestic SUV had quality/design issues that could not be fixed no matter how many times I replaced a part. It was easy after figuring that out. I wonder how much that attitude has cost Boeing in terms of reputation and delays ?
now?
there was no reason to drive other car than Toyota 20 + years ago.
it was indestructible. i had camry 1998*2003 model i think.
now quiality of Toyotas went down a bit. but quiality of european or usa makers went down the toilet. USa made seadans pretty much do not exist!
Korean car makers become way better. chinese are getting better.
germans suck, as always!
That, and we can assume with 99% certainty a toxic management culture, where everybody on a lower rung is constantly being overruled and treated to poor performance reviews, nurturing a cowed and passive aggressive work force.
Slaves and coolies do not perform good work.
Contrary to misconceptions, the cathedrals and pyramids and every other monument of civilization were constructed by motivated well paid tradesmen with pride in their work. Motivation is paramount for any type of excellence.
“In short, speed is the #1 priority”
And customer’s life does not matter. What a company!!
Regulators should also be hauled up.
The Wrong Brothers –
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wru7XVriBdQ
The cockpit door blows open in the event of a depress for structural reasons. The bulkhead was never designed to take the loads of a pressurized cockpit and a depressurized cabin. All airliners are like this.
It was never intended that cockpit doors be permanently locked in flight until after 9/11.
Locked cockpit doors have resulted in hundreds of deaths since then in several accidents where either the flight crew were incapacitated or malicious and nobody could do anything about it. See German Wings, Helios Air and others including possibly MH370.
Osama bin Laden laughs in Hell.
Next time I will fly Boeing with no engine, no fuselage. No more engine problem. No more fuselage problem. See, I’m genius.
DOJ is investigating Boeing for criminal charges due to the door failure. Per the NTSB, they have requested for two months the documentation associated with the assembly process regarding the door that blew out and requested to interview the workers responsible for the assembly but to date Boeing management has not submitted the documentation nor the workers.
How far this investigation goes up the chain of command is TBD.
The QA director maybe the fall person and get compensated accordingly to take one for the team.
Why aren’t the 25% of components Spirit produces for Airbus not causing any apparent problems?
To get orders from foreign countries those countries produced sections or parts. They screwed it up. They had no idea what they were doing. Boeing mgt didn’t care. They
got the orders and cut production cost. The assembly lines didn’t have the parts and many didn’t fit, or below par..
On some models. The 737 fuselage it 100 percent SPR/Wichita. Which used to be Boeing, but upon the sale the workforce was wrecked in terms of skills and experience. SPR management was pacing Boeing’s destruction of it’s own touch labor and engineering workforce.
Share holders first.
Pretty much nailed it Mike. How do i know? Not long ago I retired after three decades at Boeing, on the factory floors, more than half on 737 in Renton. Aside from all of us old times leaving or being pushed out, or harassed out, schedule always was all that mattered.
Problem is, the implementation of moving lines, faster rates, inexperienced and a broken supply chain, and cost cutting to foolish extremes, all put in place by an aloof and detached leadership brought Boeing to this.
It took decades to get to this point.
But the most awful truth is that factory production is so broken that it cannot be fixed. The problems aren’t just human, they are hard built into the entire production system. All of this induces human error and misconduct born out of individual attempts at self preservation and avoidance of exhaustion and mental or physical illness. Add inexperience and lack of moral courage to resist management demands.
And the FAA? They are no better. The FAA audits factory ops yearly, yet never “found” much of anything. It’s because they weren’t looking.
Any employee that raises issues is ripe for harassment, false allegations, suspensions, moves to other factories farther from home, or dismissal.
Many employees went to the media. Instead of investigations, they did what they always do which was to generally trade access to the factories in exchange for glowing stories. Few ever questioned anything, and even then only after major incidents.
Am I disgruntled? Do I have an axe to grind? Well, when I see a photo in the news of a part that I myself installed, sitting on the edge of a thirty foot deep impact crater in Ethiopia, you bet I’m fucking unhappy.
Every company is extremely aggressive in cutting costs. Even more so with the Biden administration’s extreme inflation. Large companies dedicate billions of dollars and multiple departments just to find ways to re-engineer products at a lower cost. Boeing went too far and got caught.
There will be many more Boeing’s as companies continue to cut costs to combat inflation and earnings pressure.
This crap has been going on since Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas. Boeing was famous for quality before and was run by engineers. After the merger it was run by bean counters and still is to this day whose only criteria is to maximize stock holder return and not excellence and safety
Gee.
Reminds me of when I studied “The time value of money.”
This is not rocket science, it’s economics 102.
While speeding up production is a problem (easily solved by slowing things down) BOEING has bigger problems. Per SEC documents, executive compensation changed from safety to reaching corporate DEI goals. Also, BOEING has outsourced far too much production to keep tabs on QC.
Diversity, Inclusion and Equity mis-abbreviated again.
As in DIE, DIE, DIE…
You really need to refer to the PBS Frontline segment from last year on this Boeing-McDonnell merger to explain some of this. Before, Boeing was a high quality outfit. Then they merged with McDonnell Douglas which was a cowboy-yeehaw outfit only interested in bonuses. They put the McD people in charge basically … what else do you need to know?
“News Analysis: Boeing sacrificed quality on the altar of shareholder value” (latimescom). A very interesting read, including the MD merger. 🔦✝️
I wonder if Boeing and or Spirit have hiring policy influenced by DEI or other quota over capability criteria? I also wonder why Alaska Air mechanics and or crew did not find any issues during operation and maintenance?
Engineers make the checklist, mechanics do what the list says.
Alaska Air repeatedly saw EICAS messages about pressure loss. So they marked that airplane to not fly over water. ? Why didn’t they track the problem to that door?
An aircraft has thousands of critical pieces, sensors, electronics… made in fifty or more countries. Quality controls are a quagmire or impossible.
As financial goals are the main metric of Wall Street, the said thousands of contracts are probably won by a bidding process, outsourcing quality control with it.
This is what you get when this idea of totally unregulated markets is pushed so far: people just take advantage of it. This is where the libertarian utopia clashes against human nature. Welcome to Shareholders Value maximization capitalism. Boeing is not the only company being gutted to appease shareholders never ending greed.
Wrong. Shareholders have ALWAYS been greedy. Boeing didn’t have this many problems a decade ago. Guess what started happening a decade ago…millions of boomers retired and have been retiring every day and millions more will continue to retire. We lose skilled people to retirement and in return we get pot heads, lazy, inept or indifferent people that could care less.
The real problem is management at firms and politicians never planned for this despite everyone knowing it was going to happen. It will only get worse because it will take at least a decade to fix the labor training mess and get it back on track and that assumes politicians pull their head out of their butts.
A shortage of 43,000 aviation mechanics is expected by 2027.
https://interactive.aviationtoday.com/avionicsmagazine/march-april-2023/aviation-maintenance-technician-shortage-threatens-post-covid-rebound/
Your points are well taken and understandable and appear to be well thought through.
Alan Mulally Boeing mgr infected BA with engineering problems. His boss was sacked in 2005. In Sept 2006 he jumped to Ford. He produced an aluminium (787) F-150. Wall street didn’t like it. F dropped to 1.01 in Nov 2008.
[1M] BA backbone : May/Sept 2006, 89.58/72.13. It supported Mar 2020 low.
40% of young people used drugs last year. Official data.
Were they using official drugs?
Asking for a friend.
Cool story boomer
Given the ocean of alcohol out there, I should have thought that figure to be higher, especially within management.
“This is what you get when this idea of totally unregulated markets is pushed so far: people just take advantage of it. This is where the libertarian utopia clashes against human nature.”
Though I object to implying this is “only” a Libertarian problem, you’re correct.
Self regulation gave us the ’08 crisis, the opioid crisis, big tobacco, big oil…and countless more to come.
We over regulate and tax the little guy while allowing corporations, who apparently are “people” to do whatever they see fit.
.
Printers devil ‘no one at Boeing on sight at Sprit checking anything?’ should be ‘no one at Boeing on site at Sprit checking anything?’
There likely was someone Boeing at Spirit checking things, but they aren’t capable of checking everything.
Among the questions I ask is ?If Boeing workers early since receiving the fuselage find Spirit errors, doesn’t that get reported back to the Boeing acceptance team at Spirit? And then doesn’t the acceptance team lean on Spirit to make sure such problems don’t recur? And the acceptance team specifically check for that problem for the next month or more?
Last, doesn’t Boeing take note of the financial condition of its subcontractors? If Spirit hasn’t been profitable since 2019, doesn’t that raise red flags?
To note: The incoming problem concerned bad rivets. Apparently those were fixed 19 days later in “traveled work”. The problem was missing bolts, a Boeing caused problem, committed in putting everything back together after fixing the rivets problem. – One big issue in fixing things is to not make a problem while you fix a problem.
Doors falling off, wheels falling off, hydraulic failures…. There is one link to them all: PEOPLE.
Every day industries lose skilled people, by the millions, and they are replaced with younger inexperienced people or none at all. Expect more of this across all industries. Cars will be shipped with broken or bad parts. I posted a link to people ranting about RVs in another thread. Quality people are all gone to be replaced by people who could care less.
https://apnews.com/article/united-airlines-los-angeles-plane-emergency-f66f76c2d36b2a5a229440aca381f9f2
And the funny thing is we’re just getting started. Wait 5 more years for the real fun to begin.
100% Agree. You and I chatted about this very thing the other day. I don’t think most people understand how bad quality will get before it stabilizes and starts to improve.
Case in point. We bought one of the newly redesigned Honda minivans back in 2018. It has had at least a half dozen recalls. Most of the recalls were related to the electrical system. The latest one requires that the fuel pump be replaced. Apparently the pump’s impeller fins are breaking off during operation resulting in a stalling situation (possibly at high speeds). And that doesn’t include all of the service bulletin software updates that were needed. Granted the recalls are all free, but it takes time out of my day to run it to the stealership, drop it off, and then run back to pick it up. Modern cars are becoming increasingly complex (along with a lot of other things). Complexity necessitates rigorous quality control. How’s that gonna work with younger folks who are, as you said, preoccupied with everything but thier work?
My Hybrid had it’s separate Engine Battery die while we were in Mexico last month. I called the Shop and to DRIVE IT IN would cost of $199.99 just to hook up the Interface to reset the MAIN logic board. I did it myself (bought the tester and the tool). IT IS NOT CHEAP owning these Partially electric vehicles… IT IS FAST, though and in EV mode it is great around town, getting 55+ MPG.
Yes, I agree. A pal of mine runs a big Plumbing Co. He cannot find good people who WANT to do that work and the wages are GOOD. His only Son died of an overdose and the poor guy would be out by now (he is 67) and that kid was supposed to run it with his Sister. My pal is STUCK. He has a lot of money tied up in that business in Ore.
Some execs undoubtedly cashed in bonuses for spinning off Spirit Aero. Now they probably will be rewarded for the brilliant idea (=freaking panic) of reintegration into the parent company. Spirit will lose the 30% business it has with Airbus.
Haven’t flown in a long time and don’t plan to. Some really sloppy stuff going on
“We believe that the reintegration of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems’ manufacturing operations would further strengthen aviation safety, improve quality and serve the interests of our customers, employees, and shareholders,” Boeing said in a statement on Friday.”
And this is why they are being paid big bucks. I word salad manufacturing operation.
Boeing civilian planes have competition from Europe and China. There is a long waiting line for Boeing defense products.
What a mess.
It is a practice to ship manufactured goods with known problems just to make a shipment date or make the quarterly sales numbers good. Once the deadline has passed, the problem is addressed.
Spirit may have different quality processes for Boeing and Airbus.
Can Boeing buy Spirit without triggering an anti-trust suit by Airbus for creating an entity that is both a supplier and competitor?
One could assume that Spirit’s quality is crap across the board. I guess Airbus has better quality control than Boeing, or perhaps Airbus simply has’t had any failures of Spirit provided parts….yet. If I were Airbus, I’d be double checking every part received and/or already installed from Spirit.
Shareholders will definitely hold management responsible for this! LOL!
In the “Question Abound” section, the answers are all the same.
“Because….Idiocracy.”
Is there a way to blame unions for this?
Probably
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spirit-aerosystems-union-workforce-approves-new-contract-ending-strike-kansas-2023-06-30/
Why is it that Spirit AeroSystems cannot make a profit?
Could it be union labor costs.
The new four-year contract, which union leaders endorsed on Tuesday, includes additional wage increases, allowed employees to keep their current health care plans and eradicated mandatory overtime on the weekends – three features that workers had earmarked as priorities for a deal.
This could also be part of that problem, too – https://www1.salary.com/SPIRIT-AEROSYSTEMS-HOLDINGS-Executive-Salaries.html
I checked their worker salaries, “As of Mar 4, 2024, the average hourly pay for a Spirit Aerosystems in the United States is $16.24 an hour.”
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Spirit-Aerosystems-Salary
That can’t be right, but that’s what it says, for $16/hour, I couldn’t pay the mortgage, much less eat.
They leave their $15 an hour McDonald’s job to get a pay increase and build airplanes….would you like fries with that?
You know that info isn’t right. Simple search leads you to the actual contract:
https://www.spiritaero.com/negotiations/2023-iam-final-offer.pdf
Wide wage range lowest 20.50/hr base up to 30’s/hr plus great medical and legacy pension funded by company high single digit percentage.
Only they can decide if that works for them and they voted yes.
Doesn’t sound like $20-$30 an hour should ruin an aerospace company. What should they be making?
I figured it wasn’t right (I said exactly that), $16 sounds insanely low.
That said, $20 to $30 isn’t exactly exorbitant either.
Assuming $30 is a supervisor.
The contract is online. 20.5 is minimum plant wide
Search next time
Living costs in Wichita KS are likely lower than they are where you live.
Mish, Who is in charge of procuring parts? Director of Purchasing. Who is in charge of CNC Machining? Production Manager. I could go on but the point is the union and the rank and file are not in charge. It is management that calls ALL of the shots. And if management has let the inmates run the asylum as some might argue, management is still at fault. They let it happen.Union contracts are about labor practices in the work setting, wages, benefits, nothing more and nothing less. Management sets the qualitative and quantitative standards.
As a business owner and employer of 30 skilled tradespeople, I came to the conclusion that a company gets the union it deserves.
No. Private sector unions usually require extra safety procedures and protections. Likely those extra measures were tossed away by upper management. Unions no doubt cost a lot more but the minions did not cause this problem.
“…but the minions did not cause this problem.”
That’s the whole reason I said “Is there a way to blame unions for this?”
Mish seems to think $20/hour is a lot of money, it’s not, it might’ve been 20 years ago, maybe.
Oh, I’m sure that will be thrown in along with DEI and the younger generations who don’t care. Hell, I’m surprised WOKE hasn’t raised it’s mysterious head😀 yet. Give it time. The mass of underlings goes by many names😳.
Could be, in two respects.
Speed, Cost, Quality. Pick two. We know BOEING’s choice!
Yup. speed can often be equated to cost (ie. time = money).
An example of a complex system breaking down. Will there be others?
I had a customer that told me something. He said he always thought there were 3 things. Delivery, Quality and Price. As a buyer, he always knew he would only get 2 of the 3. He bought from us when we were not the lower price.
Spirit has always been about speed…trust me…I was a metal bond repairman…I could tell all about an incident that got swept under the table which would indeed lead to a 737 coming apart in flight…thank God I stood my ground with management and reported the bad part to ethics…still I was the bad guy…all Spirit cares about is pushing those fuselage out the door!!!