BOEING WOES DEEPEN AFTER NEWS WASHING UP LIQUID HELPED BUILD 737 MAX
WASHINGTON – Less than a month after Boeing unveiled a major management shakeup that the aircraft manufacturer hoped would halt the tsunami of safety questions bedevilling it, it is already apparent that the strategy has not worked.
The announced departure later this year of CEO Dave Calhoun and chairman Larry Kelner has not stemmed the tide. In fact, the aviation giant’s predicament becomes graver by the day as Congress prepares to launch a fresh investigation into its conduct.
Last week’s revelation that a key Boeing supplier tested Vaseline, cornstarch and talcum powder as potential lubricants for a door-seal on troubled 737 Max 9 jets beggared belief in the minds of many travellers.
Spirit AeroSystems settled on “Dawn” – a popular American washing up liquid – as the most effective solution. According to reports published by The New York Times, the firm then tested the efficacy of the door seal with a hotel room keycard. Both processes were approved by Boeing and documented for the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
But Spirit praised its employees for seeking “creative ways to make the process of building fuselages more efficient”.
“People look at the hotel key card or Dawn soap and think this is sloppy,” said Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino. “This is actually an innovative approach to solving for an efficient shop aid.”
Boeing is now facing allegations regarding the construction of another model of jet: the 787 Dreamliner. Whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer who has worked for the company for four decades, told The New York Times that sections of the Dreamliner had been fastened together incorrectly.
He claimed the fault could cause aircraft to age prematurely, and ultimately break up in-flight.
His concerns are now the subject of an FAA investigation that threatens to upend ongoing efforts to manufacture and market the fastest-selling wide body aircraft in aviation history.
Mr Salehpour’s lawyers say that after he raised complaints with management, the company transferred him to work on the Boeing 777, where he claims he witnessed similar production violations. In January, he lodged a whistleblower claim with the FAA, at which point his lawyers assert that Boeing threatened to fire him. “Rather than heeding his warnings,” the attorneys wrote in a statement, “Boeing prioritized getting the planes to market as quickly as possible, despite the known, well-substantiated issues Mr. Salehpour raised.”
Boeing has denied Mr Salehpour’s claims, and says it continues to encourage employees to voice any concerns they may have about production processes. “We are fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner,” the company said, “because of the comprehensive work done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft.” It expressed similar confidence in the integrity of the 777.
More than 1,100 Dreamliners are in use worldwide. British Airways, which purchased its first Dreamliner in 2013, describes the jet as “the mainstay of the airline’s long-haul fleet”. Air France operates ten Dreamliners and more than 40 Boeing 777s. Both models land regularly at Heathrow, Gatwick and other UK airports hosting long-haul flights.
Peter Lemme, who spent 16 years working on Boeing’s avionics engineering team, claims the company’s decline began with the development of the 787. “I got a chance to see that firsthand,” he told the i. “I worked for a supplier that was building a major component of the 787.
“In earlier programmes, that group would have been staffed by say 20 or 30 Boeing engineers and they would have been directing the supplier… But on the 787… we only really worked with one engineer. And they asked us to write the specification for the system rather than writing the spec themselves and delivering it to us.”
Mr Lemme argues Boeing sought to transfer responsibilities for safety to competing suppliers in a bid to streamline the manufacturing process. “When they’re fiercely competitive, that really chills the dialogue,” he said. “And I think the 787 really suffered from that, and I think Boeing recognised after the 787 that they’d gone too far.”
Boeing executives face more difficult days, with the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations due to hold a hearing on Mr Salehpour’s claims on Wednesday. In a letter to the company, the Committee’s co-chairs warned Mr Calhoun that the hearing will examine reports of “alarming and dangerous manufacturing deficiencies that ‘are creating potentially catastrophic safety risks’”. The company says it is co-operating with the Congressional inquiry.
For Boeing’s C-suite executives, every week brings the need to try and plug more holes in the corporate dyke.
As the company’s share price crashed last week to its lowest point in over a year, it emerged that Mr Calhoun had nonetheless been awarded a 45 per cent pay rise last year, taking his annual compensation package to an eye-popping $31.4m (£25.15m).
2024-04-15T13:17:12Z dg43tfdfdgfd