FAA Investigation of the Alaska Airlines Aircraft Incident: An Independent, Non-Executive Examination of a Boeing and Spirit Aerosystems Flight Safety Analyser

The FAA will re-examine the longstanding practice of allowing company employees to perform some safety analysis of its planes.

By the time the 737 Max was cleared to fly again in late 2020, the aviation industry was in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic with air travel reduced to a trickle.

Alaska and United airlines have canceled hundreds of flights a day as their fleets of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft remain grounded. Both airlines say they are waiting for a final go-ahead from the FAA to 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.

Spirit is being sued by shareholders who accuse its leaders of mismanaging the company and misrepresenting details about its operations. Pat Shanahan was replaced as CEO of the company last fall because of concerns about manufacturing defects. Boeing and Spirit also announced an agreement to try to boost both production and quality.

Soucie cautioned, however, that following through on a shift to third-party oversight would be a heavy lift for the FAA and the aviation industry it regulates.

The impact of what they’re discussing doing here is huge, so they take their time doing it. “It’s enormous. It will affect every manufacturer of aircraft in the United States.

Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the FAA to provide records from the agency’s oversight of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, a Kansas-based Boeing contractor that makes the fuselage and the door plug of the 737 Max aircraft involved in the Alaska Airlines incident.

The FAA is thinking about moving safety oversight to an independent third party, he said in an interview. “The drive for profitability may just be overriding this ability to have an independent delegation within the organization.”

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the 737 Max in March of 2019 after 346 people died in a pair of deadly crashes of 737 Max 8 planes. Those crashes were blamed on software problems, but the FAA investigation also found hardware issues, citing an “improper manufacturing process” in some planes.

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: a key supplier’s comment on the case of Boeing’s Max 9

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.

United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have reported finding bolts that fell off of their plane, which is the only US carrier that uses the Max 9. Other iterations of the 737, such as the Max 8, have not been affected by the grounding. The Max 9 configuration that some airlines use doesn’t include door plugs that the other airlines use.

The lawsuit doesn’t specifically mention potential defects in manufacturing door plugs like the one that was blown 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.

Another former employee, identified in the lawsuit as an internal quality auditor, is quoted in the court filing as saying that “auditors repeatedly found torque wrenches in mechanics’ toolboxes that were not properly calibrated,” according to the court filing. This is a potentially serious problem, as if atorque wrench is out of calibration, it might not get the right Torque for the part, causing overtightening or under-tightening that threatens the structural integrity of the part.

According to the former employee, some managers and mechanics locked their toolboxes to prevent auditors from entering, because they were angry that Spirit required auditors to take wrongly calibrated tools.

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

A civil rights suit against Spirit AeroSystems concerning the 20-month grounding of the 737 Max 9 airliner, according to an NTSB filing

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 countries like Malaysia, France, and Northern Ireland.

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 stated that they had $3.87 billion in debt.

As orders for the Boeing airliner dried up, production and delivery halted, and Spirit laid off 2,800 employees, the 20-month grounding of the popular plane left a deep financial hole for the company.

The Max is the fourth generation of Boeing’s 737, with its first commercial flight in 2017. The Max 9, the model currently under scrutiny, has a longer fuselage than the Max 8. The narrow-body 737 has been among the world’s bestselling aircraft since it was first produced in 1968.

Homendy said on Monday that her agency requested a party to be involved in the investigation of the Alaska Airlines MAX 9 incident. The aircraft with the tail number was in service only months before the 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. That’s when news emerged that Spirit had misdrilled holes on part of some 737 Max planes: their aft pressure bulkhead, a critical piece of the structure around the cabin.

According to the lawsuit, the quality auditor at SPIRIT identified the bulkhead problem as a serious defect and reported it to managers in several departments.

“However,” the suit alleges, “Spirit concealed this issue from investors until it was revealed by independent reporting in August 2023, ten months after Spirit had identified 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.

“Defendants concealed from investors that Spirit suffered from widespread and sustained quality failures,” the lawsuit alleges. “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 plaintiffs want a jury trial, seeking “compensatory damages … for all damages sustained as a result of Defendants’ wrongdoing,” along with legal costs and expenses.