U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell call for more oversight of Boeing after whistleblower account published

Wash­ing­ton State’s two Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors today issued strong­ly-word­ed calls for Boe­ing to be sub­ject­ed to greater over­sight and account­abil­i­ty fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a whistle­blow­er account of what went wrong in the Ren­ton fac­to­ry where the Alas­ka Air­lines 737 MAX‑9 jet that lost a door plug was made.

The whistle­blow­er account, post­ed as a com­ment on an avi­a­tion news web­site, was inves­ti­gat­ed by The Seat­tle Times, which found sources who cor­rob­o­rat­ed the infor­ma­tion. The Seat­tle Times’ ace avi­a­tion reporter Dominic Gates then wrote a front page sto­ry detail­ing what Boe­ing work­ers think went wrong.

Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Com­merce Com­mit­tee, promised to use her sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers to con­vene hear­ings on the mat­ter fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Boe­ing’s embat­tled chief exec­u­tive office Dave Calhoun.

“The Amer­i­can fly­ing pub­lic and Boe­ing line work­ers deserve a cul­ture of lead­er­ship at Boe­ing that puts safe­ty ahead of prof­its,” said Cantwell.

“In today’s meet­ing with Boe­ing CEO Dave Cal­houn, I made it clear that qual­i­ty engi­neer­ing and a com­mit­ment to safe­ty always have to be the top pri­or­i­ty. Hard­work­ing engi­neers and machin­ists in the Pacif­ic North­west know this.”

“Recent report­ing by the Seat­tle Times and oth­er out­lets under­scores the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion. I will be hold­ing hear­ings to inves­ti­gate the root caus­es of these safe­ty lapses.”

Hours lat­er, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, who chairs the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, made sim­i­lar com­ments and not­ed the impor­tance of fund­ing for the FAA to ensure that there is effec­tive ongo­ing over­sight of Boe­ing’s com­mer­cial air­planes divi­sion, which makes pas­sen­ger jets for air­lines all over the world.

“Report­ing by the Seat­tle Times that seems to show seri­ous safe­ty laps­es and fail­ures in the qual­i­ty con­trol process­es at Boe­ing is absolute­ly alarm­ing. Prof­its can’t come before safe­ty — ever — and top exec­u­tives at Boe­ing real­ly need to get that — the work­ers I have spo­ken to over the years who are tasked with actu­al­ly build­ing these planes cer­tain­ly do,” said Sen­a­tor Murray.

“Boe­ing has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to the pub­lic that it will always put the safe­ty and qual­i­ty of its planes first and that it will give its work­ers the sup­port and resources they need to deliv­er on that mission.”

“Just today, the FAA approved the inspec­tion and repair pro­to­col to bring the Boe­ing 737 MAX 9 air­craft back into ser­vice. But it is extreme­ly impor­tant for the NTSB to con­duct a full inves­ti­ga­tion to get to the bot­tom of exact­ly what hap­pened, why, and how Boe­ing and the FAA will pre­vent it from ever hap­pen­ing in the future — I’ll be review­ing their find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions closely.”

“As Chair of the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, my staff and I are con­tin­u­ing to ask ques­tions and are work­ing to pass a Trans­porta­tion Appro­pri­a­tions bill that invests in air safe­ty and includes crit­i­cal fund­ing for the FAA — it should be clear to every­one that we absolute­ly can­not afford to short­change pas­sen­ger safe­ty by enter­tain­ing dra­mat­ic across-the board fund­ing cuts like some House Repub­li­cans have been demand­ing,” Mur­ray concluded.

The whistle­blow­er account that has avi­a­tion insid­ers talk­ing appeared as a com­ment to a sto­ry from “throwawayboeingN704AL” post­ed on Lee­ham News and Analy­sis, a more than ten year old online pub­li­ca­tion that prides itself on its long his­to­ry of “annoy­ing OEMs,” which is short for “orig­i­nal equip­ment manufacturer.”

The site’s About page proud­ly states: “Lee­ham News is the inde­pen­dent voice that cuts through the spin to deliv­er sto­ries with ver­i­fied facts, analy­sis and con­tent that becomes a must read every day.”

Here is the whistle­blow­er account in its entire­ty:

Cur­rent Boe­ing employ­ee here – I will save you wait­ing two years for the NTSB report to come out and give it to you for free: the rea­son the door blew off is stat­ed in black and white in Boe­ings [sic] own records. It is also very, very stu­pid and speaks vol­umes about the qual­i­ty cul­ture at cer­tain por­tions of the business.

A cou­ple of things to cov­er before we begin:

Q1) Why should we believe you?
A) You shouldn’t, I’m some ran­dom throw­away account, do your own due dili­gence. Oth­ers who work at Boe­ing can ver­i­fy what I say is true, but all I ask is you con­sid­er the fol­low­ing based on its own merits.

Q2) Why are you doing this?
A) Because there are many cul­tures at Boe­ing, and while the exec­u­tive cul­ture may be through­ly [sic] com­pro­mised since we were bought by McD, there are many oth­er peo­ple who still push for a qual­i­ty prod­uct with cut­ting edge design. My hope is that this is the wake up call that final­ly forces the Board to take deci­sive action, and remove the exec­u­tives that are resist­ing the nec­es­sary cul­tur­al changes to return to a com­pa­ny that val­ues safe­ty and qual­i­ty above schedule.

With that out of the way… why did the left hand (LH) mid-exit door plug blow off of the 737–9 reg­is­tered as N704AL? Sim­ple- as has been cov­ered in a num­ber of arti­cles and videos across avi­a­tion chan­nels, there are 4 bolts that pre­vent the mid-exit door plug from slid­ing up off of the door stop fit­tings that take the actu­al pres­sur­iza­tion loads in flight, and these 4 bolts were not installed when Boe­ing deliv­ered the air­plane, our own records reflect this.

The mid-exit doors on a 737–9 of both the reg­u­lar and plug vari­ety come from Spir­it already installed in what is sup­posed to be the final con­fig­u­ra­tion and in the Ren­ton fac­to­ry, there is a job for the doors team to ver­i­fy this “final” install and rig­ging meets draw­ing require­ments. In a healthy pro­duc­tion sys­tem, this would be a “belt and sus­penders” sort of check, but the 737 pro­duc­tion sys­tem is quite far from healthy, its a ram­bling, sham­bling, dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. As a result, this check job that should find min­i­mal defects has in the past 365 cal­en­dar days record­ed 392 non­con­form­ing find­ings on 737 mid fuse­lage door instal­la­tions (so both actu­al doors for the high den­si­ty con­figs, and plugs like the one that blew out). That is a hideous­ly high and very alarm­ing num­ber, and if our qual­i­ty sys­tem on 737 was healthy, it would have stopped the line and dri­ven the issue back to sup­pli­er after the first few instances. Obvi­ous­ly, this did not hap­pen. Now, on the inci­dent air­craft this check job was com­plet­ed on 31 August 2023, and did turn up dis­crep­an­cies, but on the RH side door, not the LH that actu­al­ly failed. I could blame the team for miss­ing cer­tain details, but giv­en the enor­mous vol­ume of defects they were already find­ing and fix­ing, it was inevitable some­thing would slip through- and on the inci­dent air­craft some­thing did. I know what you are think­ing at this point, but grab some pop­corn because there is a plot twist com­ing up.

The next day on 1 Sep­tem­ber 2023 a dif­fer­ent team (remem­ber 737s flow through the fac­to­ry quite quick­ly, 24 hours com­plete­ly changes who is work­ing on the plane) wrote up a find­ing for dam­aged and improp­er­ly installed riv­ets on the LH mid-exit door of the inci­dent aircraft.

A brief aside to explain two of the record sys­tems Boe­ing uses in pro­duc­tion. The first is a pro­gram called CMES which stands for some­thing bor­ing and unim­por­tant but what is impor­tant is that CMES is the sole author­i­ta­tive repos­i­to­ry for air­plane build records (except on 787 which uses a dif­fer­ent pro­gram). If a build record in CMES says some­thing was built, inspect­ed, and stamped in accor­dance with the draw­ing, then the air­plane damn well bet­ter be per draw­ing. The sec­ond is a pro­gram called SAT, which also stands for some­thing bor­ing and unim­por­tant but what is impor­tant is that SAT is *not* an author­i­ta­tive records sys­tem, its a bul­lentin [sic] board where var­i­ous things affect­ing the air­plane build get post­ed about and updat­ed with res­o­lu­tions. You can think of it sort of like a idiots ver­sion of Slack or some­thing. Wise read­ers will already be shud­der­ing and won­der­ing how many con­sul­tants were involved, because, yes SAT is a *man­age­ment vis­i­bilty [sic] tool*. Like any good man­age­ment vis­i­bilty [sic] tool, SAT can gen­er­ate met­rics, lots of met­rics, and oh God do Boe­ing man­agers love their met­rics. As a result, SAT post­ings are the pri­ma­ry top­ic of dis­cus­sion at most dai­ly sta­tus meet­ings, and the whole sys­tem is per­ceived as being extreme­ly impor­tant despite, I reit­er­ate, it hold­ing no actu­al author­i­ty at all.

We now return to our inci­dent air­craft, which was writ­ten up for hav­ing defec­tive riv­ets on the LH mid-exit door. Now as is stan­dard prac­tice kn Ren­ton (but not to my knowl­edge in Everett on wide bod­ies) this write-up hap­pened in two forms, one in CMES, which is the cor­rect venue, and once in SAT to “coor­di­nate the response” but real­ly as a behind-cov­er­ing mea­sure so the man­ag­er of the team that wrote it can show his boss he’s shoved the prob­lem onto some­one else. Because there are so many prob­lems with the Spir­it build in the 737, Spir­it has teams on site in Ren­ton per­form­ing war­ran­ty work for all of their shod­dy qual­i­ty, and this SAT prompt­ly gets shunt­ed into their queue as a war­ran­ty item. Lots of bick­er­ing ensues in the SAT mes­sages, and it takes a bit for Spir­it to get to the work pack­age. Once they have fin­ished, they send it back to a Boe­ing QA for final accep­tance, but then Mali­cious Stu­pid Hap­pens! The Boe­ing QA writes anoth­er record in CMES (again, the cor­rect venue) stat­ing (with pic­tures) that Spir­it has not actu­al­ly reworked the dis­crepant riv­ets, they *just paint­ed over the defects*. In Boe­ing pro­duc­tion speak, this is a “process fail­ure”. For an A&P mechan­ic at an air­line, this would be called “fed­er­al crime”.

Pre­sent­ed with evi­dence of their malfea­sance, Spir­it reopens the pack­age and admits that not only did they not rework the riv­ets prop­er­ly, there is a dam­aged pres­sure seal they need to replace (who dam­aged it, and when it was dam­aged is not clear to me). The big deal with this seal, at least accord­ing to fran­tic SAT post­ings, is the part is not on hand, and will need to be ordered, which is going to impact sched­ule, and (read­ing between the lines here) Man­age­ment is Not Hap­py. ¹⁄₂

For those read­ers who don’t know, “McD” means “McDon­nell-Dou­glas,” which used to be a giant in the avi­a­tion indus­try before the com­pa­ny start­ed going down­hill. Boe­ing bought McDon­nell Dou­glas in 1997, but as sub­se­quent events revealed, it might as well have been McDon­nell Dou­glas that bought Boe­ing, because McD’s prof­it-focused exec­u­tives sub­se­quent­ly took over and began slow­ly destroy­ing Boe­ing from the inside out. A few decades lat­er, Boe­ing’s rep­u­ta­tion is in tat­ters and its future is in ques­tion. With each pass­ing year, it is falling fur­ther behind its main com­peti­tor Air­bus, the oth­er big man­u­fac­tur­er of pas­sen­ger jets.

“In a clash of cor­po­rate cul­tures, where Boeing’s engi­neers and McDon­nell Douglas’s bean-coun­ters went head-to-head, the small­er com­pa­ny won out,” Quartz assessed in a 2020 sto­ry look­ing back at the merg­er. “The result was a move away from expen­sive, ground-break­ing engi­neer­ing and toward what some called a more cut-throat cul­ture, devot­ed to keep­ing costs down and favor­ing upgrad­ing old­er mod­els at the expense of whole­sale innovation.”

For that sto­ry, Quartz’s Natasha Frost spoke to author Clive Irv­ing, author of Jum­bo: The Mak­ing of the Boe­ing 747, who com­ment­ed: “The fatal fault line was the McDon­nell Dou­glas takeover… Although Boe­ing was sup­posed to take over McDon­nell Dou­glas, it end­ed up the oth­er way around.”

That nice­ly sums up how many retired Boe­ing lif­ers feel about the merger.

Cur­rent Boe­ing CEO Dave Cal­houn is not a for­mer McDon­nell Dou­glas exec­u­tive, but he worked at Gen­er­al Elec­tric for decades and has been described by Irv­ing as a “Jack Welch acolyte.” Welch is the for­mer GE CEO who became famous for mon­ey­mak­ing schemes that gen­er­at­ed prof­its in the short term but led to dis­as­trous con­se­quences in the long term. By the time he passed away in 2020, his lega­cy as a busi­ness­man was already being reap­praised and reevaluated.

“Nev­er mind the fact Welch rou­tine­ly closed GE’s Rust Belt fac­to­ries and moved the jobs to Third World locales, where work­ers labored for less — much, much less — than the for­mer GE employ­ees,” wrote Helaine Olen in an essay for The Wash­ing­ton Post fol­low­ing Welch’s death. “Nev­er mind the fact that he cut fund­ing for research and devel­op­ment, some­thing that can under­mine a company’s long-term health. And nev­er mind the fact that the humane post­war arrange­ment between cor­po­ra­tions and their employ­ees — give us your loy­al­ty and we’ll take care of you as best we can — end­ed in part because of Welch. He made mon­ey for share­hold­ers, and that was the impor­tant thing.”

“Cal­houn rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar­ly aggres­sive strain of car­niv­o­rous cap­i­tal­ism,” Irv­ing wrote in a 2021 piece for The Dai­ly Beast. “He’s aggres­sive­ly anti-union and anti-reg­u­la­tion, and at Boe­ing he is unre­pen­tant in his zeal to slash and burn. Dur­ing the course of this year, the work­force will have been cut by twen­ty per­cent. Plants have been shut­tered, build­ings sold off.”

On the com­mer­cial avi­a­tion side — Boe­ing also has a large defense busi­ness — the 737 MAX is Boe­ing’s sig­na­ture prod­uct and its main mon­ey­mak­er. It is the lat­est iter­a­tion of a nar­row­body jet that has been pop­u­lar with air­lines for a long time, includ­ing U.S. air­lines. South­west, for instance, has built its busi­ness around the 737. So has Alas­ka. Unit­ed and oth­ers also have lots of 737s in their fleet.

But the 737 MAX pro­gram has now become even more trou­bled and rid­dled with safe­ty issues than the repeat­ed­ly-delayed and glitch-rid­den 787 Dreamliner.

Two fatal crash­es in 2018 forced the ground­ing of the 737 MAX and led to the jet and Boe­ing’s busi­ness prac­tices being put under the micro­scope. It emerged that Boe­ing had cut cor­ners in its rush to get the MAX into ser­vice with air­lines — and that the FAA had failed to inter­vene to pro­tect the safe­ty of the fly­ing public.

The fall­out was mas­sive — and cost­ly. Yet it has not prompt­ed a change of cul­ture at Boe­ing. The com­pa­ny fired CEO Den­nis Muilen­burg (who, by the way, got a nice gold­en para­chute), but it then brought in car­niv­o­rous cap­i­tal­ist Cal­houn, who, like his pre­de­ces­sors, has been focused on the stock price and prof­its rather than on build­ing a sus­tain­able busi­ness pow­ered by skilled union workers.

The Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists (IAM) has been try­ing to use its influ­ence to pull Boe­ing out of its tail­spin for years, fierce­ly object­ing to plans from man­age­ment to gut qual­i­ty assur­ance in the fac­to­ry. But Cal­houn and his exec­u­tives have mad­den­ing­ly not been recep­tive to their feed­back or criticisms.

And so, here we are, with the 737 MAX pro­gram in cri­sis again and the FAA grim­ly halt­ing Boe­ing’s planned expan­sion of MAX production.

“We ground­ed the Boe­ing 737–9 MAX with­in hours of the inci­dent over Port­land and made clear this air­craft would not go back into ser­vice until it was safe,” FAA Admin­is­tra­tor Mike Whitak­er said in a state­ment. “The exhaus­tive, enhanced review our team com­plet­ed after sev­er­al weeks of infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing gives me and the FAA con­fi­dence to pro­ceed to the inspec­tion and main­te­nance phase.

“How­ev­er, let me be clear: This won’t be back to busi­ness as usu­al for Boe­ing. We will not agree to any request from Boe­ing for an expan­sion in pro­duc­tion or approve addi­tion­al pro­duc­tion lines for the 737 MAX until we are sat­is­fied that the qual­i­ty con­trol issues uncov­ered dur­ing this process are resolved.”

Poof! There’s the lat­est con­fir­ma­tion that Cal­houn’s plans for 2024 have gone up in smoke. All of that cor­ner cut­ting has once again not only jeop­ar­dized the safe­ty of pas­sen­gers and air­crew, it’s wreak­ing hav­oc on Boe­ing’s finan­cial health.

As long­time avi­a­tion jour­nal­ist Andy Pasz­tor wrote this week in a guest essay for The Seat­tle Times, Boe­ing’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and eth­i­cal laps­es go back decades. Its exec­u­tives have a doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of promis­ing to do bet­ter and then fail­ing to deliv­er. Why should any­one believe that things will be dif­fer­ent now? Since Cal­houn and Boe­ing can’t be trust­ed, it is vital­ly impor­tant that the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress step in to strength­en avi­a­tion safety.