• An alleged Boeing employee has detailed problems in the manufacture of the maligned 737 Max 9 aeroplanes.
• This follows a string of accidents, the latest at the start of the year when a door blew out of a Max 9 midflight.
• Allegations include that Boeing’s outsourcing of components makes it impossible for quality control to keep track of defects.

In an industry where a simple mistake can cost hundreds of lives, the last thing you want to hear about is negligence. A series of accidents involving the best-selling Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft have caused deep concern for the aviation industry around the world.

The new aeroplane, a few years old at this point, was slated by Boeing to be the next innovation in aircraft, but two fatal accidents – in 2018 and 2019, involving 346 deaths – and recent issues with the planes have forced the Federal Aviation Administration to increase scrutiny of the planes and kneecap the company’s production goals.

Eight days into the new year, a door panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 while it was already thousands of feet in the air just after takeoff. Several passengers filmed the accident and posted it to social media following the safe landing of the plane. If the door blew out at a much higher altitude, the flight could have seen catastrophic consequences.

This incident led to a wide-ranging grounding of most 737 Max 9 aeroplanes for an official investigation.

Earlier this week, someone who allegedly has access to Boeing’s internal quality control systems ie an employee of the plane manufacturer, came out and anonymously revealed some damning details about Boeing’s manufacturing process.

According to View From The Wing, which covers aviation news, the alleged employee says that Boeing’s quality control systems of the 737 Max 9 crafts in its factories deal with an “enormous volume of defects” and that it was “inevitable that something would slip up.”

“Why did the left hand (LH) mid-exit door plug blow off of the 737-9 registered as [Alaska Airlines]?” they write.

“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 aeroplane, our own records reflect this.”

This coincides with findings of the investigation, that there were loose bolts on the doors of several 737 Max 9s.

Apparently, Boeing’s quality control had detected 392 discrepancies on 737 Max mid-fuselage door installations before the Alaska Airlines incident. “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 the supplier after the first few instances,” the employee says.

Further, they allege that a back and forth between Boeing quality agents and a component maker that Boeing outsourced too confused the process entirely, which led to the bolts not being installed correctly, and this fact being missed by quality control.

What is essentially happening is that Boeing outsources so many plane components (because it’s cheaper), that when they return to the company’s production line, Boeing’s quality control staff is unable to keep track of them all. Of course, since the employee is commenting from a place of anonymity, this information should be taken with a grain of salt.

However, some respected voices in the aviation community online have said that the whistleblower isn’t entirely incorrect in their statements.

So what’s happening at Boeing? It appears the company’s pursuit of profits has hampered its once-lauded engineering capabilities.

“When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,” company CEO Harry Stonecipher is quoted to have said by View From The Wing, who had been CEO of rival manufacturer McDonnell Douglas.

Boeing shares were down 5.72 percent as of Friday morning. As far as we can see, it will take one more accident of a 737 Max 9 for a more permanent solution to be devised for the beleaguered planes, many of which are still grounded.

Especially as passenger trust in the new Boeing machines is at an all-time low, with some travel agencies now allowing customers to choose not to fly on 737 Max planes due to demand.

[Image – Photo by Richard Lu on Unsplash]