|
Boeing Failed To Re-install And Inspect Door Plug On Alaska Airways’ 737
Boeing recently made another mess with regards to its 737 MAX aircraft.
A door plug, used to cover the hole where some planes have additional emergency exits, blew out, while the Alaska Airways flight 1282 was still in the air.
The plane decompressed but made a safe landing in Portland.
I concluded:
One hopes that the FAA and Congress will finally get serious with Boeing. They must stop giving it all those lazy exceptions for issues that better (but more expensive) engineering can easily solve.
The question left open was who was responsible for the missing bolts that were supposed to hold the door plug in place but could not be found on the damaged plane. The 737 MAX 9 hulls are build by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas and then send to Boeing to be fitted out. There is usually no good reason to remove the door plug for the outfitting of the plane.
But the Seattle Times' Dominic Gates just landed a scoop which found that Boeing line workers had removed the plug but failed to reinstall it properly. The work had also not been inspected.
Here is the gist of his report:
The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times.
…
Last week, an anonymous whistleblower — who appears to have access to Boeing’s manufacturing records of the work done assembling the specific Alaska Airlines jet that suffered the blowout — on an aviation website separately provided many additional details about how the door plug came to be removed and then mis-installed.
“The reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeing’s own records,” the whistleblower wrote. “It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business.”
The self-described Boeing insider said company records show four bolts that prevent the door plug from sliding up off the door frame stop pads that take the pressurization loads in flight, “were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane.” the whistleblower stated. “Our own records reflect this.”
…
The account goes on to describe shocking lapses in Boeing’s quality control process in Renton.
The work of the mechanics on the door plug should have been formally inspected and signed off by a Boeing quality inspector.
It wasn’t, the whistleblower wrote, because of a process failure and the use of two separate systems to record what work was accomplished.
Boeing’s 737 production system is described as “a rambling, shambling, disaster waiting to happen.”
…
The Seattle Times offered Boeing the opportunity to dispute the details in this story. Citing the ongoing investigation, Boeing declined to comment. Likewise, so did Spirit, the FAA, the Machinists union and the NTSB.
Tomorrow the Boeing production line in Renton, Washington will pause production for one day for everyone to receive a quality briefing:
During the stand down, employees will attend quality workshops and "pause, evaluate what we're doing, how we're doing it and make recommendations for improvement," said Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stan Deal.
The first stand down will occur at the Renton, Washington-area factory where the 737 is built. All other Boeing commercial production facilities and fabrication sites will have stand downs over the next few weeks, Boeing said.
The two 737 MAX crashes, the 20 months long stop or 737 production and the continuing quality problems on several of Boeing's various production lines (737, 767, 787) are a direct consequence of management decisions to favor shareholder and CEO income over quality, security and technical innovation:
Finding the money for stock repurchases inevitably leads to cost-cutting. Most often, the first move is to lay off as many workers as possible. But other more subtle strategies include cutbacks in preventive maintenance and environmental controls, the outsourcing of work to lower-wage firms, skimping on health and safety protections, and underfunding quality-control. The goal is to become lean and mean, skating out to the very edge of cost reductions without jeopardizing the product. Or, well, at least not harming it too much.
You’d think that Boeing would not compromise on safety, given that one small production error or software glitch could down a plane worth hundreds of millions of dollars while killing hundreds of people in one blow. But you’d be wrong.
Boeing is a world leader in stock buybacks. Between 1998 and 2018, the plane manufacturer also manufactured a whopping $61.0 billion in stock buybacks, amounting to 81.8 percent of its profits. Add in dividends and Boeing’s shareholders received 121 percent of its profits. (Data compiled by William Lazonick and The Academic-Industry Research Network, from Boeing 10-K SEC filings.)
A company that consistently gives 120% of its profits to shareholders can not be a company that keeps its standards and innovates.
There are tax preferences in the U.S. which incentivize stock buybacks to increase shareholder income over the payment of dividends.
It's for Congress to change that.
@canuck | Jan 24 2024 17:02
“Imperialism is monopoly capitalism. Reforms, like anti-trust laws, never work. White-collar criminals are relatively immune from prosecution because of the class bias of the courts and the power of their class to influence the implementation and administration of the law. ”
Posted by: zeke2u | Jan 24 2024 17:13 utc | 29
I beg to differ.
Teddy Roosevelt ,an accidental president I admit, in 1902 used the Sherman Act of 1890 , to break up a railway monopoly:
“The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 became law while Theodore Roosevelt was serving on the U.S. Civil Service Commission, but it played a large and important role during his presidency.
When Theodore Roosevelt’s first administration sought to end business monopolies, it used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as the tool to do so. Passed after a series of large corporate mergers during the 1880s, this Act enabled government departments and private individuals to use the court system to break up any organization or contract alleged to be in restraint of trade. The federal government used the Act to invalidate formal and informal arrangements by which different companies in the same industry set prices, though for the first decade of its existence the Act did little to slow the rate of business mergers.
This changed when, in 1902, President Roosevelt urged his Justice Department to dismantle the Northern Securities Corporation. This entity was a holding company, a combination of separate railroads administered by a Board of Trustees. At issue was its control of railroading in the northern tier of the United States from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. After losing in the lower courts, Northern Security trustees appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in March 1904 that the Northern Securities Corporation violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the first major example of trust-busting during Roosevelt’s presidency.”(1)
That was only the beginning. In 1911 the US government went after the big kahuna, Standard Oil controlled by the Rockefeller family:
“Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911)
Primary tabs
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911) is a U.S. Supreme Court case holding that Standard Oil Company, a major oil conglomerate in the early 20th century, violated the Sherman Antitrust Act through anticompetitive actions, i.e. forming a monopoly, and ordered that the company be geographically split. Find the full opinion here.
The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was, in fact, a holding company which the Rockefeller family held. The Rockefeller family organized their oil empire by creating such holding companies in many of the jurisdictions in which they operated. In total, the Rockefeller family and their holding companies controlled almost the entire petroleum market in the U.S. To further the Rockefeller’s control over the petroleum market, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had acquired nearly all of the oil refining companies in the United States. The United States brought suit against the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, alleging that it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act because its acquisitions were an undue restraint of trade.
The Court first ruled that Congress had the power to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. It then ruled that “restraint of trade” included monopolistic behavior, and only unduly restrained trade if it led to one of the three possible consequences: higher prices, reduced output, and reduced quality. Balancing antitrust protections with principles of freedom of contract, the Court ruled that a company’s potentially monopolistic actions could only be illegal if it led to one of those three consequences. In this case, however, the Court found that Standard Oil of New Jersey’s actions led to these consequences and therefore violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. ” (2)
I don’t know if you are around in the 1980’s but another mammoth anti trust against AT and T. I can tell you paying phone bills came down alot after AT and T broke up and the telecommunication industry boomed:
“Charges were filed against the firm under the Sherman Antitrust Act in the 1970s. AT&T, also known as Ma Bell, was allowed to keep its long-distance service under a settlement reached in 1982. In 1984, the company’s local telephone service was broken up into seven Baby Bells as part of the agreement.”
Yes, anti trusts do work, please see above: at least they did until the 90’s when the Empire became Imperial as you duly noted.
Microsoft should have been broken up in the late 90’s-today Google, Amazon, Facebook all should be broken up according to the Sherman Act but the Oligarchs won’t allow it.
It would take a politician of Teddy’s mettle to use the Sherman Act in the interests of the American public.
I don’t see Biden or Trump doing it-Rand Paul, maybe, if he ever got there.
1. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Capitalism-and-Labor/The-Sherman-Act.aspx
2. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standard_oil_co._of_new_jersey_v._united_states_(1911)
Posted by: canuck | Jan 24 2024 17:41 utc | 33
@Posted by: Norm Macdonald | Jan 24 2024 16:50 utc | 24
The state doesn’t own the means of production in western economies but it completely controls the means of production. This results in very little competition and massive corruption. While having dozens of medium-size companies competing against each other would be great for consumers, such an arrangement would be awful for shareholders and insiders at the top who benefit from monopoly. Call the current system “capitalism” if you must but what it really amounts to is a command economy masquerading as a free market. It is designed to screw the little guy by design.
For Western countries you get the flow of control wrong, because it is the independent capitalist class that own/control the state for their own benefit. Which naturally leads to a complete evisceration of anti-monopoly laws, regulations, and regulatory bodies. After the fall of communism, the capitalist class no longer had an example to be compared to so could go full neoliberal (most of the damage was done during the Clinton years). This situation has become even worse, for working people, as the Supreme Court removed all limitations on the rich buying the government.
@Posted by: TG | Jan 24 2024 17:02 utc | 26
One wonders if the elites will ever stop flying Boeing airplanes? It would be a real kick in the head if, eventually, senior Boeing executives used Airbus planes for their corporate jet fleet, yes? Boeing airplanes might not be bad enough yet for this to happen, but we shall see.
The rich and their well-paid courtiers do not fly like other people! They all have corporate/state jets manufactured by such people as Learjet and Canadair, if they use Boeing products those will have a specialist highly skilled and disciplined ground crew and most probably only built in Washington state.
@Posted by: zeke2u | Jan 24 2024 17:13 utc | 29
Imperialism is monopoly capitalism. Reforms, like anti-trust laws, never work. White-collar criminals are relatively immune from prosecution because of the class bias of the courts and the power of their class to influence the implementation and administration of the law. This class bias affects not merely present-day courts but to a much greater degree affected the earlier courts which established the precedents and rules of procedure of the present-day courts. Instead of a kindler, gentler capitalism, what reforms have promulgated is the present liberal carapace that’s essentially a hard-core fascist, corporate state.
Exactly! I still like Wolin’s term of “Inverted Totalitarianism” as its the rich capitalist elite who control the state, not the other way round.
@Posted by: canuck | Jan 24 2024 17:18 utc | 30
Yep, with the children not only being dumbed down but also not taught basic discipline, responsibility, focus, and respect for those with more skills and knowledge.
Boeing is just one if the worse examples of owners and executives that now prioritize extractive profit making, not the building of great companies. Financialized rentier capital as against productive capital, as Hudson would put it.
Posted by: Roger | Jan 24 2024 22:18 utc | 42
|
