Claims about quality control problems at key Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems are mounting, following a near-disaster on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX flight.
Spirit, the manufacturer of the airborne door plug from the Alaska flight, runs a factory in Wichita, Kansas, that produces the stretched fuselage for the troubled planes.
Current and former Spirit employees told the story Wall Street Journal that factory workers rush to meet unrealistic quotas, and that raising safety concerns is discouraged, if not outright punished.
“It’s well known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too many problems, you get upset,” said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after noticing improperly drilled holes in the fuselage , to the newspaper.
“That doesn’t mean you ignore things completely, but they don’t want you to look it all up and write it down.”
Spirit, the manufacturer of the airborne door plug from the Alaska flight, runs a factory (above) in Wichita, Kansas that produces the stretched fuselage for the 737 MAX
Spirit CEO Patrick Shanahan (C) previously worked at Boeing for 31 years and served as acting Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration
Dean described a pizza party held at the Wichita plant to celebrate the drop in reported defects, and said the talk over the meal quickly turned to the observation that the profits were only due to underreporting of problems.
Dean’s complaints are included in a shareholder lawsuit filed against Spirit in December, alleging the company failed to disclose defects.
Spirit told the Journal that it strongly denies the allegations in the lawsuit and that it “remains focused on the quality of every aircraft that leaves our facilities.”
A Boeing spokesperson referred questions from DailyMail.com to Spirit, saying “we have nothing to add.” Spirit did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The Journal’s report notes that Boeing owned the Wichita plant until 2005, when it was acquired by Spirit as part of an outsourcing strategy at the plane maker, which focused its efforts on final assembly to boost profits.
Spirit relies heavily on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled over costs, quality and production rates.
Boeing executives have acknowledged that the company is ultimately responsible for the safety and quality control of all aircraft it sells, regardless of supplier issues.
The latest investigation into the 737 MAX comes after one of the planes, just eight weeks off the assembly line, suffered a near disaster last week when a plug used to fill an inactive emergency door blew out mid-flight.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suffered a near-catastrophic failure Friday when the door plug suddenly failed, forcing an emergency landing
The Alaska Airlines plane, which had only been in service for eight weeks, took off from Portland, Oregon, on January 5 and was flying at 16,000 feet when a panel tore from the plane.
Pilots flew the plane back to Portland, with only minor injuries among passengers.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration indefinitely extended the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes for new safety checks, and announced that oversight of Boeing itself will be tightened.
The FAA said another round of inspections is needed before it considers returning the planes to service.
Under stricter supervision, the regulator will monitor the production line and suppliers of the Boeing 737 MAX 9.
It will also consider allowing an independent entity to take over from Boeing certain aspects of the safety certification of new aircraft that the FAA previously assigned to the aircraft manufacturer.
The FAA said the continued grounding of 171 aircraft with the same configuration as those in the incident was “for the safety of American travelers.”
Boeing Co. 737 fuselage sections are on the assembly floor at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas in a file photo
A worker applies sealer to the frame of a cargo door as the lower fuselage of a Boeing 737 is assembled at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas in a file photo
The regulator had said on Monday the grounding would be lifted once they were inspected, before saying more work was needed on the planned checks.
On Friday, the FAA said 40 of the planes must be re-inspected, after which the agency will review the results and determine whether safety is sufficient to allow the MAX 9s to resume operations.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two US airlines that use the affected planes, have had to cancel hundreds of flights in the past week due to the grounding.
Alaska and United both canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday on Friday, and United canceled some additional flights in subsequent days.
Shares of Boeing fell 2.2 percent on Friday and have fallen nearly 12 percent since the Alaska Airlines incident.
Confidence in Boeing has been shaken since a pair of MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and prompted Congress to enact sweeping reforms for the certification of new planes.