By Scott Hamilton
Jan. 3, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing today issued an update on its year-long effort to improve safety protocols in the final assembly lines of the 7-Series commercial airplanes.
However, the update received lukewarm reviews from one of its leading unions and some retired employees charged with safety protocols who had complained for years about the safety culture.
Boeing has opposed a safety plan proposed by the engineers’ union, SPEEA. No meeting has been held since March 26 last year, and none is scheduled.
The update comes two days before the first anniversary of the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight blow out of a door plug on a brand new 737-9 MAX. The airplane had taken off from the Portland (OR) airport and was passing through 16,000 ft when the plug on the left side aft of the wing blew off the airplane.
Nobody was sitting in the two seats next to the plug. A teenager in the row in front of the plug was nearly sucked out of the plane. There were minor injuries and damage from the decompression throughout the cabin and cockpit. The plane made a safe emergency landing minutes later.
The cause was traced to line assembly personnel’s failure to reinstall four bolts holding the plug in place. The plug eventually shifted in its track and separated from the aircraft. The plug blowout also blew up Boeing’s recovery efforts from the 2018-19 MAX crisis following two fatal crashes. These were traced to a design flaw with a flight system known as MCAS.
In its report issued today, Boeing said that it has:
Overview
- Addressed over 70% of action items in commercial airplanes production based on employee feedback during Quality Stand Down sessions.
- Instituted new random quality audits of documented removals in high frequency areas to ensure compliance to process.
- Added hundreds of hours of new curriculum to training programs, including quality proficiency, Safety Management System (SMS) Positive Safety Culture, and critical skills.
- Mapped and prepared thousands of governance documents and work instructions for revision.
- Significantly reduced defects in 737 fuselage assembly at Spirit AeroSystems by increasing inspection points at build locations and implementing customer quality approval process.
Few details
Boeing declined to make an official available for an interview. It also did not respond to a question about any progress related to an outside safety committee appointed by then-CEO David Calhoun in the wake of the Alaska 1282 accident.
Boeing’s full press release may be downloaded here: Boeing Safety Update 1-4-25
Boeing did not detail outcomes of what it means by “addressed” 70% of action items. It’s unknown how many items were resolved, affirmed, denied, dismissed, corrected or implemented.
In addition, Boeing said that among the items it cited as safe progress in the past year, it:
- Created and filled a new position of Human Factors Functional Chief Engineer.
- Invested in improvements to the Speak Up system to strengthen confidentiality and keep employees who submit reports informed of the status and resolution of their report.
- Implemented “move ready” criteria across Final Assembly for the 737, 787, and portions of 767 and 777 to manage traveled work and mitigate risk.
- Instituted new random quality audits of documented removals in high frequency areas to ensure compliance to process.
- Released initial simplified installation plans into 737 production.
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Skeptics of the progress
Present and former employees, however, expressed skepticism over Boeing’s list. Relating to the “move ready” criteria, one former employee told LNA that in the past, the Everett factory identified downjack critical parts, parts that for structural reasons, had to be fully installed in the vehicle before it could be removed from one Control Code/Tool and moved down the line. Creating a new move-ready process encompassing more than the structural necessities for vehicle safety may introduce unintended outcomes. He said unnecessary delays and “useless” discrepancies are two possible outcomes.
This employee said that the random audits are a “reasonable short-term band-aid” to the removal process. But what’s missing “is a documented process of discipline and corrective action for those that circumvent the process. Renton had a God almighty large removal escape [Alaska 1282’s door plug] and publishing what happens next time to those who get caught gaming the system is a necessary step on the way to 100% compliance.”
The simplified installation plans highlighted by Boeing “is fraught with peril,” the employee said.
“The simplification of a known good, approved process introduces literally thousands of new error points into the system. Boeing’s problems were never centered on the Installation plans. Boeing was the victim of the aging of a very skilled workforce and the loss of institutional knowledge as that workforce retired. This includes the supervisory staff on the factory floor,” the employee said.
Failure to follow processes
Despite a year’s efforts, a current employee said that failure to follow processes remains a problem at the Fredrickson (WA) facility. Repeated leadership turnover also has been an issue. Some issues were reported through the Speak Up system a year ago, but no action was taken, he said. He fears reporting the problems to the FAA would be recognized by his managers as coming from him, resulting, he fears, in retaliation.
He said some facility managers still don’t understand the Safety Management System (SMS) that was put in place voluntarily and made mandatory during the MAX crisis. There hadn’t been a safety standdown in 10 years before former CEO Calhoun departed.
Another current employee said that Boeing Global Services (BGS) hasn’t seen any changes. Focus has been on Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), understandably. However, this employee points out that BGS is “tethered” to BCA and the Defense unit and between Defense and BCA. There has been no safety standdown at BGS, he said, and complained that the BCA standdown following the Alaska accident was show and little substance.
Another retired Boeing employee, whose duties once included safety, said “addressing” 70% of action items identified during the BCA safety stand down “doesn’t mean they were fixed.” Audits, he said, “are part of the norm. Can Boeing speak to what the findings rate is with the audits? It should be more transparent.”
This employee noted that Boeing didn’t provide a metric to define what “significantly reduc[ing]” defects in 737 fuselage assembly at Spirit AeroSystems means. Nor did Boeing discuss the Everett factory, where quality control on the 767, KC-46A, and 777 lines suffered since the COVID pandemic.
SPEEA’s skepticism
The engineers and technicians union, SPEEA, is involved in every aspect of design and production. Yet the outside safety committee, headed by a retired Navy nuclear submarine admiral, appointed by then-CEO Calhoun after the Alaska accident, hasn’t contacted SPEEA for its input in the ensuing year. The new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has not met with SPEEA. Upon assuming the position on Aug. 8, Ortberg said one of his first priorities is resetting labor relations.
SPEEA’s year-old initiative to create an Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) has been stalled by Boeing’s labor relations department, SPEEA’s Rich Plunkett told LNA on Tuesday. Plunkett is SPEEA’s Director of Strategic Development. The last meeting was in March. When he queried the department earlier this month, he was told the focus was still on post-IAM strike matters. No new date has been set to meet.
ASAP was previously implemented between the touch-labor union, the IAM 751, and Boeing, as well as with the company’s test flight department. But SPEEA executive director Ray Goforth told LNA in April that the impasse is over Boeing’s insistence that it control the information flow to a tri-party panel that consists of Boeing, SPEEA, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). SPEEA wants information to flow directly to the panel without Boeing’s filtering it. The FAA representative, who was recently reassigned, was sympathetic to SPEEA’s position, says Plunkett.
Airbus has a similar program that LNA described in detail in an Oct. 7 post. Airbus doesn’t have an ASAP (this is an official FAA program). But it does have a Speak-Up program, as does Boeing. Speak-Up encourages employees to report concerns about safety protocol and quality control, without fear of retribution or retaliation.
At Airbus, the report is reviewed by a committee of experts in different areas, but not the ones from the management of that person, to assess if there are any lessons learned, or systemic lessons learned.
Spirit embraces ASAP
As for Boeing’s current safety update, Plunkett’s response was caustic.
“It reminds me of the 787 rollout,” he said. The first 787 was rolled out to worldwide fanfare in 2008. The airplane looked intact, but close inspection revealed wooden and cardboard doors and hatches, thousands of temporary fasteners, and other incomplete production elements. In some circles, the airplane was called the Potemkin airplane, after the phony village created to impress a Russian Czar. “It’s a hollow shell put on by a prop department,” Plunkett said.
SPEEA represents Spirit’s engineers and technicians. A new contract was agreed to last month. Included is an ASAP. Plunkett said that Spirit management embraces ASAP, unlike Boeing, and worked with SPEEA to establish the program.
Plunkett hopes that once Boeing acquires Spirit, which is targeted for this spring, Spirit’s embrace of ASAP will migrate to Boeing. But a former Boeing employee isn’t so sure. If Boeing structures Spirit as its own Boeing division, the company may be able to silo ASAP to Wichita, where Spirit is located, and prevent company-wide implementation.
Plunkett said this has been another stumbling block in SPEEA’s efforts to adopt ASAP. SPEEA’s position is that safety is a company-wide issue, not one confined to site-specific locations. SPEEA proposed including Boeing’s Charleston (SC) 787 facilities in ASAP. Charleston is a non-union shop. Plunkett said Boeing’s labor relations department dismissed the suggestion as a “land grab” effort.
Human factors position
“The one thing in there that I was heartened about was, and I was not aware of, was that they created a human factors functional chief engineer,” he added. “That’s fantastic. But one of the things you may or may not know is that the old Boeing had something called the ESB, the Employment Stabilization Board. It met on a regular basis where they managed the care and feeding of the various engineering skill sets.
“They were the ones in charge of looking at what is the current population’s capabilities, where are the schools going in terms of developing the skill sets, how do we get these folks, how do we develop these folks, and then the ESB met on a regular basis with the business units to place individuals in accordance with the business needs. That was a very robust system and a way to manage skill sets, and things like human factors not getting their appropriate seat at the table would be brought forth. Boeing did away with that” after the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, he said.
“Boeing is making some appropriate moves, but it’s like they’re putting out fires while they’re not recognizing the lightning storm that is creating these fires they’re putting out,” Plunkett said.
Furthermore, despite Speak Up, SPEEA will next week file an unfair labor practice complaint over the layoff of a union member whose employee reviews were good but who visibly supported last year’s IAM strike.
“They targeted one of our activists who is involved in, go figure, the ASAP negotiation team and the SMS implementation team and is part of the ODA (the FAA’s authorized designated representative program),” Plunkett said.
The Seattle Times published a long story about Boeing whistleblowers on Dec. 29. In it, complaints about the retaliation of some who communicated through Speak Up were reported.
“A panel of aviation safety experts in February rebuked Boeing’s Speak Up program in a report to Congress. Whistleblower advocates criticized Speak Up for commonly outing whistleblowers to the supervisors they’re complaining about, exposing them to retaliation. Managers sometimes investigated complaints against themselves. Employees mistrusted the program’s promise of anonymity,” The Times wrote.
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