Leeham News and Analysis
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Leeham News and Analysis
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- Services are driving revenues and profits in difficult times, Part I May 15, 2025
- The BWB has a long way to go before flying passengers, freight May 12, 2025
Boeing’s 2025 annual safety report due this month
By Scott Hamilton
May 20, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing will release its fourth annual safety report this month. The first was in 2022.
The document is the Chief Aerospace Safety Officer Report (CASO Report). Previous CASO reports outlined programs Boeing adopted since the 2019 737 MAX grounding and safety crises emerged across Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
Related Documents
Quality control, safety protocols, intimidation, retribution, and retaliation against line workers were highlighted during the MAX accident investigations and whistleblowing accusations at the Renton, Everett (WA), and Charleston (SC) production plants.
Quality control at Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the 737 fuselage and nose sections of the other 7-Series commercial airliners, also emerged as an issue.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s cooperation with Boeing and transfer of inspection and quality authority also came under scrutiny. The FAA revoked Boeing’s “ticketing authority” to certify 737s and 787s as airworthy before delivery, assuming this role itself. FAA inspectors clamped down on Boeing, reviewing previous work and overseeing production lines.
There is no end in sight for the FAA to relax its grip on Boeing. Boeing must meet six Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) before the FAA is convinced that the company has its house in order, allowing production rates to return to pre-MAX grounding levels and boost production for the 787. These KPIs are:
- Employee proficiency measures share of employees currently staffed who are deemed proficient in core skills.
- Notice of Escape (NoE) rework hours measures time performing rework due to non-conforming work from Fabrication and suppliers.
- Supplier shortages measures shortages per day from Fabrication and suppliers.
- Rework hours per airplane measures time spent performing rework in Final Assembly.
- Travelers at factory rollout measures unfinished jobs traveling from Final Assembly.
- Ticketing performance measures quality escapes per ticketed airplane prior to delivery.
Source: Boeing.
The 2024 CASO Report is expected to update these topics and more.
Progress in safety
Boeing has periodically issued press releases touting progress in improving quality control and safety protocols and enabling employees to speak up about issues safely. However, little in the way of supporting data has been released, and no interviews were granted with the previous safety officer, Mike Delaney. Delaney retired this spring and was succeeded by Don Ruhmann.
One measurement about Boeing’s safety progress may be gleaned independently by tracking safety-related fines leveled by the FAA and the US Department of Justice (DOJ). An independent website, Violationstracker.com, has been tracking fines levied by governments and via lawsuits across many industries and companies. It’s tracked Boeing since 2000. Since then, through 2024, Boeing has been fined nearly $845m for 36 safety violations.
Nearly $700m of these originated with the DOJ for criminal charges related to the 2018 and 2019 MAX crashes that killed 346 passengers and crew, and the January 2024 near-catastrophe when a door plug blew off a new Alaska Airlines 737-9 MAX, traced to sloppy production. There were only minor injuries on the Alaska flight, which made an emergency landing 16 minutes after taking off from Portland (OR).
Before 2019, when the FAA clamped down on Boeing, most fines were small. There were some years in which no safety-related fines were levied. Before the MAX crisis began in 2019, the largest fines were in 2015, aggregating to $24m.
Once the crisis began, fines began racking up as the FAA scrutinized Boeing closely. No fines were levied in 2023, and none have been levied so far in 2025.
Click on image to enlarge.
Pennies on the dollar
However, the fines amount to fractions of pennies on the dollar compared with Boeing’s annual revenues. Even the huge DOJ safety fine last year represented a fraction of the annual earnings.
Excluding the DOJ fine, Boeing’s cost per day is inconsequential compared with revenues that ranged from a low of $58bn in 2020 to $78bn in 2023. (Last year’s revenues declined to $66.5bn due to the 53-day strike by its blue-collar union, the IAM 751.)
| Total Fine | Cost per Day | |
| 2019 | 3,900,000 | $ 10,685 |
| 2020 | 26,300,000 | $ 72,055 |
| 2021 | 50,788,778 | $ 139,147 |
| 2022 | 17,000,000 | $ 46,575 |
| 2023 | $ – | |
| 2024 | 698,600,000 | $ 1,913,973 |
SPEEA, Boeing remain at odds
The union representing Boeing engineers and technicians, SPEEA, has been at odds with the company for more than a year. SPEEA proposed a reporting program called ASAP that would initially funnel employee information to a three-member panel consisting of a union member, a company representative, and an FAA official. Boeing insists that it decide what information goes to the full panel; SPEEA objects to this filter.
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SPEEA and Boeing have been at an impasse for a year, and months go by without a meeting. Boeing’s labor relations department—not the Chief Aerospace Safety Officer’s venue—handles the issue for the company.
“Boeing is insisting on putting union containment ahead of any reasonable ASAP program,” says Rich Plunkett, the SPEEA official leading the negotiation with Boeing.
In the past, Boeing declined to comment.
Well, seeing as BA is now trying to avoid a guilty plea in the latest draft non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ — even though it did plead guilty in a previous plea deal — we can surmise that the company (and the new DOJ) pays nothing more than lip service to concepts such as accountability and consistency. The new document also tramples on the Crime Victims Rights Act.
Trial is currently still set for June 23. However, one could imagine how the trial judge is currently being “incentivized” (à la Harvard, for example) to fall in line.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-boeing-near-deal-avoid-144421545.html
https://www.tbsnews.net/worldbiz/usa/boeing-nears-deal-avoid-guilty-plea-prosecution-737-max-crashes-case-sources-1144406