Leeham News and Analysis
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Leeham News and Analysis
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Boeing publicizes fourth Chief Aerospace Safety Officer Report
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 21, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing Chief Aerospace Safety Officer Don Ruhmann publishes his 2025 Safety Report today. Leeham was present in briefings both on the report content (this article) and how the safety work is progressing in view of recent problem areas (a Monday article).
The report describes the work of the dedicated Chief Aerospace Safety Office, established in 2021. The office is focused on preventing accidents by fostering an active safety culture. The 2025 report describes areas where Boeing’s Safety work has been improved and expanded.
This is the fourth report published since Boeing started to share them with the public in 2022.
Work to strengthen Flight Safety
Boeing has several activities to strengthen the safety of flight, both for Boeing and for the industry. Commercial flight is already the safest way of transport, but it can be improved further.
The Boeing activities can be grouped into:
- Strengthening the Safety Culture internally.
- Improving the processes and practices around the development, production, and support of Boeing Commercial Aircraft products.
- Being very active in customer airline and industry collaborations for safer air transport.
Strengthening the Boeing Safety Culture
The key pillars are the internal Speak Up anonymous reporting channel, further training of its employees, an interactive website reporting on all industry incidents and accidents over the years, and what can be learned, and further engagement of employees in Boeing’s Safety Management System (SMS).
The activity around the employees gained renewed importance and commitment after the plug door blowout on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on January 5, 2024.
The analysis and feedback during and after the quality stand-downs of all Boeing Commercial Airplane (BCA) employees after the accident showed that the employees wanted more on-the-job training and more information on the quality and safety work.
The stand-downs generated over 27,000 individual pieces of feedback, such as suggestions, comments, and complaints. The FAA also visited multiple sites and conducted multi-week audits.
A total of 160,000 employees have now been trained on their role in identifying and reporting things that can result in product hazards.
A Website has been generated where an interactive time history is displayed that explains how Boeing and the industry analyzed past incidents and accidents and how people applied the lessons learned.
The Speak Up internal confidential and anonymous reporting channel for product and services safety, quality, or compliance concerns has had a 220% yearly volume increase after the report’s anonymity and independence from line management was improved, Figure 1.
Figure 1. The reporting in the Speak Up system. Source: Boeing.
Boeing Safety Practices
The Boeing Safety Management System (such a system is mandated for an airframer by the FAA from 2027) has had an additional 1,000 employees go through a five-week virtual training to be Safety Culture champions inside Boeing.
The system, which is continuously upgraded to the level required by the FAA by 2027, is used in production to focus on process improvement in the right areas that affect safety and development to raise the critical factors when conducting Design and Build Audits.
Another improvement is the Independence of the ODA (Organization Designation Authorization by FAA) Boeing employees who do FAA-assigned controlling of Boeing work. Feedback from these is that they now feel free from internal pressure when doing their job.
Like other manufacturers, Boeing is increasing the amount of data captured from airline flight operations so that it can use AI-based machine learning and other algorithms to extract relevant information that can lead to further improvement of flight safety. An example is how the ADS-B data (which now covers all commercial flights) can give detailed touchdown point information, leading to better practices and systems that avoid runway excursions.
Improved operational support to airlines
Airframers have long had Field Service Representatives stationed at airlines. Boeing has extended this to flight operations, placing 140 newly hired pilots at airlines to work with the flight operations personnel and pilots to increase support for safe flights and bring direct feedback to Boeing’s safety and other systems.
The improved operational support also includes Flight Safety Conferences together with airlines, and cooperation with the industry to improve accident statistics.
Although I applaud Boeing for this progress there still remain underlying problems.
For example, the Speakup system is over burdened…220% yearly volume .. wow! my internal contacts tell me that many, although applied to a database, have for over a year no closure or fixes to the problem reported. Managers, since they aren’t in the loop cannot report to the ‘anonymous employee’ about what’s being done to fix certain hazards.
This annual report is short on those specifics for remedies.
“The stand-downs generated over 27,000 individual pieces of feedback, such as suggestions, comments, and complaints.” …., Sounds great doesn’t it?
Think about this, over 27,000! That’s a lot of work to enter, track and action this type of feedback.
What’s Boeing doing about these? Who’s managing all this work? Huge and it grows.
No word in this report about the ASAP system implemented last year for all, except SPEEA (stay strong guys) and how this is functioning or not and the impact for employees to not feel threatened when they make mistakes and report freely. Why?
ASAP was advocated as a big safety culture improvement.
( BTW – ASAP was developed for certified airman, pilots then later applied to mx and dispatch personnel, excellent program in the airline industry)
1000 employees to advocate for safety culture. How? What changes is Boeing making for a positive safety culture? I’m sure it’s a good thing but it’d be good for the public to better understand.
In a robust SMS environment complete data transparency with the FAA (such as how the airlines operate) is tantamount for trust and how their safety culture is working. Boeing doesn’t share their complete data.
The FAA is still very much embedded in day to day operations such as airworthiness ticketing. The safety officer is silent about this.
Finally, SMS is mandated for airframers by 2027, took them long enough!
But seems Boeing will wait for full approval until that year, why not speed it up. They continue to operate under their voluntary approval.
Time will tell.
Sure a lot easier to maintain a working system than fix a broken one.
What you are saying to me sounds like “A lot of smoke but where is the fire?”. Changing a culture takes time due to the inbuilt or internal resistance to change. With Crew Resource Management (CRM),or Human Factors training programs initiated by the first airlines around 1980, the resistance was powerful. Fifteen years or so later the ‘fix’ was not to change the corporate culture but to change the CRM/HF to minimize the impact or effect that was the original intention.
Basically, don’t change the culture, change the program that is meant to change it. It minimizes the effect and we should not be surprised if Boeing, and others, will do the same. Dress it up to look and sound different, but reduce the impact.
Monday’s planned article will discuss SPEEA and ASAP.
Ever since McNerny they hired non-engineers as managers in engineering organizations.
Doesn’t this sound like a problem?
Hard to believe they can turn this around without significantly more changes in personnel.
It’s easier to squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube than to suck it back in.
I go with hiring by people that can manage vs an engineer or not.
As we saw with Muilinberg, being an engineer does not automatically get you anything.
This explains the 777X status with the thrust links. Not sure how you do a temp fix for something like that but the final fix also will need testing and close watching.
https://avweb.com/aviation-news/boeing-solves-777x-thrust-link-issue/
Very early 2020 a member went to Moses Lake to help with a test aircraft issue (747 engine testbed) and while there saw some 280 737MAX parked with generators and a/c units each and some 400 Boeing employees attending. He was told that the first 63 B777-9X aircraft off the production line would also be parked there in time. Early 2020 please note.
Another close friend was invited by his airline and Boeing to join a team examining avionic issues which also it seems included issues with the flight control computers. This was also quite a few years ago. It seems Boeing used only one supplier for programming which is a complete no no if true.
So maybe the thrust link is only one of many major issues for Boeing to deal with at a time when they have ripped the fabric of the company to shreds.
777X Thrust Link Definitive: This is the kind of detail a tech/engineer wants to see. Also amazing that something obscure like that could cause a huge problem. Often we just know it got fixed, this gives details of why it happened and what was done to fix it.
https://archive.ph/w0eC1
If true this is good news and shows a grounded plan. 42 MAX a month would be fantastic and then waiting at each point to ensure builds are steady not just ramping up regardless.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/boeing-ceo-says-company-is-pretty-confident-it-is-ready-to-increase-737-max-output/ar-AA1FJ9GY
Getting the 787s to rate 7 would be great news as well. I am iffy on wide body at rate 10 but rate 8 would seem to be a sweet spot taking into account ebbs and flows of the economies.
Haha when was the last time you heard Boeing say they don’t have the confidence? From Muilenburg to Calhoun…