March 5, 2024, © Leeham News: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week gave The Boeing Co. 90 days to come up with a real program that has measurable results to fix safety and quality shortcomings.
The move follows the release on Feb. 26 of a year-long safety audit by a panel of 24 industry experts appointed by the FAA. More than 50 recommendations were made. Much of the focus was on failures in Boeing’s Organization Designation Authority (ODA), the Safety Management System (SMS), and pressure and fear of retaliation of employees who came forward with alerts about safety issues during aircraft production at Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA).
ODAs are employed by Boeing but represent the FAA. The FAA is considering establishing an independent ODA system at Boeing.
In giving Boeing 90 days to come up with a solid safety program, Administrator Mike Whitaker was blunt: “Boeing must commit to real and profound improvements. Making foundational change will require a sustained effort from Boeing’s leadership, and we are going to hold them accountable every step of the way, with mutually understood milestones and expectations.”
But Boeing and the FAA have been down this road before. Boeing and the FAA established the ODA systems ago and the SMS was created in 2019. The FAA previously fined Boeing for failing to follow through on elements of both programs.
Feb. 26, 2024, © Leeham News: A Congressionally-mandated safety review study of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) dropped this morning. The 50-page report of a committee appointed by the Federal Aviation Administration found serious flaws in Boeing’s safety culture despite years of attempts to improve.
LNA is still absorbing the study, which may be downloaded here: Boeing Safety Study by FAA Panel 2-26-24
The Executive Summary is synopsized below.
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By Scott Hamilton
Feb. 15, 2024, © Leeham News: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) may have told Boeing it won’t allow product rate increases on the 737 MAX lines, or the addition of the North Line at Everett (WA) until it’s satisfied production quality is under control.
But as LNA first wrote upon this news, Boeing’s production is well below the currently approved 38 per month. We pointed out that Boeing was consistently struggling last year to roll 31 MAXes out of the factory—and often, the number was substantially below 31.
Sometimes the number of newly produced 737s was less than 20 a month, reports one consultant who tracks the production.
Technically, the FAA can’t stop Boeing from producing more 737s than the 38 per month cap. It doesn’t have this authority, reports Aviation Week. But the FAA is the responsible party for issuing individual aircraft airworthy certificates as the 737s are ready for delivery to airlines and lessors. And, according to AvWeek, the FAA won’t issue more than 38 certificates a month.
The FAA suspended Boeing’s so-called ticketing authority for the MAX before the airplane was recertified following the 21 month grounding beginning in March 2019. This suspension was extended to the 787 when production and quality control problems were discovered at the Charleston (SC) assembly plant.
Several aerospace analysts following Boeing pointed out that Boeing hasn’t produced 38 MAXes a month and, like LNA reported, it’s struggled to meet even the previously advertised rate of 31/mo.
The consultancy Cirium charted the actual deliveries by Boeing (and by Airbus) for their respective single-aisle aircraft.
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Special Coverage of the Boeing crisis
Jan. 24, 2024 © Leeham News: The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday it will not approve a planned expansion of Boeing 737 MAX production. The agency also laid out a path to get MAX 9 airplanes back flying.
The jetliners were grounded on January 6 after a door plug blew out the day before from a two-month-old 737 MAX 9 flown by Alaska Airlines. The FAA investigation found significant quality lapses in the program. Inspection of the MAX 9 fleet found problems in other airplanes.
After grounding the 171 MAX 9 airplanes operated by Alaska (65) and United Airlines (79), the FAA “made clear this aircraft would not go back into service until it was safe,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said Wednesday in a public statement (Emphasis added). “The exhaustive, enhanced review our team completed after several weeks of information gathering gives me and the FAA confidence to proceed to the inspection and maintenance phase.
“However, let me be clear: This won’t be back to business as usual for Boeing. We will not agree to any request from Boeing for an expansion in production or approve additional production lines for the 737 MAX until we are satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved,” he said.
“The quality assurance issues we have seen are unacceptable,” Whitaker said. “That is why we will have more boots on the ground closely scrutinizing and monitoring production and manufacturing activities.”
By the Leeham News Team
Jan. 12, 2024, © Leeham News: The Federal Aviation Administration today announced it is boosting its oversight of Boeing production and manufacturing on the 737-9 MAX.
The FAA’s been overseeing Boeing deliveries of the MAX since recertifying the airplane in November 2020. Following the discovery of production issues of the 787 in October 2020 that resulted in Boeing suspending delivery for more than a year, the FAA also assumed certification by an FAA official.
With today’s announcement, the FAA said it will add “new and significant actions to immediately increase oversight” to audit the MAX 9 production line and its suppliers to “evaluate Boeng’s compliance with its approved quality procedures.
The FAA also will increase monitoring of MAX 9 in-service events and assess the safety risks of delegated authority. The full announcement is below.
January 5, 2024, ©. Leeham News: We are discussing the different phases of a new airliner program. After covering the Design and Production, we now look at the Operational phase of a new airliner family.
For the customer, the design and production are exciting and interesting, but it’s the information and services around the operational phase (Fleet Support in Figure 1) of the airliner that are most important to the airline customer.
Last in a series of four articles
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Commentary
April 24, 2023, © Leeham News: Congress missed the boat authoring the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act (the Act) because it felt that more regulations equals more safety. But the current Harvard Business Review notes that “Activity is not a measurable metric of success.” We think that additional layers of regulatory requirements are not necessarily additional layers of security.
Understanding that Congress was a bit wide of the mark, here are some of the changes we would implement if we were asked for our recommendations.