Claims of quality control issues at key Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems are mounting, following near-disaster on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX flight.
Spirit, the manufacturer of the door plug that blew out of the Alaska flight in mid-air, runs a factory in Wichita, Kansas where the sprawling fuselage for the troubled jets is produced.
Current and former Spirit employees told the Wall Street Journal that workers at the factory rush to meet unrealistic quotas, and that raising safety concerns is discouraged, if not outright punished.
‘It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved,’ Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after flagging misdrilled holes in fuselages, told the newspaper.
‘It doesn’t mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don’t want you to find everything and write it up.’
Spirit, the manufacturer of the door plug that blew out of the Alaska flight in mid-air, runs a factory (above) in Wichita, Kansas where the sprawling fuselage for the 737 MAX is produced
Spirit CEO Patrick Shanahan (C) previously spent 31 years at Boeing, and served as Acting Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration
Dean described a pizza party held in the Wichita plant to celebrate a decline in the number of defects reported, saying that chatter at the meal quickly turned to the observation that the gains were due only to under-reporting 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 said that it remains ‘focused on the quality of each aircraft that leaves our facilities.’
A Boeing spokesperson referred questions from DailyMail.com to Spirit, saying ‘we have nothing to add.’
Spirit referred DailyMail.com to prior statements, saying that it is fully cooperating with the federal investigation into the Alaska Airlines incident.
‘At Spirit AeroSystems, our primary focus is the quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver,’ the company said.
The Journal’s report notes that Boeing owned the Wichita plant until 2005, when it was taken over by Spirit as part of an outsourcing strategy at the plane maker, which focused its efforts on final assembly to boost profits.
Spirit is heavily dependent on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled over costs, quality, and production pace.
Boeing executives have acknowledged that the company is ultimately responsible for safety and quality control on all of the planes it sells, regardless of issues with suppliers.
The latest scrutiny on 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 on Friday when its door plug suddenly fell out and it was forced into an emergency landing
The Alaska Airlines aircraft, which had been in service for just eight weeks, took off from Portland, Oregon on January 5 and was flying at 16,000 feet when a panel tore off the plane.
Pilots flew the jet back to Portland, with only minor injuries among passengers.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration extended the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes indefinitely for new safety checks, and announced it will tighten oversight of Boeing itself.
The FAA said it will require another round of inspections before it will consider putting the jets back in service.
Under more stringent supervision, the regulator will audit the Boeing 737 MAX 9 production line and suppliers.
It will also consider having an independent entity take over from Boeing certain aspects of certifying the safety of new aircraft that the FAA previously assigned to the aircraft maker.
The FAA said the continued grounding of 171 planes with the same configuration as the one in the incident was ‘for the safety of American travelers.’
Boeing Co. 737 fuselage sections sit on the assembly floor at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas in a file photo
A worker applies sealer to a cargo door frame as the bottom section of a Boeing 737 fuselage is assembled at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas in a file photo
The regulator had said Monday the grounding would be lifted once they were inspected before saying more work was needed on planned checks.
On Friday, the FAA said 40 of the planes must be re-inspected, then the agency will review the results and determine if safety is adequate to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two US airlines that use the aircraft involved, have had to cancel hundreds of flights in the last week due to the grounding.
Alaska and United on Friday both canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday and United canceled some additional flights in the following days.
Boeing shares closed down 2.2 percent on Friday and are down 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 killed 346 people and led Congress to pass sweeping reforms for certification of new airplanes.