After a near-disaster on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX flight, reports of quality control problems at key Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems are increasing.
Spirit, the maker of the door plug that exploded in mid-air on the Alaska flight, has a factory in Wichita, Kansas, where it makes the sweeping fuselage for the troubled jets.
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 penalized.
“It's a well-known fact at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you'll get moved,” said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality inspector who said he was fired after incorrectly drilling holes in plane fuselages had reported to the newspaper.
“That doesn’t mean you completely ignore things, but you don’t want you to find and write everything down.”
Spirit, the manufacturer of the door plug that exploded in mid-air on the Alaska flight, operates a factory (above) in Wichita, Kansas, that makes the expansive fuselage for the 737 MAX
Spirit CEO Patrick Shanahan (center) previously spent 31 years at Boeing and served as acting defense secretary in the Trump administration
Describing a pizza party held at the Wichita plant to celebrate the decline in reported defects, Dean said the dinner conversation quickly turned into an assertion that the increases were solely due to underreporting of problems.
Dean's complaints are part of a shareholder lawsuit filed against Spirit in December, alleging the company failed to disclose deficiencies.
Spirit told the Journal that it vigorously denies the allegations in the lawsuit and that it remains “focused on the quality of every aircraft that leaves our facilities.”
A Boeing spokesman referred questions from to Spirit and said, “We have nothing to add.” Spirit did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The Journal's report notes that Boeing owned the Wichita plant until 2005, when it was acquired by Spirit as part of an outsourcing strategy by the plane maker, which focused its efforts on final assembly to boost profits.
Spirit relies heavily on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled over costs, quality and production speed.
Boeing executives have acknowledged that the company is ultimately responsible for the safety and quality control of all aircraft it sells, regardless of problems with suppliers.
The latest inspection of the 737 MAX comes after one of the planes, which had been off the assembly line for just eight weeks, suffered a near-disaster last week when a plug used to fill an inactive emergency door burst mid-flight.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suffered a near-catastrophic failure Friday when its door plug suddenly fell out, forcing it to make an emergency landing
The Alaska Airlines plane, which had only been in service for eight weeks, took off from Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 5 and was flying at an altitude of 16,000 feet when a panel tore off the plane.
Pilots flew the jet back to Portland, with only minor injuries to the passengers.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration extended the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes indefinitely due to new safety reviews and announced that it would tighten oversight of Boeing itself.
The FAA said another round of inspections would be required before considering returning the jets to service.
Under stricter supervision, the regulator will examine the Boeing 737 MAX 9 production line and suppliers.
It is also considering having certain aspects of the certification of the safety of new aircraft, which the FAA previously delegated to the aircraft manufacturer, carried out by an independent body from Boeing.
The FAA said the continued grounding of 171 aircraft with the same configuration as the incident was “for the safety of American travelers.”
In a file photo, Boeing 737 fuselage parts sit on the assembly floor at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas
A worker applies sealant to a cargo door frame while the lower portion of a Boeing 737 fuselage is assembled at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas, as shown in a file photo
The regulator had said on Monday that the flight ban would be lifted following the inspection, before saying further work was needed in the planned checks.
On Friday, the FAA said 40 of the planes needed to be re-inspected. The authority will then review the results and determine whether safety is sufficient for the MAX 9 to fly again.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two US airlines that use the affected aircraft, had to cancel hundreds of flights last week due to the grounding.
Alaska and United canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday on Friday, and United canceled some additional flights in the following days.
Boeing shares closed down 2.2 percent on Friday and have fallen nearly 12 percent since the Alaska Airlines incident.
Confidence in Boeing has been shaken since two MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people and prompted Congress to pass sweeping reforms to the certification of new planes.