Inside Boeing's Factory Lapses That Led To the Alaska Air Blowout

Remember when a door-sized panel blew off a Boeing aircraft back in January? The Seattle Times reports that the 'door plug' incident 'was caused by two distinct manufacturing errors by different crews' in a Boeing assembly plant in Renton, Washington last fall. (And that Boeing's quality control system 'failed to catch the faulty work.')

But the details tell a larger story. The newspaper bases their conclusion on 'transcripts of federal investigators' interviews of a dozen Boeing workers, synchronized with an internal Boeing document obtained by The Seattle Times,' tracing the whole history of that panel's production. Within a day of its fuselage arriving at the factory, 'a small defect was discovered: Five rivets installed by Spirit on the door frame next to the door plug were damaged.'

That day, the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, repair of those rivets was handed to Spirit, which has contract mechanics on-site in Renton to do any rework on its fuselage. In the meantime, inspectors gave mechanics the OK to install insulation blankets, which covered the door plug. By the following Thursday, a Spirit mechanic had logged an entry in the official Federal Aviation Administration-required record of this aircraft's assembly — the Common Manufacturing Execution System or CMES, pronounced 'sea-mass' by the mechanics — that the rivet repair was complete: 'removed and replaced rivets.' But that day, a Boeing inspector responded with a scathing rebuttal, stating that the rivets had not been replaced but just painted over. 'Not acceptable,' read the work order. On Sept. 10, records show Spirit was ordered a second time to remove and replace the rivets...

['Shipside Action Tracker'] entries show that after several days, the still-unfinished work order was elevated to higher-level Boeing managers. On Sept. 15, Boeing cabin interiors manager Phally Meas, who needed the work finished so he could get his crew to install cabin walls and seats, texted on-site Spirit manager Tran Nguyen to ask why the rivet work hadn't been done, NTSB interview transcripts show. Spirit mechanics couldn't get to the rivets unless the plug door was opened, Nguyen responded. He sent Meas a photo from his phone showing it was closed, according to the transcripts. It wasn't Spirit's job to open the sealed door plug. Boeing's door team would have to do that, the records show. 'He kept asking me how come there wasn't work yet,' Nguyen told the NTSB. 'The door was not open. That's why there wasn't work yet.'

By Sept. 17, the door was still closed, the rivets still unrepaired. The job was elevated again, to the next level of managers. On that day, according to the SAT record, senior managers worked with Ken McElhaney, the door crew manager in Renton, 'to determine if the door can just merely be opened or if it needs removal....' [On September 18] at 6:48 a.m., a Boeing mechanic identified as a Door Master Lead texted a young Trainee mechanic on his team to come to the Alaska jet and open the door. The NTSB interviewed but did not name the Trainee or the Door Master Lead, who had almost 16 years at Boeing.

Filling in for the veteran mechanic on vacation, the Trainee was perhaps the least equipped to do this atypical job. He'd been at Boeing for about 17 months, his only previous jobs being at KFC and Taco Bell. 'He's just a young kid,' the Door Master Lead said...

More key quotes from the article:

Boeing put both employees on paid administrative leave.
'A company investigator accused one of them of lying. That employee told the NTSB that Boeing has set the pair up as scapegoats.'
'A 35-year veteran on the door team told NTSB investigators that he is 'the only one that can work on all the doors' and he was typically the only mechanic who would work on door plugs. That mechanic was on vacation on the two critical days, September 18 and 19 last year, when the door plug on the Alaska MAX 9 had to be opened and closed...'
'No quality inspection of the door plug was conducted, since no record of its opening and closing was ever entered in the system, documents show.'
The FBI ís investigating Boeing 'for potential criminal negligence,' according to the article, 'and has issued subpoenas using a Seattle grand jury.'

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.