Boeing asks retired Navy Admiral to head up a group to look into the plug issues.

 I Saw this, looks like Boeing is trying to be proctive, but my opinion is that they let the bean counters run the company rather than the engineers as in the days of old and now they are having a lot of problems.   

Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

 

 

 

Boeing has tapped retired U.S. Navy Admiral Kirk Donald, a former director of the branch’s nuclear propulsion program, to lead an independent review of the company’s quality system and supplier oversight.

The review, announced Jan. 15 in a company-wide message from Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Stan Deal, will examine Boeing’s commercial airplane quality management, including “quality programs and practices in Boeing manufacturing facilities” as well as its supplier quality oversight. The team’s report and recommendations will go to Boeing’s top management and board, the company said.

Donald is no stranger to high-profile investigations. During his tenure as Director of Navy Nuclear Propulsion, he was tasked with leading a 2008 U.S. Defense Department probe into the mistaken shipments of four Tomahawk missile nose cones to Taiwan.

The Donald-led review is one of several steps Boeing is taking to ease both customer and regulatory concerns in the wake of the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines 737-9 in-flight loss of an exit door plug and subsequent grounding of similarly configured 737-9s. Boeing will also bring customers in for inspections of its 737 production process, both at Boeing and major supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the 737 fuselage sections and exit door plugs.

While the NTSB has yet to release any information to explain the Jan. 5 occurrence, statements out of Boeing and the FAA suggest both believe mistakes by Spirit that led to the broader 737-9 groundings may have played a role in the Alaska accident.

Boeing also is stepping up its own quality inspection efforts, both internally and at Spirit. A separate review of Spirit’s exit door plug work is also underway, as is scrutiny of “more than 50 other points in Spirit’s build process,” Deal wrote, with special attention being paid to “assessing their build plans against engineering specifications.”

As part of the increased focus on Spirit, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will head to Wichita to join Spirit AeroSystems CEO Pat Shanahan and other Spirit executives in a meeting with 737 program employees Jan. 17. The event will include Boeing employees who work in Wichita or are assigned there as part of the stepped-up scrutiny, sources with knowledge of the plans confirmed to Aviation Week.

Boeing’s moves come on the heels of FAA’s stepped-up scrutiny of the 737-9 program. The agency on Jan. 12 said it would audit the 737-9 production line and suppliers “to evaluate Boeing’s compliance with its approved quality procedures.” The findings “will determine whether additional audits are necessary,” the agency said. It is also stepping up monitoring of 737-9 in-service events.

Bigger picture, the agency said it will consider whether certain aspects of Boeing’s delegation program and quality oversight granted by the FAA would benefit from being under “independent, third-party entities” instead of agreed-upon leaders within Boeing and other applicants.

“It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. “The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identified in recent years require us to look at every option to reduce risk. The FAA is exploring the use of an independent third party to oversee Boeing’s inspections and its quality system.”

Meanwhile, the FAA and Boeing will evaluate inspection results from 40 737-9s to determine what steps operators must take to ensure door plugs are safe to operate. It is not clear when the inspections and review will be done or when affected 737-9s will be cleared to return to service.

“After reviewing Boeing’s proposed inspection and maintenance instructions, the FAA determined it needed additional data before approving them,” the agency said as part of announcing its plan to evaluate data from the 40 checks. “The FAA is encouraged by the exhaustive nature of Boeing’s instructions for inspections and maintenance. However, in the interest of maintaining the highest standard of safety the agency will not approve the inspection and maintenance process until it reviews data from the initial round of 40 inspections.