Boeing vows to improve training and eliminate defects in FAA plan

Boeing has pledged to US federal regulators that it will improve the safety and quality of its manufacturing through training, simplifying processes and eliminating defects.

Chief executive Dave Calhoun met Mike Whitaker, head of the US Federal Aviation Administration, on Thursday to turn in a plan which the agency had given Boeing 90 days to submit. The aerospace manufacturer is facing multiple investigations since a door panel blew off a 737 Max during a commercial flight in January.

The plan is supposed to show how Boeing will address the problems flagged not only in an FAA audit but also in a congressionally mandated report published in February by an expert panel that criticised the company’s safety culture. The panel called Boeing’s safety processes “inadequate and confusing”, with rank-and-file employees possessing little knowledge of company-wide safety initiatives and exposed to potential retaliation for reporting safety problems.

Boeing and the FAA will track six performance metrics to judge whether the manufacturer is improving its processes. They will measure the share of employees deemed proficient in certain core skills; the hours spent fixing flawed work, both from suppliers and Boeing itself; daily parts shortages; work that remains uncompleted after a plane rolls off the factory floor; and mistakes identified during final inspections before planes are delivered to customers.

“This is about systemic change, and there is a lot of work to be done,” Whitaker told a news conference in Washington, DC. “These metrics will provide us a way to monitor their health over the coming months.”

The FAA has capped Boeing’s production of the Max at 38 per month, and the company is currently building fewer than that. Boeing has been burning cash as it slows production to try to improve quality.

Whitaker said there was no timeline or numerical targets tied to lifting the cap.

Senior leaders from the FAA will meet Boeing weekly to review progress on performance metrics laid out in the plan, and Whitaker said he would meet quarterly with Calhoun, with their next meeting in September in Seattle.

The FAA’s enhanced oversight of Boeing, begun earlier this year with more inspectors in the plane maker’s factories, will continue. The focus will be less on auditing, Whitaker said, and more on inspection — more “hands on, and also talking to folks on the floor and getting a more accurate picture to what’s happening”.

The door panel blowout has drawn scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, prosecutors and the flying public. Though no one was killed, the incident raised questions about the safety and quality of Boeing’s manufacturing, recalling the twin fatal crashes of Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019.

The US Department of Justice also has determined that Boeing violated its deferred prosecution agreement, established in 2021 to resolve a criminal charge for misleading aviation regulators who certified the Max. Prosecutors have until June 7 to file criminal charges. Boeing disputes the department’s assessment.

A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found four bolts meant to secure the panel to the fuselage were missing. An audit by the FAA found “multiple instances” where Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, which supplies the fuselage for the Max, failed to meet quality control requirements.