A lawsuit has been filed against a parts supplier

FAA’s oversight of the Boeing 737 Max flight in the COVID-19 pandemic: Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and the Alaska Airlines case

“It appears that FAA’s oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces airplanes that are in condition for safe operation, as required by law and by FAA regulations,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., wrote in a letter to the FAA administrator on Thursday.

By the time the 737 Max was cleared to fly again in late 2020, the aviation industry was in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic with air travel reduced to a trickle.

Alaska and United airlines have canceled hundreds of flights a day as their fleets of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft remain grounded. Both airlines have been waiting for approval from the FAA to look at the planes that have been grounded.

The public should be evaluated to strengthen production quality and aviation safety.

The class-action lawsuit alleges that when Spirit’s leaders told investors in recent years that the company is dedicated to safety and defect-free manufacturing, they were making false or misleading statements. The suit says that the culture of the company was to push out product over quality.

Soucie cautioned, however, that following through on a shift to third-party oversight would be a heavy lift for the FAA and the aviation industry it regulates.

“They’re taking their time doing it because the impact of what they’re discussing doing here is huge,” Soucie said. “It’s enormous. Every manufacturer in the US that makes aircraft will be affected by it.

Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the FAA to provide records from the agency’s oversight of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, a Kansas-based Boeing contractor that makes the fuselage and the door plug of the 737 Max aircraft involved in the Alaska Airlines incident.

He said in an interview withNPR that the move by the FAA to consider moving safety oversight to an independent third party was smart. “The drive for profitability may just be overriding this ability to have an independent delegation within the organization.”

The agency wasn’t quick enough to ground the Boeing Max 8 after two crashes that left 343 people dead. The FAA administrator seems to have taken a more aggressive approach to this incident, which he started just a few months ago.

If the plane’s door plug had exploded, it could have been much worse, according to investigators, since it was at 16,000 feet.

A recent lawsuit alleges ‘excessive’ defects at Boeing parts supplier, a successor of the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 fuselage scandal?

An inspector working for a key supplier for Boeing found excessive amount of defects at a manufacturing plant in Kansas, according to documents filed in federal court last month.

The allegations add to the scrutiny of Spirit AeroSystems, which made the fuselage and the door plug that blew out of the side of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 during a flight last Friday with 171 passengers and six crew members aboard. There were no serious injuries reported.

The lawsuit doesn’t specifically mention potential defects in manufacturing door plugs like the one that was blown out. A representative from the company declined to comment about the lawsuit’s allegations.

The lawsuit says that this included preparation for fuselages to be shipped to Boeing, and oversight for the ‘Final shake’, which was what Spirit called its final inspection before shipment.

According to the court filing, a former employee is quoted saying “auditors have repeatedly found screwdrivers in mechanics’ toolboxes that were not properly adjusted.” “This was potentially a serious problem, as a torque wrench that is out of calibration may not torque fasteners to the correct levels, resulting in over tightening or under-tightening that could threaten the structural integrity of the parts in question.”

According to the former employee, Spirit required auditors to seize wrongly calibrated tools — a move that he said angered managers and mechanics, including some who allegedly locked their toolboxes to block the audit.

Source: A recent lawsuit alleges ‘excessive’ defects at Boeing parts supplier

The 20-Month Grounding of the Alaska Airlines Max 9 Aircraft Accident: Suspense When Spirit Learned about the Defect and its Implications

As airlines moved to update their fleets and serve more customer demand, Spirit was forced to give plane parts to Boeing. At the end of the third quarter last year, Spirit reported a backlog of $42.2 billion, which it linked to work for Airbus and Boeing.

The headquarters of the company are located in Kansas, where it’s listed as the largest employer with 9,500 workers. Its global reach spans to Malaysia, France, and Northern Ireland.

But Spirit AeroSystems has faced a string of challenges in recent years, and last November the company reported a net loss of $691.6 million in the first three quarters of 2023. It had $3.87 billion in debt.

The 20-month grounding of the popular plane rocked Spirit financially: As orders for the Boeing airliner dried up, production and deliveries halted, and Spirit laid off some 2,800 employees.

The Max is the fourth generation of Boeing’s 737, with its first commercial flight in 2017. The Max 9, the model currently under scrutiny, has a longer fuselage than the Max 8. Since 1968 the narrow-body of the 737 has been one of the most popular aircraft.

Homendy said that she asked Spirit AeroSystems to be a part of her agency’s investigation of the Alaska Airlines Boeing Max 9 incident. The aircraft, with tail number N704AL, had been certified as airworthy and entered into service only months before Friday’s incident.

That means thatspirit can help the investigation and submit its own findings of cause The analysis and final report will be taken on by the agency.

The executives are accused of handling the problem that made headlines last summer. That’s when news emerged that Spirit had misdrilled holes on part of some 737 Max planes: their aft pressure bulkhead, a critical piece of the structure around the cabin.

The plaintiffs say that in October 2022, Joshua Dean, who was then a quality auditor at Spirit, had identified the bulkhead problem as a significant defect and reported it to managers in several departments.

“However,” the suit claims, “Spirit hid the problem from their investors until ten months after they identified it.”

The public was aware that Boeing had revealed a problem in the way tail fin fittings were joined to the rear of some models of the 737 MAX.

The lawsuit states that defendants lied to investors about the quality problems that they had. “These failures included defects such as the routine presence of foreign object debris (‘FOD’) in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality.”

The plaintiffs want a jury trial, seeking “compensatory damages … for all damages sustained as a result of Defendants’ wrongdoing,” along with legal costs and expenses.