Boeing, the US aerospace giant, is going from one public relations disaster to the next. Insiders who dare speak out, do so at great peril to themselves. Boeing’s latest problem is its space program with two astronauts stuck in space. Investigation upon investigation has led nowhere. Boeings’s newly appointed CEO has his work cut out for him.
Diana Mautner Markhof
26 August 2024
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Boeing, once the crown jewel of the US defense industry, is struggling to get its act together. Whether it be their airplanes or space program, Boeing has consistently failed to meet quality and safety standards. In the last five years, three CEOs have led the company (Dennis Muilenburg (2015-2019), Dave Calhoun (2020-2024), Kelly Ortberg (as of 8 August 2024).
Boeing‘s negative press is rubbing off on the US government, which historically is close to the aerospace giant. Boeing is a major employer and military contractor and part of the very powerful military industrial complex.
Whistleblowers who have spoken out against Boeing’s shortcomings and wrongdoings face retaliation by the company and two have met an untimely death.
After multiple investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), NASA and Congress, nothing has changed. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Capitol Hill on 6 March 2024: “It’s absurd that two months later [since the Alaskan Airlines debacle], we don’t have [the necessary information]”.
Boeing’s woes started a decade ago with its 787 Dreamliner. After the deadly crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019, Boeing lost more than USD 25 billion. The deadly crashes killed 346 people. In a recent deal with the US Justice Department, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to one criminal count of conspiracy to defraud the government.
Add to this the horrifying Alaskan Airlines Flight 1282 which lost a door in mid-flight on 5 January 2024 (the door narrowly missed the house of a high school teacher in Portland, Oregon), the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft for weeks by the FAA and the loose parts found by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines on the grounded 737 MAX 9 jets, it is more than evident that Boeing has serious manufacturing, safety and quality control issues.
Picture: Interior of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 with blown off door. © NTSB
When Boeing‘s then CEO Dave Calhoun stated that he has “… confidence in the safety of our airplanes” on 24 January 2024, it sounded more like Hamlet’s „my lady doth protest too much“. Calhoun’s optimism was not shared by the FAA report, launched after the Alaskan Air incident, which confirmed that four critical bolts were missing from the aircraft. The FAA strongly criticized Boeing‘s safety culture and its unwillingness to share information.
In late February 2024, the FAA gave Boeing officials 90 days to develop a comprehensive plan to address “systemic quality-control issues to meet FAA’s non-negotiable safety standards.” In March 2024, the FAA “found multiple instances where the company allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements”, which included the “manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control.” Weeks before Alaska Airlines’ trip from hell, Boeing was accused of systematically ignoring safety problems with MAX 9 jets.
On 9 March 2024, John Barnett, a former Boeing quality control manager turned whistleblower, was found dead with a gunshot wound. Barnett had worked at Boeing’s large South Carolina plant. Although the coroner’s report stated that Barnett died “from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” speculation surrounding his death has not quieted down. Since 2017, Barnett was in a legal battle with his former employer, whom he accused of retaliating against him for raising safety concerns in the company’s commercial airplanes. His family refutes the suicide narrative. “He was looking forward to having his day in court and hoped that it would force Boeing to change its culture,” his family said in a statement.
A second whistleblower also died on 30 April 2024 after testifying against Boeing. Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, was one of the first whistleblowers to speak out against Spirit leadership which, he alleged, systematically ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX. He died after contracting MRSA in the hospital. Dean had lived a healthy lifestyle and was in excellent health before his sudden death at age 45. In October 2022, Dean reported finding a serious manufacturing defect in the MAX. After informing management of this, nothing was done and Dean was ultimately fired by Spirit in April 2023.
The latest public relations disaster to hit Boeing was a report released by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on 8 August 2024 which made clear that significant issues persist with Boeing’s work on the Block 1B version of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The report points out Boeing’s lack of an „acceptable quality management system and trained workforce“.
“According to DCMA (the Defense Contract Management Agency) officials, Boeing’s process for addressing contractual noncompliance has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur”.
The report listed 71 „corrective action requests“(CARs) which were issued by DCMA from September 2021 to September 2023 pertaining to Boeing’s SLS work at Michoud. Of these CARs, 24 involved critical safety hardware. This number is unusually high for a spaceflight program at this stage in development according to the DCMA.
NASA has rejected financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance with quality controls.
Two US astronauts, Butch Willmore and Suni Williams, are now stuck in space because of Boeing’s inability to return them to Earth because of safety concerns. Willmore and Williams were the first pilots for Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. What was supposed to be a two-week journey into space may last as long as eight months, until February 2025. Such a prolonged space stay is likely to affect their bodies negatively.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s operation, is scheduled to launch its next mission in September 2024 and there is speculation as to whether two of the astronauts originally scheduled to board the SpaceX flight home will stay behind, to enable Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth.
The NTSB wrapped up its „Investigative Hearing“ on 6 and 7 August 2024. The hearing brought to light thousands of pages of newly published documents which prove that Boeing struggled with its 737 MAX assembly process long before the Alaskan Airlines blowout in January 2024. After more than 20 hours of testimony and seven months of investigating, the NTSB and Boeing have been unable to ‚figure out‘ who the workers were who forgot the bolts or how the 737 MAX jetliner left the Boeing facility without those critical bolts. The hearings confirmed that Boeing’s failures are systemic in nature. The NTSB’s final report is expected to take a year to 18 months to complete.
As Boeing continues to be investigated by the FBI – which has told passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight that they might be victims of a crime – the Justice Department pushed Boeing to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud after finding that it failed to live up to a previous settlement related to regulatory approval of the MAX.
Boeing‘s new CEO, Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, made his top priority clear on his first day at the office on 8 August 2024: “People’s lives depend on what we do every day and we must keep that top of mind with every decision we make”.
Will this message finally get through to Boeing? Or is Boeing Boeing Gone?
Picture: Boeing Threatened By Criminal Investigation, photo dated 18 June 2023. The Boeing 737 MAX is the fourth generation of the Boeing 737, a narrow-body airliner manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes a division of American company Boeing. It succeeds the Boeing 737 Next Generation and competes with the Airbus A320neo family. The new series was announced on August 30, 2011. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has confirmed the opening of a criminal investigation into Boeing. The negligence at the origin of the accident during the Alaska Airlines flight could call into question the agreement reached in 2021 with the American justice system, which allowed Boeing to escape a trial for the crashes of 2018 and 2019. Photo by Thomas Arno © IMAGO / ABACAPRESS
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