The FAA says Boeing needs to put 'safety and quality above profits'
A year after a door plug fell off an Alaska Airlines-operated (ALK) Boeing (BA) 737 Max 9 mid-flight, the Federal Aviation Administration says that Boeing still has a ways to go before it regains the government’s full confidence. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker wrote in a blog post Thursday that the planemaker hasn’t done what it needs to do to lengthen its short leash.
“What’s needed is a fundamental cultural shift at Boeing that’s oriented around safety and quality above profits,” Whitaker wrote. “That will require sustained effort and commitment from Boeing, and unwavering scrutiny on our part.”
Boeing declined to directly respond to a Quartz request for comment on Whitaker’s assessment, though it did forward its recently updated “Strengthening Safety & Quality” section of the website, which notes among other things that the company has “significantly reduced defects in 737 fuselage assembly” and hired someone for a recently created “Human Factors Functional Chief Engineer” position.
A piece of fuselage designed to cover an unused emergency exit door came loose and threw Boeing’s entire 2024 into chaos. The door plug incident led to the resignation of former CEO Dave Calhoun and an $8.3 billion bill to reacquire the supplier behind the fuselage in question, Spirit AeroSystems (SPR).
It also led to the Justice Department concluding that Boeing had failed to live up to a settlement over the 737 Max 8 crashes. Boeing ended up pleading guilty, and that plea deal was struck down because a judge thought it included too much diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Additionally, the FAA imposed a 38-planes-per-month limit on 737 Max production and put more “boots on the ground” to inspect Boeing facilities. That complicated things for Boeing, whose commercial airliner division makes its most money by far on 737 Max sales. At the time of the blowout, Boeing had also been gearing up for a recovery from the last controversy involving a 737 Max — a pair of fatal plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 Max 8 variant.
Whitaker says that the heavier scrutiny of Boeing is “here to stay,” though he is set to resign when president-elect Donald Trump takes office. It is not clear how a Trump nominee’s FAA would handle the 737 Max situation.
