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Boeing submitted a plan to federal regulators on Thursday promising to improve the safety and quality of its manufacturing through training, simplifying processes and eliminating defects.
Chief executive Dave Calhoun met with Mike Whitaker, head of the US Federal Aviation Administration, to turn in the 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 the 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.
Whitaker said Boeing’s plan included six “key performance indicators” to track the company’s progress as it tries to improve quality. He declined to identify the metrics, deferring the question to Boeing, which said it would “share additional information about the plan . . . with more details in the coming days”.
“This is about systemic change, and there is a lot of work to be done,” Whitaker said at 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 it is currently building fewer than that. The company has been burning cash as it slows production to try to improve quality.
Whitaker said there is 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 the 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.