Boeing notifies FAA that parts in Max and other 737s may be ‘susceptible to premature
 

cnbc.com/2019/06/02/boeing-notifies-faa-of-737-max-parts-that-may-be-susceptible-to-failure.html

Guess a roll of duct tape on board isn't gonna be accepted....

Seems like Boeing are using the old "not our fault" line, its one of their suppliers and THEIR manufacturing process.

I think they have been watching too many episodes of "suits" and think they can get away with this "Plausible deniability" line.

So who pays for the replacement?

There was a whistle blower thread here on PPRN alleging just that, substandard subcontractor parts manufacturing and faked QC, but no official investigation afaik.
Perhaps these concerns will now be explored more fully. As SLF, can only hope Boeing is in the clear on this.

I wonder if you mean this one?

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes...637901849.html

Which AD is this? I can’t seem to find anything on the FAA (or EASA) website?

Surely this is fake news... as like 2000 ADs are released by FAA and EASA every year?!

It is on the FAA website: www (dot) faa (dot) gov/news/updates/?newsId=93206

6/2/2019 UpdateFAA Statement

Boeing has informed the FAA that certain 737NG and 737MAX leading edge slat tracks may have been improperly manufactured and may not meet all applicable regulatory requirements for strength and durability.

Following an investigation conducted by Boeing and the FAA Certificate Management Office (CMO), we have determined that up to 148 parts manufactured by a Boeing sub-tier supplier are affected. Boeing has identified groups of both 737NG and 737MAX airplane serial numbers on which these suspect parts may have been installed. 32 NG and 33 MAX are affected in the U.S. Affected worldwide fleet are 133 NG and 179 MAX aircraft.

The affected parts may be susceptible to premature failure or cracks resulting from the improper manufacturing process. Although a complete failure of a leading edge slat track would not result in the loss of the aircraft, a risk remains that a failed part could lead to aircraft damage in fight.

The FAA will issue an Airworthiness Directive to mandate Boeing's service actions to identify and remove the discrepant parts from service. Operators of affected aircraft are required to perform this action within 10 days. The FAA today also alerted international civil aviation authorities of this condition and required actions.

The article dated yesterday said that the FAA "will release" an AD. So give them a chance before crying out fake news (though you're in good company with this).

More concerning perhaps is that half the article deals with the MAX problem rather than this particular issue. While copywriters might be paid by the word, it illustrates the public perception Boeing is facing.

It is literally the first thing you see when you open the FAA website. With the heading "FAA Updates on Boeing 737 MAX"...

I don't think so. There was a guy with an Asian-sounding name here on PPRUNE with a lengthy whistleblower thread. As far as I recall from skim reading through his posts, it was exactly the issue with faked leading edge components that he tried to get official attention about.

Was it not charles shi or something along those lines? most people were quick to dismiss his claims, although having several bad experiences myself trying to get safety critical items made in china I can believe it.

There seem to be many parts subcontractors, but the previous allegations were about flight spoilers on the B777: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN1CL0R2

The B737 story is a new issue, and there are few details so far. Original story link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKCN1T30RX

Ah, OK. Thanks for clarification.

From the FAA AD : Just asking , on the 737 , asymmetric slats deployment is not big issue ?

Replacement time?
 

Could any Engineer give us an estimated time in man hrs for such a replacement.
I have unfortunately no interaction with the heavy maintenance as the 738 just keeps on ticking during normal ops.
During Bird strike Inspection I have inspected the Slat Tracks and Flaps fully extended and I doubt that the replacement takes less then say two days.
Anyone?

Regards
Cpt B

"allegedly"

early 2000's. Didn't end well for the whistle blowers as usual. NG's built with barrel frames at section joints made by hand on a mandrel instead of by CNC per the Production Certificate of the TC.

Assuming that the OEM will suddenly gain a conscience is wishful thinking. History shows that the messenger ends up with holes in their backs for believing all the platitudes of integrity that is part of growing up... Alaskans whistleblower post 261 got nailed, just look at the response with the 787 production saga. There is industrial politics at play occasionally, but in the ring frames, that was just people doing their job description.



BOEING PARTS SCANDAL

Boeing Parts and Rules Bent, Whistle-Blowers Say

By Florence Graves and Sara Kehaulani Goo
April 17, 2006, The Washington Post

Jeanine Prewitt knew there was a problem when the holes wouldn't line up.

On a Boeing Co. assembly line in Kansas in 2000, Prewitt saw workers drilling extra holes in the long aluminum ribs that make up the skeleton of a jetliner's fuselage. That was the only way the workers could attach the pieces, because some of their pre-drilled holes didn't match those on the airframe.

Prewitt was a parts buyer, the third generation of her family to work at the sprawling Boeing factory on the outskirts of Wichita. She believed that pieces going into one of the world's most advanced and popular airliners, the Boeing 737, should fit like a glove.

The assembly workers Prewitt observed were not the only ones who noted problems with parts from a key Boeing supplier, AHF Ducommun of Los Angeles. Other workers told her that many pieces had to be shoved or hammered into place. And documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that quality managers reported numerous problems at Ducommun in memos recorded in Boeing's system for monitoring its suppliers.

Whether questionable parts ended up in hundreds of Boeing 737s is the subject of a bitter dispute between the aerospace company and Prewitt and two other whistle-blowers. The two sides also have enormously different views on what that could mean for the safety of the jets.

The whistle-blower lawsuit is in U.S. District Court in Wichita. No matter how it is resolved, it has exposed gaps in the way government regulators investigated the alleged problems in aircraft manufacturing, according to documents and interviews.

Boeing said that the lawsuit is without merit and that there is no safety issue. Even if faulty parts landed on the assembly line, the company said, none could have slipped through Boeing's controls and gotten into the jetliners. The whistle-blowers "are not intimately familiar with Boeing's quality management system," said Cindy Wall, a company spokeswoman. "Our planes are safe."

The three whistle-blowers, however, contend that Boeing officials knew from their own audits about thousands of parts that did not meet specifications, allowed them to be installed and retaliated against people who raised questions. They say the parts, manufactured from 1994 to 2002, fit the Federal Aviation Administration's definition of "unapproved" because they lack documentation proving that they are airworthy. Moreover, they say, forcing a part into place could shorten its lifespan.

Under the U.S. False Claims Act, plaintiffs who prove the government was defrauded -- more than two dozen jets went to the U.S. military -- could receive monetary damages along with the government.

After the whistle-blowers notified federal authorities in 2002, the FAA and the Pentagon looked into their charges. Each said its investigation cleared the airplane parts and found no reports of problems from military or civilian operators of Boeing jets. The Department of Transportation's inspector general also dismissed the charges.

The Post's review, however, found that the FAA did not assess many of the whistle-blowers' key allegations. FAA inspectors examined only a small number of parts in the plants and did not visit any airplanes to inspect the roughly 200 types of parts questioned by the whistle-blowers.

The Pentagon and Transportation Department, in turn, relied on the FAA's work, documents show.

One reason the FAA chose not to pursue the whistle-blowers' claims, officials said, was that its engineers believed the parts in question would not present a safety risk even if they failed in flight. There has never been a crash caused by such a failure, the agency said.

But on a number of occasions, the agency has expressed concern about similar parts, albeit on the previous generation of 737s, which Boeing began phasing out in 1996. Last year, prompted by reports from some carriers of cracks, the FAA formally alerted U.S. air carriers that fly the older version of the 737 to inspect for possible fatigue cracks around such parts. Cracks in these areas, the FAA said, "could result in reduced structural integrity of the frames, possible loss of a cargo door, possible rapid decompression of the fuselage."

'We're All Appalled'

For nearly 40 years, the airframe for the Boeing 737 has been assembled in Wichita, loaded on trains, and hauled to the Pacific Northwest to get its wings, tail and engines. Boeing sold the plant in 2005 to a Canadian firm, which still does that work in Wichita under contract.

Prewitt's job at Wichita was to purchase parts for 737s and other jets from Ducommun and other suppliers. She said workers informed her that some pieces were coming in with inaccurate measurements beyond the margin of error. In the summer of 2000, she visited one assembly line where the aluminum ribs, known as chords, were being attached to the 737 fuselage.

As Prewitt watched, she said, one worker pulled a chord from the stack and saw its holes were in the wrong place. "I said, 'So what do you do?' She grabbed a drill and drills a hole and connects it together," said Prewitt, now 45. "We're all appalled. I sat there watching her drill, drill, drill."

She said the chord problem reinforced worries that others had raised for a year about other Ducommun parts. She had examined reports of problems with "bear straps," large pieces of reinforcing sheet metal bonded to the skin around an airliner's doorways. Prewitt said the pieces, which have four jutting corners something like a bearskin rug, were coming in short in one corner. That forced workers to drill holes for rivets closer to the edge of the piece than specified.

The whistle-blowers said they learned that some managers knew of the problem but encouraged workers to make the parts fit. For example, when Prewitt recommended tossing out 24 bear straps she considered unacceptable, a Boeing procurement manager objected. "Scrapping any bearstraps is stupid, since we've used over 300 with the same condition," the manager wrote a whistle-blower in a May 13, 1999, e-mail reviewed by The Post.

Boeing's corporate audit office convened a team to look into the parts problems in 2000. The 14 members included Prewitt and two others who later would join the whistle-blower lawsuit -- Taylor Smith, 44, contract administrator for the new generation of 737s and other jets; and James Ailes, 53, a technical troubleshooter. Others were experts on quality assurance, tooling and manufacturing processes.

The team visited Ducommun's Gardena, Calif., plant. In its report to Boeing, the team said it found that many of the more than 500 heavy-duty manufacturing tools used by Ducommun were incorrectly calibrated, misused or not built to Boeing's specifications. Contrary to Ducommun's factory records, the report said, the supplier still was making parts with hand tools such as routers, as it had done for the older 737 models, instead of the sophisticated computer-programmed tools Boeing engineers had specified.

Ducommun, also named in the lawsuit, declined to comment on the allegations beyond stating that the FAA and other agencies had already dismissed them.

The Boeing audit team issued its report in August 2000. Among other things, it noted that Boeing was seeking financial compensation for irregularities at Ducommun's plant and was reconsidering its relationship with the supplier.

Ducommun's statement said it never made a payment to Boeing as a financial settlement, but according to documents reviewed by The Post, the company agreed in January 2001 to a $1.6 million settlement with Boeing for overbilling and manufacturing problems. Boeing declined to comment.

Prewitt received a cash-and-stock bonus worth nearly $3,000 after what Boeing called her "outstanding contribution" to the audit. Soon, however, members of the team grew discouraged with what they saw as Boeing's reluctance to follow up on their findings. They said Boeing officials cleaned the report of details about possible airliner safety problems and violations of FAA procedures. When they raised the possibility of reporting their concerns to the FAA, they said, they were told to keep quiet or face possible legal action from Boeing.

Boeing said that it did not sanitize the report and that its policies prohibit threats or retaliation against employees who raise safety questions. Company spokeswoman Wall said the fact that the audit team was assembled shows that Boeing's oversight of suppliers is effective. She said that the team's mission was to look at "cost issues" regarding Ducommun's accounting and tools and that she does not know how the whistle-blowers on the team drew the conclusion that the parts were flawed. She said assessing quality was outside their area of expertise.

Eventually, the whistle-blowers came to believe that Boeing did not want to hear about anything that would be expensive to fix or would slow production. In the summer of 2000, Boeing was facing stiff competition from Airbus SAS. Boeing had recovered from recent production problems and was boosting its 737 output to 28 from 24 a month.

The auditors noted in their report that other Boeing plants were getting bad marks from the FAA. FAA inspectors looking into production breakdowns at the company's Pacific Northwest plants released in October 2000 the results of a special, months-long audit that found, among other things, inadequate planning, poor oversight of suppliers and nonconforming parts.

In early 2002, Prewitt, Smith and Ailes sent thousands of documents supporting their case to the Justice Department. They alleged that questionable parts had been installed not only on hundreds of 737s but also on some 747s, 757s, 767s and 777s and their military equivalents without the knowledge of the Air Force and Navy, the commercial airlines, or the FAA. Shortly after that, in March 2002, the three workers -- and one other whistle-blower who later dropped out -- filed their lawsuit.

In 2003, the whistle-blowers withdrew their suit after the Justice Department declined to join. They refiled it in March 2005. By then, Ailes was still employed at what is now Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, but Prewitt and Smith had been laid off. All three allege they received demotions and lower job evaluations because of their actions.

FAA Probe

The lawsuit cites only those jets sold to the military, because the False Claims Act applies to only federal contracts. However, the whistle-blowers said most of the parts in question also had been installed on commercial airliners. So at the request of the Justice Department, the FAA launched a probe in the spring of 2002. It was handled by the division that investigates parts suspected to be "unapproved" -- ones that lack the paper trail showing they meet specifications.

FAA officials said that rather than restrict themselves to the more than 200 types of parts questioned by the whistle-blowers, their engineers reviewed a list of all Ducommun parts made for Boeing. They said they found most of the parts were unique to military planes. None of the commercial parts on their own, the engineers decided, were "principal structural elements," or parts whose individual failure could lead to a catastrophe. FAA officials, however, now say that some parts are in areas that are considered principal structural elements.

In the end, the engineers narrowed their list to 11 of the "most critical" Ducommun commercial parts and the FAA focused its investigation on how they were being made at the time of its probe. The agency said it has no official documents explaining the decision to eliminate hundreds of parts from investigation. That did not follow procedures adopted when the agency created an office devoted to investigation of suspect parts in 1995. Those rules require that FAA inspectors review the manufacturing history, quantity and importance of each part that is reported as suspect and then document their findings.

In the Wichita case, the report produced by the parts investigation office details only 11 types of parts, only one of which exactly matches a part number on the whistle-blowers' list. The FAA said a few part numbers represent families of parts. It could not say how many individual parts were considered. "It's a possible situation where the form was not filled out by the book," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman.

Beverly Sharkey, who heads the parts investigation office, said the agency decided not to physically inspect the parts already on aircraft because that would have required the "destructive testing or peeling apart" of hundreds of cabins. That was unnecessary, she said, because airlines had no reports of parts failures and the FAA had no reason to believe that there was a safety problem. Inspectors visited the Ducommun and Boeing factories and said they found no problems.

The military did not examine the parts questioned by the whistle-blowers, either, apparently because officials believed the FAA was doing it, according to a summary by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and first reported by Mother Jones magazine. Officials at the service declined to comment.

In the summer of 2004, the FAA closed its two-year probe, saying Ducommun's current manufacturing processes were sound. "The most important thing is corrective action," said Peggy Gilligan, deputy associate administrator for aviation safety at the FAA.

Safety Question

Last year, the FAA reopened the case. The agency had received new reports about the parts from two FAA-certified experts hired by the whistle-blowers' lawyers.

The lawyers had provided four experts with the court documents and Boeing quality control reports from 1999 and 2000. All four experts, who are certified by the FAA to make decisions about aircraft engineering or airworthiness on behalf of the agency, and one additional expert hired by The Post to review the same documents said they believed that practices at Ducommun and Boeing were seriously flawed.

One of the whistle-blowers' experts wrote in his report that the documents "demonstrate systemic manufacturing control and quality problems" and that "from an engineering standpoint the safety of each Ducommun part has to be doubted." The expert said he could not judge how the parts might affect the jets' airworthiness.

His comments were consistent with those of all the whistle-blowers' experts, whose reports were supplied to The Post on condition that the authors not be named before a trial.

The evidence that Boeing and Ducommun ignored quality controls is "beyond the scope of anything I've ever heard of -- where an entire inspection system would be bypassed," said Sammy K. Hanson, the consultant hired by The Post. Hanson, who has worked in aircraft certification for 12 years, said that because the FAA acknowledges that it did not look at parts installed on planes, "every one of these parts [in the lawsuit] is 'unapproved.' "

Other aviation experts said that even if FAA procedures were violated, metal parts used for reinforcement are not as critical as, say, the main landing gear.

"Sheet metal parts are necessarily pretty flexible so if they don't fit perfect as delivered, it's not a big deal to shove them into place, bend them a little bit, push on them and rivet them together," said Charles Eastlake, a professor of aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and a former aircraft structural designer for the Air Force. "Quality control people turn purple when they see that, but it's the way it's always been."

Another argument holds that because planes are stripped down for major maintenance every five to seven years, any early cracks or corrosion would probably be spotted before the part could create a problem. In fact, FAA officials said their inspectors combed through records from airlines that performed such maintenance and found no reports of problems with bear straps, chords or frames. Spokesmen for Southwest, American and Continental airlines told The Post they had found no problems with the parts.

But some analysts suggest that when factory workers force together parts that are not built according to their design, it could eventually cause premature cracking.

When you "bend and twist" with undue force, you can introduce more stress on the parts and the structure they are attached to, said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and former airline mechanic. Goglia said that can be especially true of parts used to reinforce the cabin around doors, which may be more vulnerable to fatigue.

But, Goglia added, the safety impact of any suspect part is difficult to determine without an engineer's analysis of how it was made and where it is used.

The FAA has yet to complete its second investigation. The agency said the same lead inspector has been assigned to the matter. "We're confident we came to the right conclusions in the first case," said Brown, the FAA spokeswoman.

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report. Research assistance also was provided by the Brandeis University Institute for Investigative Journalism, which Graves directs.

© 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post
All Rights Reserved.

Outsource and contractors, the play book from the modern business school.
Boeing has lost its way a long time ago.


Unfortunately, what is not detailed in the big excel spreadsheet is that reputational risk remains 'in-house'
So Boeing, how much did all that 'outsourcing' and 'partnering' reduce unit cost?

Problems with Boeing 737 next generation with structural dangers reported SBS​ dateline Australia

This report includes the ladies who were the whistleblowers about QC issues. It cost them their jobs.

"CNC" by any other name...







https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....194be33b38.jpg


A "riveting" read, knowing that the QA team got the bullet.

http://timtate.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...st-21-2000.pdf

P.S.: I'm not anti Boeing, they have made good planes, but they are a monolithic corporation and have the ethics as seen in the Airforce KC fiasco. Success breeds contempt. Airbus makes good planes too, have their own issues but overall they have a good product line up against TBC. (Airbus manuals suck too)

The ring frame issue was not trivial; the parts are primary structure that were given an increase in life and reduction in inspection due to being CNC fabrications... A number of accidents of NG's involved these aircraft, and curiously most of them have fractured their hulls at the same location, the joints of the fuselage, when one would imagine that would be a strong point. Not aware that any AD of MSB was ever issued to replace the frames with proper conformed articles. At least they will only be flying for the next 50 years or so.

Those details are included in the link I posted, and that is roughly how long it takes: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKCN1T30RX

The FAA said it will issue an Airworthiness Directive to require Boeing's service actions to identify and remove the parts from service. It said operators will be required to perform this action within 10 days, but can continue to fly the planes during the 10-day period before the parts are removed. So what if the parts take longer than 10 days to arrive? Are the aircraft then grounded?
.

Do I read this audit report correctly? Boeing discovered serious non conforming practices in the engineering of several aircraft parts, and all they seemed to care about was being overcharged by the supplier who was charging for precision CNC parts but providing hand made ones?



​​​​​​​

Up to 148 parts ...
 

... but 312 aircrafts identified :sad:. Thought parts tracking was better. These are not consumables.

Are these the parts and/or supplier that Chi was talking about in his whistleblower claim?

I made a similar comment on another thread, it is quite disturbing that parts are not tracked better. Seems that on top of poor QC and monitoring of the supplier chain, they have serious issues with knowing what goes on a specific aircraft

Finally this planemaker appears like a second-tier assembler, incapable of ensuring his parts are manufactured with modern methods, and unable to efficiently control and track them...

Beancounters... Enough said.

A repost after the swat visit.

Perhaps seeing the ring frames being worked on a table was a good indicator that the stipulated 1/3000" accuracy was going to be a tad out. A tad it seems is equal to n hammer blows upon installation.

Flat tables are an extremely expensive investment. I suppose the blanket evened things up a bit.

I thought the whistleblowers seemed intelligent, erudite and driven. One, a third generation Boeing employee, would surely not want to harm the company if possible.

Tja, that happens when you manage a company from behind a desk writing notes and mail without ever lifting your ass but keeping your pockets open so they can be filled..

I did not see anything in the quote that said they could not continue frying once the parts were removed :)

Reminded me of an occurrence in the hot air balloon field, only third hand so it might actually be true:

The Velcro manufacturer first found out that Velcro was in use to seal the top seam of hot air balloons when they were served with notice of a product liability lawsuit.

Their reaction was to send out a notice to all hot air balloon owners advising them that Velcro was not approved for 'critical' applications and was not to be used in hot air balloons.

A balloon owner who was also a lawyer crafted a great response thanking them for their concern and 'per their instructions' had removed the Velcro from his balloon and would let them know how thing worked out after his next flight...

BTW: There wa Nothing wrong with the Velcro, other that it was wet, it is part of a quick dump system for landings, just the usual 'deep pockets' approach.

so you are saying they would be OK to fly with the leading edge slats locked out????

Nope, not me Boeing, at least as quoted.
Really just a comment on the absurd things that can happen when lawyers get involved and common sense has left the building.

BTW, just noticed a typo in my original, I did of course meant 'flying' not frying

Boeing uses subcontractors is new? Who in any large manufacturing business would even think of such a possibility. I will say that I did once visit a manufacturer that built much of its machines in house, the worst quality I have seen in that industry. Capital investment is needed to build quality parts consistently, and subcontractors are efficient. Do you think Airbus builds every component in their product? In investigating the uncommanded nose down events of the A330, I learned that Northrup Grumman supplies their brain boxes, or at least did at the time of the incidents that deserved grounding the fleet. Major manufacturers have their areas of expertise and search out suppliers for their expertise in other areas. An operation is missed, the problem is later discovered, determine the possible effect of such a problem, and get the word out ASAP. Not notifying would be a problem. Yet here Boeing is chastised for discovering a problem, being open about it, and asking the FAA to issue an AD. Quite unlike automobile manufacturers who need to rack up dozens, maybe hundreds of incidents before issuing a recall.

To be fair to the wheelies, a dozen incidents is at most around 30 casualties. A dozen jetliner crashes....