No one wants to talk about why Boeing planes fail

[pnwmom]

74. If that report is correct, "It was removed for repair."

It arrived from Spirit in need of repair.

The only way for the plug to have blown out is if it moved up, so that the stop fittings were no longer aligned with the stop pads — which is how the plug is opened for maintenance.

. . . . As the whistleblower describes, many routine fixes are done by a team of mechanics from Spirit who are permanently on site in Renton to do “warranty” repairs on parts built by Spirit in Wichita.

Pierson confirmed that Spirit employees were stationed in Renton doing this kind of rework as far back as 2018.

“We had Spirit employees in our factory when the fuselage came in that were doing what people call ‘warranty work,’ but we would just call it defects or non-conformances,” Pierson said.

Also, according to the whistleblower, a Boeing employee/employees failed to record the repair properly.

Now the two sets of employees working in Renton, the Spirit employees and the Boeing employees, are pointing fingers at each other. "However, the whistleblower states that Spirit produces “a hideously high and very alarming number” of defects.

"The whistleblower says Boeing’s records for just the past year document a total of 392 nonconforming findings at the location where the door plug is installed, including both MAXs with actual emergency doors there and those like the Alaska jet with permanent plugs."

The fact remains that it is the whole SYSTEM, set up by former MD bean-counters, of dividing the responsibilities between Boeing employees and outside contractors, that contributed to the problem.