With Boeing facing multiple government investigations, the company needs to make \u201ca serious transformation\u201d around its safety and manufacturing quality, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday. The comments came one day after Buttigieg said the aircraft builder is under \u201cenormous\u201d scrutiny by his department since a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max jetliner in mid-flight.<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into the Jan. 5 blowout on an Alaska Airlines jet. That followed the company\u2019s admission that it couldn\u2019t find records that the National Transportation Safety Board sought for work done on the panel at a Boeing factory. The Federal Aviation Administration, part of Buttigieg\u2019s department, is also investigating Boeing.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we respect the independence of DOJ (the Department of Justice) and NTSB (the National Transportation Safety Board) doing their own work,\u201d Buttigieg told reporters Monday, \u201cbut we are not neutral on the question of whether Boeing should fully cooperate with any entity \u2013 NTSB, us, or DOJ. They should, and we expect them to.\u201d Buttigieg said Boeing must \u201cgo through a serious transformation here in terms of their responsiveness, their culture and their quality issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boeing gave a one-sentence response. \u201cWe will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with all government investigations and audits, as we take comprehensive action to improve safety and quality at Boeing,\u201d the company said. Alaska Airlines said it is cooperating with the Justice Department investigation. \u201cIn an event like this, it\u2019s normal for the DOJ to be conducting an investigation,\u201d the Seattle-based airline said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are fully cooperating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.\u201d The New York Times reported Tuesday that Boeing failed 33 of 89 FAA audits during an examination following the blowout on the Alaska Airlines jet. The wide-ranging, six-week audit found dozens of problems in various parts of the 737 Max, the newspaper reported, citing a slide presentation on the audits of aspects of the production process.<\/p>\n
The report said seven of 13 audits that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the body of the aircraft, also failed. One example cited was the use of liquid Dawn dish soap to lubricate a door seal during a \u201cfit-up\u201d process. The audits dealing with the door plug, the part that blew off the Alaska Airlines jet, found issues at both Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems. Last week, Boeing, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, came under withering criticism by NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy over the missing work records on the Alaska jet.<\/p>\n
She told a Senate committee that Boeing had repeatedly rebuffed her agency\u2019s attempts to get information ever since the blowout. Boeing disputed some of Homendy\u2019s claims; NTSB stood by her testimony. The FAA has barred Boeing from boosting production of Max jets and gave the company 90 days to come up with a plan to fix quality-control issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Boeing facing multiple government investigations, the company needs to make \u201ca serious transformation\u201d around its safety and manufacturing quality,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":33798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8857,11135,7348,11134,3372,7388,7460,792,8018,9721,9588,9590,5866,4697,8013],"class_list":["post-33797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-airlines-boeing-737-9-max","tag-audits","tag-boeing","tag-compliance","tag-doj","tag-failures","tag-inflight-blowout","tag-investigation","tag-mid-cabin-door-plugs","tag-national-transportation-safety-board-ntsb","tag-quality-control","tag-safety-issues","tag-scrutiny","tag-transportation-secretary-pete-buttigieg","tag-us-federal-aviation-administration-faa"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}