Not the first time quality control has been an issue at the N.C. plant.
From a New York Times article back in 2019: "Ever since, Qatar has bought only Dreamliners built in Everett." [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamline...
"We have a manager that will physically watch us while we're working on the jet and watch us as we go to the bathroom," he says. "I'm a 40-year-old military veteran and I have a 20-something-year-old manager asking me why I use time to use the bathroom."
But the point is, anytime you provide 4 "breaks" a day for bathroom time, you'll get some managers staring at you for breaking the pattern. And don't forget that most tasks in aircraft assembly require 2 people. If you're installing fasteners, you've got to normally have someone on the other side of the assembly to either buck the rivet or put a nut on a bolt. So one person running for the toilet causes work to stop for others.
It's an ongoing issue for quite a long time...
[0] https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=1434 (I've timestamped to the relevant part about the Charleston plant)
The only small problem is that they turned this plant into a sweatshop, not only the workers have no aviation culture but people in power seem to think they are bolting on just another Ford Pinto like the old days.
> “They didn’t want us bringing union employees out to a nonunion area,” said David Kitson, a former quality manager, who oversaw a team responsible for ensuring that planes are safe to fly.
> “We struggled with that,” said Mr. Kitson, who retired in 2015. “There wasn’t the qualified labor pool locally.” Another former manager, Michael Storey, confirmed his account.
Oops.
But the company also has regrets about how the project was run and vowed not to do that again. I doubt that applies to the [SC] part of the equation, though.
Don't get me wrong, the Everett plant certainly has had issues in the past (there are plenty of signs hanging up about Foreign Object Debris), but the company seems to have targeted cost cutting as priority one.
I also remember that there were consistent ongoing quality issues. Planes from SC would require significant rework when they arrived in Everett.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/losing-787-would-be-ma...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/03/boeing-union...
> Boeing’s mere presence in South Carolina was already viewed as a union-busting move when the company first opened an aircraft production plant there in 2011 rather than Washington state, where Boeing had unionized operations. South Carolina has the lowest union membership rate in the United States at just 2.7% of workers. The National Labor Relations Board filed a federal complaint against Boeing for the move, accusing the company of violating federal labor law, before dropping it after the company came to an agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
The 787 was designed to not require as much infrastructure as the Everett plant has to offer. I’m out of the loop, but Wikipedia still lists most of the rest of their catalog as being produced in Everett, and the new 777 is coming online.
Sounds more like having to choose between 787 capacity and other production lines.
I’m not sure where they get losing the 787 meaning nothing to backfill it. For those specific employees, changing programs may be difficult and not all of them will be picked up, but for the region, I don’t see how this means 30k fewer jobs.
Also Everett does other things besides assembly. I think most of their IT and a few other programs are there.
I'm not saying it's the only play, but Boeing is a strategic interest to the nation (both economically and strategically), it's already receiving massive subsidies, and huge paychecks are being cut to executive leadership.
It might be worth it to continue to manufacture these planes in the US, with an emphasis on safety and providing good jobs, even if that meant it wasn't strictly profitable to do so. If we're giving them billions in tax cuts anyways, which they then use to layoff workers and move plants, maybe we should cut out the song and dance.
10 years ago they were cutting research but keeping the management chain. Fewer people to bill hours for that the same overhead. Yeah that probably didn’t work out.
ETA: the US govt is substantially responsible for this situation. They had the bright idea to reduce the diversity of defense contracts and that they meant to accomplish this by having some of the contractors merge. I believe they actually facilitated the Boeing-MD as well.
So I’m not sure how them taking over entirely will fix this. Defense contracts have always been political chips for Congress. Giving them more control won’t help that.
Its brand has been seriously damaged by these scandals. It used to be, "If it's not Boeing I'm not going," now it's, "If it's Boeing, I'm not going."
Let the company go bankrupt, enact export controls on its capital and IP. The free market will do a better job than the government could.
Nationalization for something like an airplane company is terrible idea.
I see this sentiment a lot, but nobody ever says what it will do a better job of: Innovation? Meeting customers’ needs? Or just providing a minimum marketable product while maximising returns for shareholders?
Both.
Strategic interest because Boeing has a massive military business.
Plus, the sheer size of the company and the fact that's it's one of two airline manufacturers worldwide (ignoring the few companies that focus solely on the regional jet business).
It's not an easy industry to start a startup in.
Jokes aside, this again brings up the fact that Boeing as a company has deep quality control issues and I really hope this "structural issue" (vague sounding terms aren't comforting either) is limited to the 8 aircrafts in question and hope many more don't pop up, else it'll be a serious blow to public confidence on Boeing, especially after the MAX situation.
In a similar vein, that reminds me of the time I was stuck in my seat on plane that had pushed away from the gate, but was just sitting on the tarmac because the captain "didn't like the look of an engine indication". About 45 minutes in to just waiting there, there was a commotion as everyone's phones/Blackberries started chirping. Apparently, some plane had just landed in the Hudson river.
When things go sideways, keeping everyone calm is a big part of the job, even if it means fibbing a bit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292
Edit: Interesting tidbit from the Wikipedia page:
"Screenwriter Zach Dean was also on the plane, and while contemplating his mortality resolved to write a script about mortality (which eventually became the film Deadfall)."
Either way, safe travels!
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-charleston-consolidation-imp...
The culture continued to emphasize profits first through Jim McNerney, and searched for ways to cut costs at every turn.
If this is really true, then I personally think it's wonderful that no one is taking a risk with my safety when I'm flying on an airplane.
Oh I think they take plenty of risks. Look at the 787 Max.
At least one airline has refused to accept airplanes from boeing's SC plant because of the poor manufacturing policies practiced there. if boeing does shut down it's everett assembly plants as part of the downturn, i will stop flying any recent (post classic 737) boeing equipment for my own safety.
I think there are only a few hundred of those left, they stopped making them 20 years ago. NGs seem fine to me, I've never thought twice before flying on one.
> The company “conducted a thorough review of the manufacturing data with respect to both shimming and skin surface profile. Based on that analysis we were able to determine that both conditions affected these eight airplanes only,” said the Boeing spokesman, who added that it has notified the Federal Aviation Administration “and are conducting a thorough review into the root cause.”
Who knows why they decided to review that data. Maybe they have a project to try to spot problems they missed before, or maybe someone just noticed a problem on a newer plane and they went back to find out if any others were affected by that same problem.
737-6, -8, -9. (Assuming that the -7s are temporarily out of service as you've said)
747 (cargo)
757
767
777
787 (all but these 8)
So still quite a few lines flying.
737-600s, 737-700s, 737-800s and 737-900s are part of the 737NG/Next Generation series that debuted in 1998. They are still flying and are safe. 737-8s are part of the 737MAX series (which includes 737-7s, 737-8s, 737-9s, and 737-200s), and they are all unsafe/grounded. As far as I know, the 737-8 is the only MAX variant to actually have been delivered so far, but I can't find a proof of that at the moment.
Wow. And that's the PR-approved press release. More details will probably appear in Aviation Week.
Is this a problem with joining carbon fiber?
Fundamentally? No. That said, I imagine there's a lot of pressure from the management to make big, expensive, slow-to-manufacture subassemblies fit together, even when they maybe don't quite. Not sure if it's an issue with their tolerances, or if something bigger is going on (the skin roughness they mention is troubling, because it implies the carbon layup might not have been compressed enough during its cure, and would require significant reinforcement at the very least to meet minimum strength requirements--an aircraft that can't even reach its limit load is fantastically unsafe to fly), but joining composites is mostly about having good procedures and following them religiously.
Boeing has outsourced all core competencies, including manufacturing the main fuselage. They are more or less a last-step assembler at this point. There's no reason to get in a 787, and I'll never, ever step foot into a MAX.
Aka the 737-8, which is what they have low-key renamed the MAX.
Anyway, for 'copy protection' they are using wpcp_disable_selection https://myprogrammingnotes.com/protect-web-page-copied-using... , it hooks document.onselectstart and document.onmousedown. onselectstart is very abuse-able and has no place in User Agents just like the likes of onbeforeunload navigator.sendBeacon and window.opener, meaning you should probably hardcode disable it (userscript, or directly modding own browser). onmousedown is a bit more problematic and cant be dealt in automatic fashion. You will have to manually go to devtools every time and delete all onmousedown event listeners.
The main question is whether or not Boeing fundamentally has good procedures and QC--if those have been compromised, they can't really be trusted to make mostly-metal airplanes, either.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
> The source of the newly-discovered structural issue has been traced to a mating point inside the aft fuselage between two carbon fiber composite barrels, known as Section 47/48 where the two barrels meet with a large bulkhead that caps the pressurized cabin. The pieces are fabricated and joined with the aft pressure bulkhead at Boeing’s North Charleston, S.C. plant and then delivered for final assembly to the company’s nearby final assembly building or flown to Everett, Wash.
