| From: John Koligman | 3/12/2024 12:29:45 PM | | | | | | Southwest is getting screwed here. NOT a good idea to be totally dependent on one aircraft produced by one vendor.
Southwest Airlines cuts capacity, and rethinks 2024 financial forecast, citing Boeing problems
PUBLISHED TUE, MAR 12 20247:17 AM EDTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Leslie Josephs @LESLIEJOSEPHS
KEY POINTS
- Southwest said it would reevaluate its 2024 financial forecast because of Boeing’s delivery delays this year.
- Airline CEOs have been frustrated by repeated setbacks at Boeing that have delayed deliveries of new planes.
- Boeing is facing a quality control crisis in the wake of a blown fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.
Boeing 737 MAX airplanes are seen parked at a Boeing facility on August 13, 2019 in Renton, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
Southwest Airlines said Tuesday that it will have to trim its capacity plans and reevaluate its financial forecasts for the year, citing delivery delays from Boeing, its sole supplier of airplanes.
The Dallas-based airline said Boeing informed Southwest’s leaders that it should expect 46 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes this year, down from 58. Southwest had expected Boeing to deliver 79 Max planes, including some of the smallest model, the Max 7, which hasn’t yet won certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Because of the delays, Southwest said in a filing that it is “reevaluating all prior full year 2024 guidance, including the expectation for capital spending.”
Southwest’s statements, ahead of a JPMorgan industry conference on Tuesday, are the latest sign of how Boeing’s quality control crisis and production problems — both before and after a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight in January — are weighing on some of its best customers.
“We all need Boeing to be better,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said at the conference.
Alaska Airlines said in a filing Tuesday that its 2024 capacity is “in flux due to uncertainty around the timing of aircraft deliveries as a result of increased Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Justice scrutiny on Boeing and its operations.”
Last week, United told staff that it would have to pause pilot hiring this spring because of late-arriving aircraft from Boeing, CNBC reported. Southwest said it has stopped hiring pilots, flight attendants and other employees this yearand expects to end 2024 with lower headcount than last year.
Southwest shares were down more than 12% in morning trading. The airline said leisure bookings in the first quarter were weaker than expected and forecast unit revenue to be flat to up no more than 2% compared with a year earlier, down from a January estimate of a rise of as much as 4.5%.
Boeing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. |
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| From: John Koligman | 3/12/2024 1:24:48 PM | | | | | | F.A.A. Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues
The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.
The Federal Aviation Administration deployed as many as 20 auditors at Boeing, which builds the 737 Max at its plant in Renton, Wash.Credit...Jason Redmond/Reuters
By Mark Walker
Reporting from Washington
Published March 11, 2024Updated March 12, 2024, 10:25 a.m. ET
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A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.
The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.
The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.
For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.
The F.A.A. also conducted 13 product audits for the part of the inquiry that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades, and seven resulted in failing ones, the presentation said.
At one point during the examination, the air-safety agency observed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document that describes some of the findings. That action was “not identified/documented/called-out in the production order,” the document said.
In another instance, the F.A.A. saw Spirit mechanics apply liquid Dawn soap to a door seal “as lubricant in the fit-up process,” according to the document. The door seal was then cleaned with a wet cheesecloth, the document said, noting that instructions were “vague and unclear on what specifications/actions are to be followed or recorded by the mechanic.”
Asked about the appropriateness of using a hotel key card or Dawn soap in those situations, a spokesman for Spirit, Joe Buccino, said the company was “reviewing all identified nonconformities for corrective action.”
Jessica Kowal, a spokeswoman for Boeing, said the plane maker was continuing “to implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen safety and quality, and build the confidence of our customers and their passengers.”
In late February, the F.A.A. gave the company 90 days to develop a plan for quality-control improvements. In response, its chief executive, Dave Calhoun, said that “we have a clear picture of what needs to be done,” citing in part the audit findings.
Boeing said this month that it was in talks to acquire Spirit, which it spun out in 2005. Mr. Buccino said on Monday that Spirit had received preliminary audit findings from the F.A.A. and planned to work with Boeing to address what the regulator had raised. He said Spirit’s goal was to reduce to zero the number of defects and errors in its processes.
“Meanwhile, we continue multiple efforts undertaken to improve our safety and quality programs,” Mr. Buccino said. “These improvements focus on human factors and other steps to minimize nonconformities.”
The F.A.A. said it could not release specifics about the audit because of its active investigation into Boeing in response to the Alaska Airlines episode. In addition to that inquiry, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused the door panel to blow off the plane, and the Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation.
During the F.A.A.’s examination, the agency deployed as many as 20 auditors at Boeing and roughly half a dozen at Spirit, according to the slide presentation. Boeing assembles the 737 Max at its plant in Renton, Wash., while Spirit builds the plane’s fuselage at its factory in Wichita, Kan.
The audit at Boeing was wide ranging, covering many parts of the 737 Max, including its wings and an assortment of other systems.
Many of the problems found by auditors fell in the category of not following an “approved manufacturing process, procedure or instruction,” according to the presentation. Some other issues dealt with quality-control documentation.
“It wasn’t just paperwork issues, and sometimes it’s the order that work is done,” Mike Whitaker, the F.A.A. administrator, said at a news conference on Monday. “Sometimes it’s tool management — it sounds kind of pedestrian, but it’s really important in a factory that you have a way of tracking tools effectively so that you have the right tool and you know you didn’t leave it behind. So it’s really plant floor hygiene, if you will, and a variety of issues of that nature.”
One audit dealt with the component that blew off the Alaska Airlines jet, known as a door plug. Boeing failed that check, according to the presentation. Some of the issues flagged by that audit related to inspection and quality-control documentation, though the exact findings were not detailed in the presentation.
The F.A.A.’s examination also explored how well Boeing’s employees understood the company’s quality-control processes. The agency interviewed six company engineers and scored their responses, and the overall average score came out to only 58 percent.
One audit at Spirit that focused on the door plug component found five problems. One of those problems, the presentation said, was that Boeing “failed to provide evidence of approval of minor design change under a method acceptable to the F.A.A.” It was not clear from the presentation what the design change was.
Another audit dealt with the installation of the door plug, and it was among those that Spirit failed. The audit raised concerns about the Spirit technicians who carried out the work and found that the company “failed to determine the knowledge necessary for the operation of its processes.”
Other audits that Spirit failed included one that involved a cargo door and another that dealt with the installation of cockpit windows.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington. More about Mark Walker |
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| To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (3624) | 3/12/2024 7:59:30 PM | | From: John Koligman | | | | Exactly what I was thinking! In addition, I'm no aviation expert, and I'm sure warning lights in the cockpit are common, but I still found it disturbing that multiple iterations of a pressurization warning kept the plane flying.
Alaska Airlines Flight Was Scheduled for Safety Check on Day Panel Blew Off
The 737 Max remained in service for a day after the airline’s engineers, concerned about warning lights, scheduled it to come in for maintenance. During that period, a door plug came off in flight.
The Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that had a door plug blow out midflight focused new attention on Boeing’s manufacturing processes and the safety procedures followed by airlines.Credit...Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Mark Walker and James Glanz
March 12, 2024Updated 6:02 p.m. ET
A day before the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, engineers and technicians for the airline were so concerned about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening and undergo maintenance, interviews and documents show.
But the airline chose to keep the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, in service on Jan. 5 with some restrictions, carrying passengers until it completed three flights that were scheduled to end that night in Portland, Ore., the site of one of the airline’s maintenance facilities.
Before the plane could complete that scheduled sequence of flights and go in for the maintenance check, the door plug blew out at 16,000 feet, minutes after embarking on the second flight of the day, from Portland to Ontario International Airport in California.
The plane landed safely and no one was seriously injured, but the incident focused new attention on Boeing’s manufacturing processes and the safety procedures followed by airlines.
The scheduling of the maintenance check on the plane has not previously been reported. It demonstrates that the airline chose to keep the plane in service while it made its way toward the maintenance facility rather than flying it to Portland without passengers.
Alaska Airlines confirmed the sequence of events. But the airline said the warnings it had on the plane did not meet its standards for immediately taking it out of service.
Donald Wright, the vice president for maintenance and engineering for Alaska Airlines, said the warning signals — a light indicating problems with the plane’s pressurization system — had come on twice in the previous 10 days instead of the three times the airline considers the trigger to take more aggressive action.
Alaska Airlines has repeatedly asserted that there is no evidence that the warning lights, which could also be caused by electronic or other problems, were related to the impending plug blowout.
“From my perspective as the safety guy, looking at all the data, all the leading indicators, there was nothing that would drive me to make a different decision,” Max Tidwell, the vice president for safety and security for Alaska Airlines, said in an interview.
The airline’s engineers had called for the plane to undergo a rigorous maintenance check on Jan. 5 to determine why the warning lights were triggering based on their use of “a predictive tool” rather than on the number of times the warning lights had gone off, the airline said.
While it kept the plane in service, the airline did put restrictions on it following the recommendation of the engineers. It restricted the plane from flying long-haul routes over water, like to Hawaii, or remote continental areas in case of the need for an emergency landing.
Extensive evidence of a potential problem with the plane had been accumulating for days and possibly weeks, according to interviews with the airline and records of the investigation into the blowout. In addition to the flashing lights, investigators say the door plug had been gradually sliding upward, a potentially crucial link in the accumulating string of evidence. The airline said its visual inspection in the days leading up to the blowout did not reveal any movement of the door plug.
A door plug is a panel that goes where an emergency exit would be located on a plane with the option of expanding the number of passenger seats.
A preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board last month said that four bolts meant to secure the door plug in place were missing before the panel came off the plane. It outlined a series of events that occurred at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., that may have led to the plane being delivered without those bolts being in place.
Mark Lindquist, a lawyer representing passengers on the Jan. 5 flight, said the series of mishaps involving the Alaska Airlines jet were alarming, adding that both the carrier and Boeing, the 737 Max 9’s manufacturer, would struggle to explain the events in court.
“When jurors find out they’d actually been cautioned by engineers to ground the plane and they put it into commercial rotation instead, jurors will be more than mystified — they’ll be angry,” Mr. Lindquist said.
In his court filing, Mr. Lindquist said that passengers on a previous flight heard a “whistling sound” coming from the area of the door plug. The documents say passengers brought the noise to the attention of the flight attendant, who then reported it to the pilots. When asked about the report, Alaska Airlines said it could not find any record of a report of whistling coming from the plane.
Almost a week before the blowout, the 737 had been taken out of service on Dec. 31 because of an issue with the front passenger entry and exit door. Records show the plane resumed service on Jan. 2. However, on Jan. 3, a pressurization warning light was triggered during at least one of the plane’s flights. Alaska Airlines officials said the plane was inspected by engineers and the carrier determined it was safe enough for the plane to continue flying.
The next day, the same light was again triggered.
A spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines said it was then that engineers and technicians scheduled the deeper inspection of the plane for the night of Jan. 5 in Portland. But the airline chose to keep the plane flying with passengers as it made its way across the country that day.
The revelations about the warning signs of a potential problem have raised questions about whether routine inspections should have been able to weave together various indications of an issue and avert the incident.
Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters last week that over the 154 flights the plane had flown since entering service in the fall, small upward movements of the door plug had left visible marks, and possibly created a gap between the panel and the fuselage.
Alaska Airlines officials said they did not notice any unusual gaps between the door plug and the plane’s fuselage during inspections on the days leading up to the door plug coming off.
Additional evidence includes the pressurization system lights on previous flights and the unconfirmed reports of a whistling noise.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington. More about Mark Walker
James Glanz is a Times international and investigative reporter covering major disasters, conflict and deadly failures of technology. More about James Glanz
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| To: John Koligman who wrote (3625) | 3/13/2024 8:17:35 AM | | From: Jeff Vayda | | | | | As with most 'incidences' you need multiple failures. Anyone of the escapes could have been captured and averted the mishap - plenty of blame to go around. Might look on the other side and appricate the robust engineering which allowed so many people to 'miss' the preferred action and still get out with out significant harm. |
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| To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (3622) | 3/14/2024 2:16:37 PM | | From: John Koligman | | | | So the CEO they hired is an 'accountant'.....
"Boeing hired Calhoun to right the ship and help return the plane maker to its engineering roots. Some questioned the move at the time, given that Calhoun himself was trained as an accountant and has no engineering background. Calhoun, who previously worked at the Blackstone Group, Nielsen and GE, was cut from the same cloth as Jim McNerney, who ran Boeing as CEO from 2005-2015, a tumultuous era marked by strained labor relations and cost-cutting."
Dave Calhoun was hired to fix Boeing. Instead, ‘it’s become an embarrassment’
Analysis by Allison Morrow, CNN
4 minute read
Updated 10:37 AM EDT, Thu March 14, 2024
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, pictured in January.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
New YorkCNN —
Hardly a day has gone by in 2024 without a bad headline for Boeing, from life-threatening mid-flight crises up above to entrenched business debacles happening on the ground. So how does CEO Dave Calhoun still have a job?
“It’s become an extreme embarrassment,” Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aviation analyst, told me. “The board seems weirdly absentee, investors seem weirdly complacent, and the government doesn’t seem to have a mechanism for dealing with this.”
Let’s step back: Boeing’s ( BA) stock has shed more than a quarter of its value this year, and it’s only March. One of its planes suffered a mid-flight blowout on January 5, prompting multiple federal investigations that increasingly suggest Boeing workers failed to put crucial bolts in place after making repairs. Last week, investigators called the company out for dragging its heels in response to their requests for key evidence.
Boeing said it is working closely with regulators’ investigations and has plans in place to improve safety measures at its production facilities.
“We will continue supporting this investigation in the transparent and proactive fashion we have supported all regulatory inquiries into this accident,” Boeing said in a statement.
Boeing’s 737 Max problems would be egregious enough on their own.
But wait, there’s more.
RELATED ARTICLEBoeing is in big trouble
On Monday, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flying from Australia to New Zealand plunged suddenly mid-flight, injuring 50 passengers before landing safely. On Tuesday, news began emerging that a Boeing whistleblower, John Barnett, died in an apparent suicide on the same day he was scheduled to give testimony about safety concerns he raised over the company’s safety protocols.
It’s not clear whether Boeing bears any responsibility in either case. The company said it was gathering information about what went wrong on the 787. And in response to its former employee’s death, the company said: “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
Boeing lost its wayIf Boeing were any other company, its CEO would be out the door. But Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive since 2020, remains in his job, as does the entire C-suite at the time of this writing.
“It’s been three years of ‘there’s no way Calhoun can stay at the helm,’” said Aboulafia, managing director of the consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory. “But he seems to be staying at the helm … I do not get it.”
Boeing actually raised Calhoun’s total compensation in 2022, to $22.5 million, despite problems with the 777 program and quality control issues with the 787 that forced regulators to halt the company’s deliveries. Calhoun’s 2023 compensation has not yet been announced — Boeing typically reveals that information in April.
To be fair to Calhoun, he took over a company in deep distress following two fatal 737 Max crashes that landed the crucial plane in a nearly two-year-long grounding and put the company in a yearslong crisis. And the plane maker’s problems didn’t start there: The 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas is widely cited as Boeing’s poisoned chalice. It was after the merger that the bean-counter executives began taking over, gutting the joint, and putting accountants into roles once held by engineers. Maximizing profit took precedence over quality. In the short term, margins improved. But in the long term, Boeing lost the plot.
Executives at Boeing, starting in the mid-aughts, “identified an industry with tons of cash flow, high barriers to entry and only two players,” Aboulafia said, referring to Boeing’s European rival, Airbus. “It’s a recipe for getting away with bad things.”
Critics of the 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 weren’t just a problem of flawed design but also deeply flawed management that eroded Boeing’s corporate culture.
Boeing hired Calhoun to right the ship and help return the plane maker to its engineering roots. Some questioned the move at the time, given that Calhoun himself was trained as an accountant and has no engineering background. Calhoun, who previously worked at the Blackstone Group, Nielsen and GE, was cut from the same cloth as Jim McNerney, who ran Boeing as CEO from 2005-2015, a tumultuous era marked by strained labor relations and cost-cutting.
RELATED ARTICLEBoeing sales unfreeze but they’re still well below normal
Under Calhoun, Boeing still hasn’t been able to shake its enormous problems. This year’s mounting concerns prove his efforts haven’t resulted in sufficient quality and safety improvements.
CNN has reached out to Boeing for comment.
“If you ask me, the first thing that needs to happen for Boeing to gain trust is to basically fire the entire C suite,” Gad Allon, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, told me Tuesday. “I know that will not happen, but … there is not a single person that has a C in front of their title that is not responsible for what we’re seeing now.”
But Allon isn’t holding his breath for Boeing’s board of directors to act.
“If there is a functioning board, that’s what should happen. |
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| To: John Koligman who wrote (3627) | 3/14/2024 7:16:27 PM | | From: Jeff Hayden | | | | | It's been since 1997 that Boeing was poisoned by the MacDac merger that brought in management incompetence. That's nearly 3 decades of upper level rot, including the board. That board needs to be replaced with technically competent people also. Maybe pilots and some customer people. |
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| From: Thomas M. | 3/14/2024 7:50:17 PM | | | | | | In 2014 an Al Jazeera reporter visited a Boeing 787 plant in South Carolina, and found that of the 15 respondents, 10 said the planes were not ready. Plant workers said that management turns a blind eye to 90% of production problems. Many employees were addicted to drugs.
Tom |
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