[ The plug door that ripped off an Alaska Airlines plane only
exists because of cost-cutting production techniques to facilitate
cramming more passengers into the cabin.]
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BOEING 737 MAX INCIDENT A BY-PRODUCT OF ITS FINANCIAL MINDSET  
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Luke Goldstein
January 9, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ The plug door that ripped off an Alaska Airlines plane only exists
because of cost-cutting production techniques to facilitate cramming
more passengers into the cabin. _

National Transportation Safety Board Investigator-in-Charge John
Lovell examines the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282,
January 7, 2024, in Portland, Oregon., NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
BOARD VIA AP

 

On Sunday night, Bob Sauer, a high school science teacher in the
Portland, Oregon, area, took a flashlight into his backyard and
spotted a 65-pound piece of white aerospace equipment. It was nestled
at the foot of several trees, which softened its 16,000-foot fall out
of the sky.

The specific piece of equipment, a plug door that broke off a Boeing
737 MAX 9 aircraft during Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 from Portland on
Friday night, in fact illustrates many of the broader trends in the
airline industry today: the desire to cram more passengers into finite
space, the standardization of production across outsourced
subcontractors, and the lack of oversight from federal regulators into
these increasingly dangerous schemes.

Many of these same problems led to Boeing’s infamous 737 MAX plane
crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people. Those crashes
involved a new semi-autopiloting software that malfunctioned, forcing
the planes to nosedive against the pilot’s best attempts to correct
course.

A faulty course change pretty well describes Boeing, which went
through a restructuring during the 1990s from an “association of
engineers” to a firm run by Wall Street shareholders. This
catastrophic path has led to another systemic crisis for one of the
world’s two major commercial aviation companies, underscoring the
deterioration of Boeing’s product quality by financialization,
cost-cutting, and outsourcing.

BEFORE 2006, THE FUSELAGES OF BOEING PLANES were not designed with
plug doors, which appear nearly identical to exit doors from the
outside except they’re nonfunctional. Plug doors also help manage
cabin pressurization levels.

By the early 2000s, airlines were consolidating, and bolstered by this
new market power, many wanted to pack more seats onto planes, to the
detriment of the consumer experience. Ryanair, a discount flyer, was
one of the main airlines pushing for more seats from Boeing.

But because Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations require
a certain number of exit doors per passenger, more seats would also
demand a reconfiguration of the plane to fit more exit doors. “There
are a lot of different ways to configure an aircraft to pack in air
travelers like cattle, but it changed the calculus for manufacturers
to meet standards,” said Bill McGee, an airline industry expert at
the American Economic Liberties Project.

As McGee explains, it’s not that these orders posed so much a
technical or engineering challenge to Boeing, which still had many of
the best aerospace engineers. It was, however, a business predicament
for the new management that took over after Boeing’s merger with
McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

Along with using more subcontractors for production, Boeing was in the
process of standardizing all facets of its production across its
supply chain to cut costs. This was a priority of the finance veterans
now at the top of Boeing’s organizational chart. The company’s
decision to leave Seattle, where production is located, and move its
corporate headquarters to Chicago symbolized this transition away from
engineering and toward becoming a shareholder-driven firm that issued
extravagant dividend payouts.

Boeing didn’t want to tailor different plane designs with a wider
array of seating specifications for separate airlines, even though
they had done so before. It’s far more cost-effective to
mass-produce one standard fuselage to fit all airline orders.

Court documents indicate that employees at Spirit AeroSystems,
Boeing’s main supplier for plug doors, warned the company about
safety issues but were instructed to falsify documents instead.

The solution Boeing came up with was to introduce cutouts in all its
planes for the 737-900ER planes, the generation that came before the
current 737 series. Plug doors could easily fill those cutouts, or be
swapped out with exit doors for airlines that wanted to seat more
passengers. That way, Boeing’s jets could meet FAA regulations,
while avoiding specialized manufacturing.

This new design modification seemed innocuous at the time, and by all
accounts passed federal inspections without an issue. Later, the 737
MAX 9 planes with cutouts for plug doors were also certified, and
delivered to airlines within the past several months.

The need for the plug door introduced another line of supply for a new
piece of equipment, which Boeing subcontracted out to suppliers. A
separate company had to manufacture and install the plug door,
depending on the airline’s desired seating configuration. When those
aerospace suppliers began cutting corners on safety standards, it
exposed another risk.

That seems likely to be one potential cause of the recent accident on
Alaska Airlines. In a recent lawsuit reported by The Lever
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court documents indicate that employees at Spirit AeroSystems,
Boeing’s main supplier for plug doors, warned the company about
safety issues but were instructed to falsify documents instead.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary
findings
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four bolts meant to attach the Alaska Airlines plug door to the
fuselage of the plane were missing, and inspectors are working to
determine if they were ever installed. “We don’t know if they were
there or if, again, they came out during the violent explosive
decompression event,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Monday
news conference.

Spirit AeroSystems was once a division of Boeing based in Wichita,
Kansas, but the company spun it off in 2005.

In a statement, Spirit commented on the accident: “Spirit is a
committed partner with Boeing on the 737 program, and we continue to
work together with them on this matter. Spirit is following the
protocols set by the regulatory authorities that guide communication
in these types of circumstances.”

THERE HAD BEEN WARNING SIGNS ABOUT THE 737 MAX 9S before the recent
accident. In December, Alaska Airlines had a series of issues where
warning lights flashed indicating a loss of cabin pressure on the MAX
9 planes. It decided voluntarily not to fly the planes over water
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so they could have a safe landing if anything went wrong.

There were no orders or known inspections from the FAA after these
reports, and it’s unclear whether the depressurization issue that
appeared to cause the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 incident was linked
to the plug doors. The NTSB has said that there are redundancies in
the system of warning lights, and planes have backup systems to
account for a failure of pressurization.

Videos taken from inside the Flight 1282 aircraft mid-flight show a
gaping, rectangular-shaped hole on the left side of the plane’s
fuselage, as high-velocity winds ripped through the aircraft before it
made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport.

No passengers were severely injured or killed in Friday’s accident,
primarily because of the fortunate circumstance that no one was
sitting in the window or middle seat next to the plug door that ripped
off.

In response to questions from the _Prospect_, the FAA said: “The
National Transportation Safety Board is in charge of the investigation
about Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. It would be premature for the FAA
to answer questions or provide information while the investigation is
underway. The NTSB will provide any updates.”

On Monday, United Airlines found bolts loose
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the plug doors on numerous of its own Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes. Alaska
Airlines found the same issue. The 171 MAX 9 planes in operation have
been grounded
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further notice.

In a statement regarding the latest developments on the accident,
Boeing said: “As operators conduct the required inspections, we are
staying in close contact with them and will help address any and all
findings. We are committed to ensuring every Boeing airplane meets
design specifications and the highest safety and quality standards. We
regret the impact this has had on our customers and their
passengers.”

Just a week before the incident, the FAA asked airlines to inspect
for loose bolts
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a different part of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, in the rudder control
system, after a maintenance check by an unnamed international airline
revealed a bolt with no nut fastening it in place.

In previous decades, a popular slogan that company leaders frequently
parroted was “If it ain’t Boeing, then I ain’t going.” These
days, that could only be uttered with the deepest irony.

_Luke Goldstein is a writing fellow at The American
Prospect. _ _David Dayen contributed reporting._

_Read the original article at Prospect.org.
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_Used with the permission. © The American Prospect, Prospect.org,
2024. All rights reserved. _

_Click here to support the Prospect's brand of independent impact
journalism. [[link removed]]_

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