The US Department of Transportation’s (DOT) top inspector has blasted the Federal Aviation Administration for ineffective oversight of Boeing’s 737 and 787 production systems.
DOT’s Office of Inspector General issued a report on 11 October calling on the FAA to overhaul the processes it uses to oversee the troubled aircraft manufacturer.
“FAA does not have sufficient information to determine risk within Boeing manufacturing facilities,” says the report, dated 9 October. “Weaknesses in FAA’s oversight processes and systems limit its ability to identify and resolve Boeing production issues.”
The 40-page document says the FAA still considers numerous Boeing production facilities to be “high risk”, but that, at the same time, the agency lacks an effective means for actually assessing that risk.
The report came the same day Boeing disclosed it is laying off 17,000 workers and ending 767 production, and that it lost $6 billion in the third quarter – all amid an ongoing, costly machinists’ strike.
The Inspector General undertook the review, which specifically focuses on 737 and 787 production, at the request of the US Congress. Lawmakers sought answers in response to several years of ongoing quality and safety concerns involving Boeing production, including issues causing the 5 January in-flight failure of a 737 Max 9’s mid-cabin door plug.
The report broadly concludes that the FAA has failed to properly evaluate a production system as sprawling and complex as Boeing’s. “The agency’s current audit processes are not comprehensive enough to adequately identify key discrepancies and non-compliances.”
The FAA did not respond to a request for comment.
Boeing says the ”audit reinforces the improvements we are making as part of the safety and quality plan we presented to the FAA in May 2024. Our plan emphasises workforce training, simplifying manufacturing plans, eliminating defects, strengthening our safety and quality culture, and monitoring the health of our entire production system, including with suppliers”.
The Inspector General found that the FAA annually assesses risk levels at 22 Boeing sites, and that it still considers “multiple” of those facilities – including Boeing’s Renton 737 and North Charleston 787 assembly sites – to be “high risk”.
“It consistently considers these facilities high risk due to the complexity of Boeing’s quality system, level of outsourcing, organisational stability, relationship with FAA and overall compliance history,” the report says.
Though the FAA has recently completed more Boeing audits than required by its policies, FAA inspectors lack adequate guidance needed to accurately assess risk, leaving the audits ineffective at ensuring Boeing meets requirements, the report says.
For instance, the FAA’s guidance does not specify how often problems must occur to be considered systemic or pervasive – and therefore deserving of more attention. As a result, FAA inspectors “generally classify non-compliances as isolated, even when similar issues were previously identified”.
The Inspector General also says the FAA has failed to ensure Boeing’s suppliers are properly scrutinised. While FAA policy does not require its inspectors to directly assess suppliers, it does require inspectors ensure Boeing assesses them. In that responsibility, the FAA has come up short, the report concludes.
It calls attention a problem in recent years involving Boeing’s use of 787 fuselage sections that failed to meet specifications, resulting in oversized gaps between sections. The issue forced Boeing to halt 787 production and rework already produced jets.
While Boeing had ostensibly required suppliers to complete “first article inspections” (FAIs) to ensure parts meet specifications, only one in four 787 fuselage-component suppliers could prove to the DOT that they actually completed the inspections, the report says. One supplier completed its first such inspection on the “534th section it manufactured”.
“The manufacturing errors occurred, in part, because Boeing and FAA did not verify that either Boeing or its suppliers had complete FAIs or that the parts were produced in accordance with design requirements,” the report says.
