FAA Keeps Boeing On Short Leash

10

The FAA is keeping Boeing on a shorter leash than the company wanted to ensure it makes some internal changes on its certification processes. The company applied for its customary five-year Organization Designation Authorization allowing designated Boeing employees to sign off on some aspects of the certification of new aircraft. In the wake of the MAX debacle and manufacturing issues with the 787, the agency has determined three years is enough. “There are multiple in work improvements that the F.A.A. would like to assess within the Boeing organization over the next three years,” The New York Times quoted an FAA official as telling Boeing.

According to the Times, the FAA wants Boeing to ensure the designated employees are shielded from interference by their bosses and to update its internal audits to make sure its safety management system is in place. “As always, we are committed to working transparently with the F.A.A. through their detailed and rigorous oversight processes,” the Times quoted a company statement. It also said the FAA will be monitoring the progress.

Russ Niles
Russ Niles is Editor-in-Chief of AVweb. He has been a pilot for 30 years and joined AVweb 22 years ago. He and his wife Marni live in southern British Columbia where they also operate a small winery.

Other AVwebflash Articles

10 COMMENTS

  1. The FAA should never, ever give a Boeing employee the power to sign for anything again.
    What should be done is the FAA should hire the required engineers on a contract to last as long as certification takes, and bill Boeing for 200% of their salary and benefit expenses, plus management costs.

    • You miss that people inside the company have intimate knowledge of the design including subtleties.

      Certainly Boeing botched big time by:
      – not updating safety analysis, which I believe are part of its process
      – no one awake enough to grasp the major morphing of MCAS from minor to major impact
      – pressure (which I have not seen details of)

      FAA is far from perfect, some loose cannons, some dullards, silos duplicating work, some disobeying of technical directives from HQ. Varied with location in my direct experience.

      Boeing has a long road still ahead. Apparently FAA thinks it will take at least three years, on top of the three since the disasters caused by MCAS.

      McNerney made it clear a decade and a half ago that managers would be evaluated on how they treated employees, not just on output. And presided over the reset of the B787 program which had not learned from the military division how easy it is to fool yourself about project progress – illuminated in articles in internal newsletters. Schedule push was part of the botch of the B787 program.

      • Clarification:
        More complicated than I said.
        Some updates were made to safety analysis, but some assumptions were very questionable and some factors missed.
        Stumbling around IMO.
        Very good article in Seattle Times, by Dominic Gates and another person (not perfect, they did not correctly understand control column pitch force which was just lower rate of increase in force with increased pitch, not a reduction in force).

  2. I agree with John S. Maybe the changes are more profound, but it just feels like a limit on the time from 5 to 3 years. And how will you make sure undue pressure doesn’t come from above?

    • That’s an awkward one, people have to be coached to focus on the mission. Signers need some protection.

      Quality of people, including managers, is key. On the 787 program Boeing had some managers and employees who should not have been there, albeit I expect they’d never have been given delegated approval authority And it had some suppliers who were either incompetent or dishonest.

      Seattle is bad for not having a great quantity of alternative employers in aviation, albeit I can’t think of an area that has anymore – SoCal and Wichita were good in the past I gather.

  3. There’s dullard in every business. My one boss told me years ago to price out tires for our customers. Then have them come back for installation. So why should I price out something we don’t have, when there are 5? time stores in a 3 mile radius from our location, that does have the tires in stock?

    • That’s worse than dullard I suspect.

      But perhaps the shop was convenient to the potential customer, for other work.

      Smart businesses will suggest the customer go to a shop that has the tires, if they want them soon. A WasMart near me referred people to nearby small businesses when it did not have something needed – for example, one store did not sell sewing machines. A specialized store that did thrived in the shadow of WasMart, failed when it had to move away as mall was being re-developed (and because it did not grasp that publicity was now crucial).

  4. Rational K has it exactly right. His statements match my experiences from inside aviation certification on other large scale projects.

LEAVE A REPLY