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As Boeing looks to buy a key 737 supplier, a whistleblower says the problems run deep (www.npr.org)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For most of his career at Spirit AeroSystems, Santiago Paredes worked at the end of the line. It was his job to catch production errors before the fuselage left the factory in Wichita, and Paredes caught a lot of them.

“It’s poor quality. Poor quality of work, just plain and simple,” he says, flipping through photos on his phone of the serious mistakes that he flagged during his dozen years as a quality inspector at Spirit.

Boeing is trying to rebuild its battered reputation for quality after a door plug blowout on a 737 Max in midair last January. The troubled plane-maker is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that makes the fuselage for Boeing in Wichita, Kan.

“They say the correct things like they've always said,” said whistleblower Santiago Paredes. “But I know how they really are.” A clash with management

Paredes says he brought his concerns to his managers repeatedly. But they were more worried about getting fuselages out of the factory faster to keep up with Boeing’s backlog.

“They were upset for me finding defects,” Paredes said. “It was never the people that created the defects fault. It was my fault for finding it.”

It got to the point, Paredes says, that a manager ordered him in writing to essentially undercount the number of mistakes.

“They wanted me to basically falsify the documentation on the amount of defects that were being found,” Paredes said. “They were telling me to lie.”

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[-] [email protected] 35 points 4 weeks ago

Airbus, this is your chance. You bought Canadian company Bombardier, use that plant to make planes in North America.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Airbus already has an A320 plant in Alabama. https://us.airbus.com/en/airbus-us-locations#:~:text=The%20Airbus%20U.S.%20Manufacturing%20Facility,aircraft%2C%20producing%2060%20aircraft%20annually

That plant is why airbus was brought in on the Bombardier deal. It was originally to make the C220 in that plant to get around import tariffs.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Oh interesting.

But I'm not following, I thought Airbus bought Bombardier's plane division. How is that Airbus being brought into the bombardier deal?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

So this was before airbus bought it from Bombarider.

The original deal was a 51% stake in the company with the option to buy the rest within a few years. This was in exchange for building the C series as it was called inside their US facilities. Since it would be American built, there’d be no import tariff.

Then when the deal settled, airbus very quickly chose to purchase the entire program from Bombardier. That’s the deal we know to get the A220.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

Sorry, who owned the Alabama plant originally? Bombardier or Airbus?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

Airbus. Bombardier has manufacturing plants in Canada.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Maybe as in allowed the acquisition to go forward, like by the SEC? Guessing.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

When the news came around about boeing airplanes having fault issues last year, I actively avoid all boeing flights. If I was forced to use Boeing, I'd research the model and ensure it wasn't on the Boeing shit list. Of the five flights I had since 2023 when the Boeing shit show happened, I changed one of them and actively shopped for flights without Boeing.

If you think I'm a paranoid for doing this, I absolutely bet you there's millions like me. People who will rather pay extra to avoid a Spirit airline experience, you will pay for convenience. Families who would rather throw some more dough to ensure their vacation isn't ruined. Companies that would throw more dollars knowing the airline ticket they got wont result into a multi million dollar insurance claim that the company has to pay for.

So yeah, Boeing has a big fucking problem right now.

[-] phdepressed 3 points 4 weeks ago

Honestly, doubt it is millions. Boeing has a big problem for the other reasons you mention but people like yourself actively avoiding their planes is going to be a minority. I've flown a few times since all the shit became public. All the planes were Boeing... full flights (and not super popular destinations). I'm thankful I want on a 787 or the new 757s I'll agree with that.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

I can't think of a single US airline that doesn't use Boeing.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

Spirit
Frontier
Allegiant
JetBlue
Breeze

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It was his job to catch production errors before the fuselage left the factory in Wichita, and Paredes caught a lot of them.

Boeing is trying to rebuild its battered reputation for quality after a door plug blowout on a 737 Max in midair last January.

The troubled plane-maker is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that makes the fuselage for Boeing in Wichita, Kan.

But the door plug had to be reopened in the first place so that workers could repair damaged rivets that were installed at Spirit’s factory in Wichita.

Since then, the two companies have scrambled to improve their manufacturing quality and rebuild the trust of federal regulators and the flying public.

The company fired its CEO last fall after a series of expensive and embarrassing quality lapses and brought in Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive.

The original article contains 773 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024

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