Duck! Boeing is still screwing up
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Coming to a yard near you
A full year after the Air Force grounded its fleet of Boeing 767 tankers because of foreign object debris (think tools, metal scraps, wire, etc.) found left behind by assembly line workers), Boeing’s workers are still leaving construction trash in 737 Maxs’ fuel tanks.
The embattled plane maker found everything from tools to rags inside the fuel tanks of about 35 aircraft, a company spokesman told Reuters.
Here’s what happened last year:
Boeing was forced to ground its 767-based KC-46 tankers for the past week after the Air Force expressed concern about loose tools and bits of debris found in various locations inside the completed airplanes, according to internal company memos.
“We have USAF pilots here for flight training and they will not fly due to the FOD (foreign object debris) issues and the current confidence they have in our product that has been discovered throughout the aircraft,” factory management wrote in a Feb. 21 memo to employees on the 767 assembly line.
“This is a big deal,” the memo emphasized.
Training flights resumed Thursday morning after approximately a week’s downtime, during which Boeing worked with the Air Force on how to resolve the production problems. Boeing spokesman Chick Ramey acknowledged the problem but characterized it asonly “a temporary pause” in flight operations.
The KC-46 is built as an empty 767 airframe on the main assembly line in Everett, then transferred to a facility at the south end of Paine Field called the Military Delivery Center (MDC), where the jet’s military systems, including the refueling and communications equipment, are installed and the airplanes are completed.
The internal company memo said the MDC “grounded our 767 tankers due to FOD and tool control.”
During the process of building aircraft, all airframes are supposed to be routinely swept for any kind of foreign object debris — especially anything metal. A loose object left, say, inside a wall cavity or under a floor, is potentially dangerous because over time it could damage equipment or cause an electrical short.
“The 767 program has been scrambling to get our employees down south … to the MDC to clean FOD from our delivered tankers to get our aircraft back in the air,” the memo states.
The memo notes that eight tools were found in aircraft delivered to the MDC and two more in tankers delivered to the U.S. Air Force.
Another memo said repeated finding of FOD by the Air Force was “a chronic issue” that has “resulted in a program level impact.”
Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Hope Cronin said the military is “aware of the concerns over FOD in KC-46 production aircraft” and takes such contamination “very seriously.”
“The combined Air Force, Defense Contract Management Agency, and Boeing team is working together to resolve these concerns as safely and quickly as possible,” Cronin said via email.
Making sure that no foreign object debris makes its way onto a finished airplane is the responsibility of every mechanic who works on the plane but also of the quality inspectors, whose job is to do a final check on any area of an airplane before it is closed up.
What seems to be a serious lapse in FOD control comes as Boeing says it intends to cut almost 1,000 quality inspectors jobs over the next two years.
The company fired its chairman last December, and might want to do that again, while also looking for workers who’ll take pride in and responsibility for their work. It occurs to me that marijuana is legal in Washington; perhaps it shouldn’t be.
