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Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

bbc.com

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Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#11

Post by jMyles »

mikekchar wrote: post #8
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

>> [...] The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time. > [...] I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox guarding this particular hen-house. I can imagine situations where I would not agree, to be honest. If a manager says, "There is a bug in this system here" and I say, "I'm investigating that problem and wi…

> If a manager says, "There is a bug in this system here"

I think that your metaphor does a disservice to this whistleblower and the allegations that he's making.

Better is to imagine a manager saying, "I have observed bugs being intentionally left in the codebase in order to cut cost. Senior managers are aware of this and have allowed it to continue."

In that scenario, the matter of when to intervene is quite different I think.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#12

Post by krn »

riffraff wrote: post #7
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

It seems to me the FAA comes out of this looking terrible, even if the accusations are not grounded it seems absurd that no actions were taken to verify such a notice coming from a QA engineer in the company itself. I wonder if other regulatory bodies around the world could/would/should have done something.

> It seems to me the FAA comes out of this looking terrible, even if the accusations are not grounded it seems absurd that no actions were taken to verify such a notice coming from a QA engineer in the company itself.

This has been going for a long time now[1]:

> Instead of being manufactured by the approved computerised process, Ducommun employees were cutting the parts by hand - literally using a felt-tipped pen to mark out the shape and then cutting the metal with a hand-cutter.

> Not only did this result in parts which could never meet the mandated 3000ths of an inch accuracy - but the Boeing team realised it violated the official type design: any aircraft with these parts on them would be legally "unairworthy" - and therefore not allowed to fly.

> The Department of Justice ordered two investigations - one by the FAA and, because Boeing had sold some 737NGs to the military, one by the Defence Criminal Investigative Service.

> But the whistle-blowers have been dismayed by these investigations. Al Jazeera obtained a copy of the FAA investigation - which the administration redacted. The only publicly-viewable "investigative actions" appear to be that the FAA looked up Ducommun's address and visited its website.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/12/...

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#13

Post by briandear »

riffraff wrote: post #7
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

It seems to me the FAA comes out of this looking terrible, even if the accusations are not grounded it seems absurd that no actions were taken to verify such a notice coming from a QA engineer in the company itself. I wonder if other regulatory bodies around the world could/would/should have done something.

How do we know the FAA hasn’t taken no notice? Does the whistleblower present any evidence? How about the air carriers? Do they fail to test their systems during their frequent inspections? One requirement of an air carrier certificate is that they have to check this stuff and sign off on it.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#14

Post by jMyles »

briandear wrote: post #10
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

John Barnett’s potential involvement with the union ought to be disclosed. There are repeated claims of “problems,” that are strangely coincidental to union opposition to right to work states. Attributing altruism when in fact there had been a concerted campaign against right to work states and factories moving there is journalistic malpractice. “Many analysts say that Boeing decided to put its second Dreamliner airc…

I think that you make a lot of interesting points until your final paragraph. If I'm reading the details properly (and I may not be; you seem to be far more informed than I am), then the particular test in question may have detected the problem about which Mr. Barnett is complaining, where other tests might not:

> Mr Barnett says that when he was decommissioning systems which had suffered minor cosmetic damage, he found that some of the oxygen bottles were not discharging when they were meant to. He subsequently arranged for a controlled test to be carried out by Boeing's own research and development unit.

> This test, which used oxygen systems that were "straight out of stock" and undamaged, was designed to mimic the way in which they would be deployed aboard an aircraft, using exactly the same electric current as a trigger. He says 300 systems were tested - and 75 of them did not deploy properly, a failure rate of 25%.

...or am I reading this incorrectly?

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#15

Post by onion2k »

briandear wrote: post #10
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

John Barnett’s potential involvement with the union ought to be disclosed. There are repeated claims of “problems,” that are strangely coincidental to union opposition to right to work states. Attributing altruism when in fact there had been a concerted campaign against right to work states and factories moving there is journalistic malpractice. “Many analysts say that Boeing decided to put its second Dreamliner airc…

That means it's actually more important to investigate the issue. If people are muddying the waters with false accusations that's incredibly bad for Boeing, the aviation industry as a whole, and public confidence in flying.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#16

Post by usr1106 »

There is at least one big airline that denies to accept airliners built in Charleston. Don't remember which. So quality problems are not invented by a single disgruntled employee. There have been news articles before https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamline... says that Qatar Airways "stopped" accepting planes fron Charleston. Not sure whether that means indefinitely or until the planes in question are reworked.

In normal markets competition would make sure that a company like Boeing gets enough pressure or eventually fails. Now they are too big to fail however they misbehave. And there is little doubt that they do badly. The merger with McDowell Douglas should never have been approved, even less the newest acqusitation of Embraer. Case AT&T showed what to do if competition does no longer work.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#17

Post by simion314 »

mikekchar wrote: post #8
jMyles wrote: post #2

Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…

>> [...] The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time. > [...] I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox guarding this particular hen-house. I can imagine situations where I would not agree, to be honest. If a manager says, "There is a bug in this system here" and I say, "I'm investigating that problem and wi…

It depends, say if your investigation would find bugs that would cause you to be fired and fined then why should we trust you to investigate yourself? I think this is what is happening herewith Boeing, they are trying hard to cover the issues or if they can't hide them to reclassify them as not severe or patch them with some bad hack.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#18

Post by chopin »

briandear wrote: post #13
riffraff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me the FAA comes out of this looking terrible, even if the accusations are not grounded it seems absurd that no actions were taken to verify such a notice coming from a QA engineer in the company itself. I wonder if other regulatory bodies around the world could/would/should have done something.

How do we know the FAA hasn’t taken no notice? Does the whistleblower present any evidence? How about the air carriers? Do they fail to test their systems during their frequent inspections? One requirement of an air carrier certificate is that they have to check this stuff and sign off on it.

What I know from how an oxygen generator works, you cannot reliably test those destruction free. So you would have to take some out and trigger them. I would be reluctant to believe that this is the procedure.
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