3-hour meeting ends with FAA saying Boeing can’t increase Max plane production until quality is fixed

By Gregory Wallace, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Boeing executives presented sweeping changes to the company’s production process and safety systems in a three-hour meeting with the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday. The plan is meant to reassure the public, airline customers and regulators that the troubled company’s planes are safe to fly.

“This is a guide for a new way for Boeing to do business,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said after the meeting. He said he expected the company to produce “systemic change.”

Going forward, Boeing and FAA leaders said they will meet weekly on progress implementing the plan and the FAA will conduct monthly reviews.

The plan includes several components to improve employee training, clarify instructions for assembly line employees, prevent suppliers from shipping defective components to Boeing and go through additional FAA audits, the agency said.

The FAA had ordered outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and his aides to develop the roadmap after two reviews in February found serious issues at the planemaker.

The meeting included Calhoun and other leaders at the company, the FAA said. Whitaker said the meeting included an “extensive PowerPoint presentation that broke the plan into components.”

Whitaker said he expects the company to build “robust” safety and quality management plans. He said the FAA will not allow Boeing to increase the number of planes coming off of its Max assembly line each month until it is satisfied on production quality.

“I don’t think it will happen in the next few months,” Whitaker said.

He said Boeing has not asked the FAA to release it from the limits. “We have not even had preliminary discussions on that point,” he said. And Boeing’s CFO was at an industry conference last week and signaled the company is nowhere close to being ready for increases.

Whitaker said the FAA has changed the way it monitors work on the Boeing assembly line. “We’ve changed that model,” he said, from paperwork audits to inspectors on the assembly line.

Whitaker said the FAA and Boeing will have “constant engagement,” ranging from FAA inspectors on Boeing’s factory floor daily to weekly senior meetings and quarter meetings between the CEO and FAA administrator.

Work at Boeing has begun on its quality improvement plan, which includes hundreds of hours of new employee training and more time for managers to spend supervising production line work.

The improvements include 7,500 new tools and equipment, 400 improved work instructions, and 300 hours of employee training material, the company said.

Boeing says it is increasing employee coaching and eliminated some responsibilities so that managers can spend more time supervising employees on the factory floor.

“Many of these actions are underway and our team is committed to executing on each element of the plan,” Calhoun said.

His deputy who oversees the commercial airplane program, Stephanie Pope, urged employees in a company email today to “continue to Speak Up” on safety issues. That company has said an earlier request for feedback drove a five-fold increase in reports, and some of those are reflected in the new plan.

“We will succeed as a team and execute with safety, quality, and compliance in everything we do,” wrote Pope, the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Turbulent year for Boeing

Boeing has seen a string of bad news this year, from a mid-air fuselage blowout in January to probes from regulators to a report faulting Boeing for major quality issues. The new report is meant to show that the company – and Calhoun – can turn around what was once an international hallmark of manufacturing quality.

Boeing’s plan could also shed new light on the findings of FAA inspectors at Boeing’s Renton, Washington, facility that builds the 737 Max, as well as the Wichita, Kansas, plant of key supplier Spirit AeroSystems. The FAA provided the findings to both companies but shielded the report from public view and has so far declined CNN requests for a copy.

Neither the FAA nor Boeing has made public the actual plan. Whitaker said the plan is Boeing’s, and it can decide how to publicize it.

The plan is seen as a crucial step to rebuilding the safety culture and practices of the nation’s single largest exporter.

Boeing has begun implementing changes within its production process that it says will produce safer airplanes. The changes include clearer instructions for the assembly line, training improvements and more tools. The company says it has also ordered each station be completed before a plane moves on the assembly line and directed Spirit to not ship defective fuselages to Boeing’s Renton plant.

Whitaker ordered the plan from Boeing after reviewing the findings of FAA auditors who visited the company’s 737 Max assembly line. The auditors were deployed in response to the January 5 door plug blowout on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, a months-old Max. The National Transportation Safety Board believes Boeing delivered the plane to the airline without critical bolts that hold the door plug in place, and Calhoun admitted to a “quality escape.”

After the blowout, the FAA grounded Max 9s for three weeks and ordered inspections of each door plug.

It was the second grounding since the first 737 Max delivery in 2017. The Max 8 spent 20 months grounded after crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.

The plan may be one of Boeing’s last major milestones under Calhoun, who announced in the wake of the blowout he would join other senior managers in leaving the company this year. The corporate board has a search underway for a new chief executive.

A previous safety culture review – including FAA and outside experts – was broader than the Max assembly line and found a “disconnect between Boeing’s senior management and other members of the organization on safety culture.” The timing could not have been worse for the company: The panel was wrapping up its work around the time of the door plug blowout and it landed on desks at the FAA at the same time as the initial production line audit results.

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