Fear of retaliation, lack of communication, disconnection... A harsh report commissioned by US regulators and published this Monday calls into question Boeing's “safety culture” in what represents a new blow for the US commercial aircraft manufacturer .
Boeing has been under close surveillance since the accident earlier this year in which an Alaska Airlines plane lost a panel in mid-flight that covered a hole intended for an emergency door in other configurations of the plane, a 737 Max.
However, the report carried out by a group of experts and published this Monday by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is independent of said event.
“The law did not mandate the group of experts to investigate specific air incidents or accidents, nor to make recommendations on specific air incidents or accidents, which occurred before or during the work of the group of experts,” the report states.
“However, on several occasions during the expert panel's activities, serious quality problems with Boeing products became public.
“These quality issues amplified the expert panel’s concerns that safety-related messages or behaviors are not being applied across Boeing’s entire population,” he adds.
Whether or not there was retrospective bias as a result of those incidents, the report is very harsh.
“The expert panel observed a disconnect between Boeing senior management and other members of the organization on safety culture,” the report says.
Interviewees questioned whether Boeing's safety reporting systems would operate in a way that ensured open communication and the absence of retaliation.
“The expert panel also observed an inadequate and confusing application of the five components of a positive safety culture (information culture, fair culture, flexible culture, learning culture and informed culture),” it indicates.
Boeing's safety management system procedures “are not structured in a way that ensures that all employees understand their role,” the report states.
“Procedures and training are complex and constantly changing, creating confusion among employees, especially between different workplaces and groups of employees,” the document states.
The expert panel also found a lack of knowledge of security-related metrics at all levels of the organization;
Employees had difficulty distinguishing the differences between different measurement methods, their purpose and their results.
Furthermore, although a recent restructuring has improved things, there is still room for pay and leave retaliation for those who raise red flags.
“Interviews with employees revealed distrust in the anonymity of the Speak Up program, which calls into question the effectiveness of this whistleblowing program.
Ultimately, employees prefer to report security problems to their bosses,” the text says.
“The group of experts also detected other problems at Boeing that affect aviation safety, such as the inadequate consideration of human factors in proportion to their importance to aviation safety and the lack of participation of pilots in the design and operation of aircraft,” adds the report, which includes dozens of recommendations to Boeing and the FAA itself to improve safety.
Within six months of the report's publication, Boeing must review the recommendations and develop an action plan to implement them.
Boeing will then have to share that action plan, including the timeline, with the FAA.
“Successful adoption of the recommendations is expected to improve the level of safety provided by Boeing to its workers, operators and the public,” the experts say.
The report comes a day before Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun meets with the head of the FAA, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg.
The executive has issued multiple public apologies since then in an effort to silence criticism from regulators, lawmakers and customers.
“We will carefully review the panel's assessment and learn from its conclusions, as we continue our comprehensive efforts to improve our safety and quality programs,” Boeing said in a statement Monday.
Boeing replaced the head of the 737 Max program last week, the company said in an internal memo.
After a career of almost 18 years with the American company, Ed Clark says goodbye to the company with immediate effect.
The company is taking steps to strengthen the quality of the 737 program, including additional inspections at its factory and at major suppliers and increased oversight by airlines.
It also decided to halt 737 production for a day to refocus its employees on quality.
Additionally, Boeing has appointed an outside expert to conduct an in-depth independent evaluation of the quality management system.
The incident, although without catastrophic consequences, once again put Boeing and its 737 Max model in the eye of the hurricane after its flight permit was withdrawn in 2019 — the American manufacturer even suspended its manufacturing — following two fatal accidents. that cost the lives of more than 300 people in a different variant than the one that the mishap has now suffered.
In October 2018, the flight crashed in the Java Sea, Indonesia.
610 of the low-cost company Lion Air operated by a 737 Max 8;
A few months later, in March 2019, 157 people died on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in the largest air disaster of that year, also involving a 737-8.
The company closed last year with losses of 2,222 million dollars (about 2,050 million euros).
Although these are red numbers, their amount is less than half of the $4,935 million in losses from the previous year.
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