'Nobody wants Boeing to fail;' aviation safety expert says company must clean up its act

(TND) — Boeing is going through a tough period, and one aviation safety expert said the company must do everything in its power to repair its damaged reputation.

“Nobody wants Boeing to fail, because (the) ramifications are too big,” said Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, a professor of aviation and aerospace sciences at the University of North Dakota.

The aerospace industry is dominated by Boeing and Airbus, and Boeing’s production is crucial to meet growing demand for air travel, he said.

“They only want them to clean up their act,” Adjekum said.

A red-hot spotlight of scrutiny has been trained on Boeing since a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner Jan. 5 above Oregon. The pilots were able to safely land the plane that had a hole in its side.

Past Tragedies

This week also marked the fifth anniversary of the Boeing Max aircraft crash operated by Ethiopian Airlines that left 157 people dead.

That deadly crash occurred less than five months after a Boeing Max aircraft crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people.

Thankfully, no one lost their life earlier this year when the door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines flight.

But Adjekum said it raises questions as to why a big company like Boeing hadn’t seemed to learn the hard lessons from its past.

“And that's where the safety culture comes in,” Adjekum said.

Boeing’s 737 Max 9 jetliners first took flight in April 2017 and were certified by the Federal Aviation Administration for passenger service about a year later, according to The Seattle Times.

The first of the two deadly crashes involving another model of the Boeing Max planes occurred just months later. And the Max planes were grounded for over a year and a half.

Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion, including a $244 million fine, to settle an investigation into the crashes of the flights operated by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, according to The Associated Press.

Current Investigations

For months, the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board have been probing the Jan. 5 incident involving the Boeing plane operated by Alaska Airlines.

The Department of Justice has now reportedly also launched an investigation of the Jan. 5 incident, focused on whether Boeing complied with the settlement stemming from the deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Boeing has been given 90 days to outline its action plan in response to the FAA’s recently concluded audit that Adjekum said showed “a lot of lapses in internal controls (and) production quality control issues.”

The FAA reportedly examined 89 aspects of production at Boeing's plant in Renton, Washington, and 33 failed.

The FAA said Boeing’s action plan must also address the findings from an expert review panel report that examined Boeing’s safety culture.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, meanwhile, said Boeing has been unable to provide requested documentation as to who previously worked on the panel that blew off the Alaska Airlines jetliner.

“Boeing has informed us that they are unable to find the records documenting this work. A verbal request was made by our investigators for security camera footage to help obtain this information; however, they were informed the footage was overwritten. The absence of those records will complicate the NTSB’s investigation moving forward,” Homendy wrote this week in a letter to lawmakers.

Adjekum said proper documentation is critical to an effective safety management system.

Boeing is likely to be cooperative with federal regulators, he said.

But, he said, “We have yet to see how accountable Boeing will be to itself, and also how the FAA is holding them accountable.”

Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said in an employee memo in late January, shortly after the grounded Max 9 fleet returned to the skies, that, “This increased scrutiny ... will make us better.”

Calhoun said they had “much to prove to earn our stakeholders’ confidence. There is no message or slogan to do that. It will take transparency and demonstrated action – that starts with each of us along with a commitment to listening to each other and speaking up.”