Boeing says workers skipped an important test on 787s yet signed off on it as complete

[thewayne]

*sigh*

The test on the Dreamliner was to "confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes". A Boeing employee witnessed some shenanigans, apparently saw the inspections not being performed or being done in a half-assed fashion and being logged as complete, and reported it to his supervisor. His supervisor reported it to executive leadership, and executive leadership reported it to the FAA who are investigating.

Boeing says that this will not affect the safety of planes in service, which I find a little dubious - seems to me that every plane in service will need an inspection. They also say that it will affect "customers and employees "because the test now needs to be conducted out of sequence on airplanes in the build process" i.e. they have to go back and redo those inspections, probably with additional supervision to make sure they're done properly and logged, which is going to disrupt production and slow down delivery for a little while.

Once again, corporate culture of 'gotta get them planes out the door to meet deliverables and quarterly profit expectations!' and not enforcing safety standards rears its ugly head.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/boeing-says-workers-skipped-required-tests-on-787-but-recorded-work-as-completed/

Comments

[moonhare]

A tale as old as time…

I’m so glad to be out of the QA field.

[warriorsavant]

So, you're insisting that the management is responsible for what their company makes and does! You're such a radical.

[kaishin108]

And moving on to space travel. OMG
They sound like a horrible company these days.

[thewayne]

Yeah, that's pretty much my feelings.

[disneydream06]

UGH... Really just makes you wanna go out and jump on a plane.
NOT...
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

Oh, heads will roll if they can figure out who was responsible and pin it on specific people. There will also hopefully be some amount of "someone encouraged this culture, therefore the supervisors will also take a punishment for not instilling a proper safety ethic" as well. It is better that this is at least, self-reported and someone blowing a whistle on safety concerns, rather than it being discovered by wings falling off mid-flight.