> 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 much better in terms of being positioned to blow this particular whistle.
> According to Mr Barnett, 57, the rush to get new aircraft off the production line meant that the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised. The company denies this and insists that "safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing's values".
Surely Boeing must realize how tone-deaf this sounds given the current skepticism being (rightly) cast its way.
> Mr Barnett says his attempts to have the matter looked at further were stonewalled by Boeing managers. In 2017, he complained to the US regulator, the FAA, that no action had been taken to address the problem. The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time.
I tend to lean libertarian on a lot of "regulatory" matters, but no matter your normal view of things, I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox guarding this particular hen-house.
> John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory.
Even if the bag does not inflate, breathe normally as oxygen is flowing. Or not.
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.
Cutting parts by hand isn't necessarily bad. But they should have gone to a design engineer and said "we're hand cutting these parts, and don't think we can get accuracy better than 1/32nd of an inch. Will that compromise the design?"
The engineer will then run a few tests and simulations, green-light the change, a superior will check the maths, and they'll be good to go with making the part by hand.
> But there was worse to come: every part in the production process has to be signed off at each stage of its manufacture on a document called a "shop traveller". This records that each individual stage of manufacture has been carried out in accordance with the type design.
> The Boeing team discovered that Ducommun had apparently falsified these records: it had two sets of "books" - the official one recording that each part had been made by the computerised process and a second set recording the actual, handforming process which had really been used.
> What that meant, in the eyes of the Boeing team, was that every single chord and bear strap manufactured by Ducommun had to be viewed as unlawful.
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.
Yes, I know, but is this the required procedure for this part? It's definitely more expensive than some visual or electrical inspections. That's why I said I'm reluctant that this is the procedure.
Yes and no. There is a BIT for each unit, (now I don't know the exact details, but this is how I understand/remember it) but the pyrotechnic devices is tested by running a low level current through it to see if it has been fired/failed. The actual seal is verified via testing prior to aircraft certification, and checked in production using helium.
>> [...] 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 will get back to you", it would be a bit strange for the manager to call a halt to my investigation so that they could start a new one. Usually the manager would wait until my investigation is finished. If they were still not satisfied, then that's the time to intervene.
In the same way, I would not expect the FAA to intervene on an issue if the manufacturer was already investigating it. They would wait until that investigation was finished. Sure, put a deadline on it, but it's pretty reasonable to say that you don't know where the issue stands because it's currently under review.
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.
> 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.
If the audititors get involved yes yes you do that. Your manager (and their manager and so on) won't even have a say. In fact you might still end up doing the investigation as someone familiar with the system, but the auditors will be involved at every step.
In the meantime, people die, or have the potential to die.
There's nothing preventing the FAA from proceeding with its own investigation, except for Boeing saying, "Nah, don't do that, we got our own thing going on here... btw, how's your bank account? Get that 250k yet?"
Then in this case, people have a higher potential to die while Boeing twiddles its thumbs and bars the FAA from running its own, separate investigation.
> Even if the bag does not inflate, breathe normally as oxygen is flowing. Or not.
The 787 doesn't have any accumulator bags, the big difference with that system is that its electronically pulse controlled oxygen flow rather than a mechanical/chemical constant flow system.
His claim isn't exactly true, the lab he used sent power to all systems at once, this is why he saw a failure of about 25%, in fact the system on the plane actually fires the system in a sequence because the power draw to start all systems at once is just too high. So sit closer to the front of the plane if you want oxygen faster.
Of course I was just riffing on the typical in-flight safety language, but I appreciate learning a bit more about the 787. I guess I never noticed this, but I imagine the safety video doesn't show (or mention) the bags?
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 aircraft assembly line in the state to reduce the leverage of the machinists’ union, which represents Boeing’s work force in the Puget Sound region of Washington State and has used work stoppages to exact concessions from the company in the past. South Carolina is one of the least unionized states in the country.” [1]
And not surprisingly, pro-union “whistleblowers” are all to willing to leverage the fears of the public to advance their agenda.
If oil company workers were to go to the media to suggest that solar panels caused cancer, we’d frame their claim within the context that they have a self-interest rather than a genuine concern. Since John Barnett is retired and depends on a union pension, he has a vested interest in this despite not even working at Boeing for years.
The Aerospace and Machinist Union is extremely powerful. It’s foolish to think they are going to miss an opportunity to make a case than a non-union factory is more dangerous than a union one. Their literal existence depends on advancing that narrative. Even if they are right, their angle makes it hard to give their objections objective credibility.
However, that being said, that doesn’t mean the story is false, but responsible journalism wouldn’t let a “whistleblower” be the key voice in the story.
Those planes go through airworthiness inspections each year and unless some IA is fraudulently signing off on airworthiness requirements (which includes fully testing the oxygen systems,) then there isn’t any actual reason to suspect a system that doesn’t work. If Boeing is fraudulently conducted airworthiness inspections, then that’s something that would ground any airline using those planes — no air carrier is going to risk their carrier certificate by “helping” Boeing by faking airworthiness. Airlines themselves are responsible for maintenance and inspections — they have no incentive to be complicit in helping Boeing cover up defective oxygen systems. Boeing isn’t the one doing airworthiness inspections on airliner operated aircraft. The would mean the end of the airline. Suggesting that oxygen systems is faulty is ridiculous considering how frequently they are tested by the operators. If United found the O2 of the 787 was faulty, they wouldn’t accept the airplane. They would demand Boeing fix the issues or they wouldn’t take delivery. Those airplane sales contracts are extensive and exhaustive. United has no incentive to accept a faulty airplane.
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%.
You are reading that correctly, but as someone who worked on the system over a decade ago, I bet he didn't have it setup exactly like the plane. I bet he tried to fire all the cylinders at once, a 25% failure rate in this configuration actually isn't bad. But on the actual aircraft they don't fire all of the cylinders at once, they are staged front to back because the power draw is too big to fire all the pyrotechnic devices at once.
Reading heavily between the lines now but I would think that this person also had enough (though maybe not as direct) experience to know to stagger the deployment, no?
No. As a quality guy he probably has a lot of experience with the single units, but not the system as a whole. No line inspector would have a reason to test a full ship-set of units off aircraft, so I can't imagine a lab setup to do this test with the proper staging.
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.
I’d contest the airlines would not act as you suggest:
1) they’d believe they can get away with it.
2) it wouldn’t be the end of the airline. Large fine, negotiated down, cost of doing business.
Even if people died, would the fine be that huge? I can’t find numbers for past incidents, but somewhere in my memory I have $2m for wrongful death. 300/4 * 2m = 150m. Is that way off? BA just got fined 230m for a data breach...
> 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 much better in terms of being positioned to blow this particular whistle.
> According to Mr Barnett, 57, the rush to get new aircraft off the production line meant that the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised. The company denies this and insists that "safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing's values".
Surely Boeing must realize how tone-deaf this sounds given the current skepticism being (rightly) cast its way.
> Mr Barnett says his attempts to have the matter looked at further were stonewalled by Boeing managers. In 2017, he complained to the US regulator, the FAA, that no action had been taken to address the problem. The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time.
I tend to lean libertarian on a lot of "regulatory" matters, but no matter your normal view of things, I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox guarding this particular hen-house.
> John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory.
Even if the bag does not inflate, breathe normally as oxygen is flowing. Or not.