“According to investigators, the door had originally been fitted by Spirit, but had subsequently been removed by Boeing technicians to rectify faulty riveting,” the BBC report said.”
Is this a BOEING or SPIRIT issue?
Both.........................
Boeing sold off their Wichita fuselage factory to Spirit, then pressured Spirit to increase 737 fuselage deliveries to meet increased production demand, and also squeezed Spirit on pricing.
Technically, it was Spirit that ignored the faulty fuselages, but it was Boeing who accepted the fuselages and allowed Spirit to perform rework to repair the defects on the Boeing assembly line.
In fact, it was this rework to repair a Spirit defect that led to the Alaskan Air door plug to be reinstalled without its fastening hardware. Boeing removed the door, Spirit performed remedial work on the door opening area, then Boeing reinstalled the door plug without putting the fasteners back in that lock the plug in place.
Ultimately, had Spirit not shipped a defective fuselage, the door plug would not have been removed by Boeing in the first place.
This all leads back to when Boeing merged with McDonnel Douglass and M-D's "the next quarter is more important than the product" mindset crept into Boeing management. It was former M-D managers who came up with the idea of selling off Wichita to Spirit in order to make Boeing's bottom line look better.