Posted on 06/30/2024 7:57:50 PM PDT by lasereye
Another Boeing whistleblower has come forward, saying that he witnessed 787 Dreamliner planes being built in a manner that could lead to a "catastrophe down the line."
Richard Cuevas was a Strom airplane mechanic who used to work as a contractor for Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems.
In a complaint filed by his lawyers to the FAA, Cuevas said Spirit AeroSystems workers were drilling holes into the fasteners of the plane's forward pressure bulkhead, which were bigger than what Boeing had specified.
In March, a few months after he reported his findings to Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, he was fired from his job, the complaint said.
A sprawling 204-page report by the Senate subcommittee investigating Boeing's safety and quality practices, released on June 17, cited accounts from numerous other whistleblowers.
These include Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance inspector for Boeing, who alleged that the company lost track of hundreds of faulty 737 parts and ordered staff to conceal improperly stored plane parts so that FAA inspectors would not see them.
Merle Meyers, a former Boeing quality manager, said that Boeing's manufacturing team regularly tried to retrieve bad parts from a "reclamation" area even after they were thrown out.
John Barnett, a Boeing manager turned whistleblower, said that safety procedures were ignored in the interest of speed and efficiency in building the planes.
Just days before he was supposed to give a deposition, Barnett was found dead from a"self-inflicted gunshot wound," the Charleston County coroner's office told BI's Matthew Loh.
Boeing planes have been plagued by technical issues in recent months.
Most prominently, in January, a door plug came off a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines jet at 16,000 feet.
It was the second crisis regarding Boeing's Max planes after two Max 8 models crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The two planes that went down in Ethiopia and Indonesia had four Muslim pilots.
In the rest of the world, the 737 MAX had 60,000 flights without even one incident report about the software that allegedly crashed the two Muslim planes.
Excuse me? Is this a hate America article?
Yes, you do.
Many if not most bolts and nuts for aircraft are drilled for safety-wiring. Drilling the hole(s) too big will weaken the fastener. That said, I generally bought my aircraft fasteners pre-drilled by the maker. Wondering why Boeing was not doing that.
Fine, fine, they can add some JB weld to the washers as well.
You engineers and your safety factors.
An article on the German owned Business Insider by what sounds like a muslim trashing Boeing.
Why would anyone think 15 Boeing hit pieces a week on this site is hate America?
This global campaign has been worth in the hundreds of billions dollars in cap value reversal between BA and Airbus.
In the meantime, =Airbus has the higher crash frequency per mile flown. Back to are they owned by Blackrock, Vanguard etc...? It would make sense.
"...workers were drilling holes....which were bigger than what Boeing had specified."
There's not an aircraft in the field that doesn't have some of this going on - over-sizing fastener holes is pretty common across the board.
I've spent years working on aircraft in the field and there's not much I haven't seen. This is a non-issue.
Too many steps involved with JB Weld. Just use some good old fashioned Duct Tape.🤪
Why is this a hit piece? Is something in it inaccurate?
What are the other hit pieces? You have the links? Are they inaccurate?
In the meantime, =Airbus has the higher crash frequency per mile flown.
You have a link?
Of course some aviation fasteners have holes for safety wire, cotter pins and other security devices. These are pre drilled at the bolt factory during manufacturing and go through strict QC testing for cracks and defects. The fastener is then typically given a plating or other anti corrosion treatment
While there is an AN standard from back in the 1940s for field drilling safety wire holes in bolts I have not seen it done in practice . Don’t think it’s even possible in today’s litigious product liability world.
Critical high strength fasteners come packaged to prevent even minor surface scratches that could cause fatigue cracks or break the anti corrosion treatment. Drilling holes in them on a Boeing production line is not a thing and it’s pretty difficult to drill a hole in bolt heat treated to 210K + psi
Some fasteners are hollow for weight reduction but the holes are from the factory
There are various rivet and rivbolt type fasteners with holes as well that are upset or cold worked and sometimes shaved.
These are not what the article refers to as far as I can tell.
This is not what the article
“Another formerly great American company apparently taken over by lunatics.”
MBAs
Mediocrities Building Airplanes.
Cut-n-pasted from the article excerpt: "....Cuevas said Spirit AeroSystems workers were drilling holes into the fasteners of the plane's forward pressure bulkhead,....."
I was replying to your post #10.
Building race bikes, I had to drill fasteners myself on occasion. And drain plugs. Tricky business, some of them.
But I did say that when I bought aviation fasteners they always came predrilled, and wondered why Boeing would be doing it on the line. Occurs to me now to ask if the fasteners in question were out-of-spec as-bought, and should have failed incoming inspection.
“Excuse me? Is this a hate America article?”
No kidding, some of us here would rather have airplanes that can fly safely, rather than be infested with DEI.
It’s kind of like saying: “You must hate the military because you oppose them being sent to Ukraine to fight Russians.”
“Please, please tell me you should have ended this with /sarc”
No kidding, sheesh.
All these whistle blowers can keep coming out and exposing what’s going on with some dying for no reason, but nothing is going to really happening until more aircraft or parts fall out of the sky.
How many DEI employees had financial ties to China?
Yeah, been on the watchlist for awhile..
Reminds me of another long term resident troll..
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