First, Boeing puts defense-level components into their aircraft, then, it seems they can’t put the right effort into building the money-makers (the 737 is a cash cow):
Jeannine Prewitt knew there was a problem when the holes wouldn’t line up.
On a Boeing Co. assembly line in Kansas in 2000, Prewitt saw workers drilling extra holes in the long aluminum ribs that make up the skeleton of a jetliner’s fuselage. That was the only way the workers could attach the pieces, because some of their pre-drilled holes didn’t match those on the airframe.
Prewitt was a parts buyer, the third generation of her family to work at the sprawling Boeing factory on the outskirts of Wichita. She believed that pieces going into one of the world’s most advanced and popular airliners, the Boeing 737, should fit like a glove.
And we call accusations of poor American craftsmanship a baseless perception?
The assembly workers Prewitt observed were not the only ones who noted problems with parts from a key Boeing supplier, AHF Ducommun of Los Angeles. Other workers told her that many pieces had to be shoved or hammered into place. And documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that quality managers reported numerous problems at Ducommun in memos recorded in Boeing’s system for monitoring its suppliers.
I hope someone at Boeing kicks some serious QC ass over at AHF Ducommun, or we won’t have a commercial aircraft industry soon. How many such reports do airlines (especially foreign) need to see before they exclusively buy Airbus?
