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Former senior Boeing Co. managers and engineers have issued a stunning warning to flyers to avoid the airline giant’s troubled 737 Max 9 planes as they take to the skies again.
“I would never fly in a Max plane,” Ed Pearson, a former Boeing senior manager, said candidly. told the Los Angeles Times A model recently witnessed a door plug blow off mid-air on an Alaska Airlines flight.
“I’ve worked in factories where airplanes are manufactured, and I’ve seen employees under pressure to get airplanes out the door quickly.”
Joe Jacobsen, a former Boeing engineer who also worked at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), issued a similar warning, saying it was “premature” for airlines, including Alaska, to resume flying jets.
“I tell my family to stay away from Max,” Jacobsen told the Los Angeles Times, claiming that his time with the company taught him that profits were prioritized over quality control.
“I’ll tell everyone the truth.”
A Boeing Co. jet was temporarily grounded for federal inspection earlier this month after an Alaska Airlines jet partially exploded mid-flight, blowing off a young passenger’s shirt and forcing an emergency landing.
President and CEO David Calhoun acknowledged a few days later that a “high-quality escape” had occurred and told employees that “this event will never happen again.”
On Wednesday, he acknowledged in an email to employees that the “scrutiny” resulting from the incident “revealed that there is more work to do” to “strengthen our safety and quality processes.”
Mr Pearson said he had been “trying to shut down the company” even before 2018, when a Lion Air jetliner crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board.
Pearson Aviation Safety Foundation in September published research It found that airlines had filed more than 1,300 reports with the FAA about safety issues with Boeing’s Max 8 and Max 9 aircraft.
Meanwhile, Jacobsen said aircraft manufacturers have long “sought to maximize profits” and “go with the lowest bidder.”
“For the last 20 years, they’ve been moving in the direction of financial engineering rather than technical engineering,” Jacobsen said, arguing that the company is essentially playing a game of whack-a-mole where you only solve the problem once. Problems began to emerge.
The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to release preliminary findings on the Alaska Airlines near-accident in the coming days.
The FAA has already allowed airlines to resume flying Boeing Max planes under its own “exhaustive rules.” [and] Enhanced review. ”
“To be clear, this is not a return to business as usual for Boeing,” said Administrator Mike Whitaker. said in a statement last week.
“The quality assurance issues we’ve seen are unacceptable. That’s why we have more workers on site and are closely scrutinizing and monitoring our production and manufacturing activities.”
Alaska Airlines officials said they will operate the Max 9s “only after rigorous testing is completed and each aircraft is deemed flyable in accordance with FAA requirements.”
About half of those tests were completed by the end of last Monday, aviation officials said, and the first Max 9 departed from Seattle, Washington, on Friday and landed in San Diego, California. About 1 hour late.
United Airlines also began operating Max 9 flights from Newark, New Jersey, to Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday morning.
But Jacobsen, a former FAA engineer, said the agency’s decision to allow the plane to fly again was “premature,” and he and other safety advocates say the Max 8 and the It cited numerous safety issues with both Max 9 aircraft. Year.
In fact, the FAA last year warned pilots to limit the use of anti-icing systems to five minutes after finding engines with “serious defects that could lead to flying debris and loss of control of the aircraft.” ”
Boeing had asked the FAA for a technical exemption to remove the Max 7 from the line that would require modifications to the anti-icing system, but withdrew the petition on Monday.
The company is scheduled to announce fourth-quarter results on a conference call with investors on Wednesday. The company’s stock price has fallen about 19% since the January 5th aerial eruption.
Boeing CEO Calhoun said in an email to employees Wednesday that he was “disappointed” by the “tough and direct dialogue with our customers, regulators and lawmakers.” .
“While we have taken significant steps in recent years to strengthen our safety and quality processes, this incident makes it clear that we still have much work to do. ” he admitted.
“We will be better off with more oversight from ourselves, regulators and others,” he told staff.
“We have serious challenges ahead of us, and I know this team is up to the task.”
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