FAA's 'cozy' relationship with Boeing at issue again after Alaska Air blowout

By Patrick Malone / The Seattle Times

Following the crashes of two 737 MAX jets that left more than 300 people dead and Boeing’s reputation for safety in tatters, Congress held probing hearings that unmasked limp and malleable federal oversight of how American planes are built.

While the flying public enjoyed the safest decade on record until the crashes five years ago, Boeing capitalized by persistently convincing the Federal Aviation Administration to narrow its scrutiny of the company’s factory floor, former employees of the company and its chief regulator told The Seattle Times. With each passing year, the FAA ceded a little more of its authority by deputizing manufacturers like Boeing to police the quality of their own work.

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FAA’s “customer”

To find the origins of Boeing’s manufacturing troubles requires some history. Multiple former Boeing and FAA employees point to the McDonnell Douglas merger with Boeing in 1997 as the start of the current troubles.

Almost immediately, McDonnell Douglas’s profit-driven ethos began to push safety aside, according to Jacobsen. He said that trajectory snowballed in the years following the merger. That’s supported by the congressional report from the 2020 hearings; it showed that pressure exerted on manufacturing workers by Boeing managers led to mistakes and stoked reluctance to acknowledge or fix them.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/faas-cozy-relationship-with-boeing-at-issue-again-after-alaska-air-blowout/