Boeing 737 Max Was Plagued With Production Problems, Whistleblower Says

Описание: Reported today on The Seattle Times

For the full article visit: https://www.seattletimes.com/business...

Boeing 737 Max Was Plagued With Production Problems, Whistleblower Says

Four months before the first deadly crash of Boeing's 737 Max, a senior manager approached an executive at the company with concerns that the plane was riddled with production problems and potentially unsafe. That manager, Ed Pierson, plans to tell his story to Congress on Wednesday.

Employees at the Renton, Washington, factory where the Max is produced were overworked, exhausted and making mistakes, Pierson said in an interview. A cascade of damaged parts, missing tools and incomplete instructions was preventing planes from being built on time. Executives were pressuring workers to complete planes despite staff shortages and a chaotic factory floor.

"Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off," Pierson said in an email to the head of the 737 program in June 2018 that was reviewed by The New York Times. "And for the first time in my life, I'm sorry to say that I'm hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane."

Pierson, who is scheduled to testify at a House Transportation Committee hearing on the two 737 Max crashes, called on Boeing to shut down the Max production line last year. But the company kept producing planes and did not make major changes in response to his complaints. During the time when Pierson said the Renton facility was in disarray, it built the two planes that crashed and killed a total of 346 people.

Pierson did not raise concerns about the new automated system, known as MCAS, which caused pilots on both doomed flights to lose control. He focused on the potential safety hazards resulting from production problems.

Pierson retired in August 2018, partly because he was uncomfortable with the conditions in the 737 factory. After the first Max crash in