As Boeing looks to buy a key 737 supplier, a whistleblower says the problems run deep
LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
Boeing is trying to rebuild its battered reputation after, most recently, a mid-air blowout of a door plug on a 737 Max. The troubled plane maker is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, a key fuselage supplier in Wichita, Kan. But as NPR's Joel Rose reports, one former employee warns that problems at Spirit run deep.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: For most of his career at Spirit AeroSystems, Santiago Paredes worked at the end of the line. It was his job to catch production errors before the fuselage left the factory in Wichita, and Paredes caught a lot of them.
SANTIAGO PAREDES: Here we got a big dent on the skin.
ROSE: Paredes still has pictures on his phone of some of the problems he flagged during his dozen years as a quality inspector at Spirit.
PAREDES: It's poor quality of work just plain and simple, you know?
ROSE: Paredes says he brought his concerns to his managers repeatedly, but they were more worried about getting fuselages out of the factory faster to keep up with Boeing's backlog. It got to the point, Paredes says, that a manager ordered him in writing to essentially undercount the number of mistakes.
PAREDES: They wanted me to basically falsify the documentation on the amount of defects that were being found.
ROSE: Paredes was demoted - he says, in retaliation for complaining. He did get his old job back, but finally quit Spirit two years ago and went public with his concerns in a shareholder lawsuit alleging, quote, "excessive" defects in the factory. Spirit denies that and is fighting the case in court. None of this got much attention until January when a door plug panel blew off a 737 Max jet in mid-air.
Were you surprised when the door plug blew out?
PAREDES: No, because I've said it before. I was like, it's just a matter of time before something escaped.
ROSE: The door plug blowout brought a whole new level of scrutiny to Boeing and Spirit. Federal investigators believe that four key bolts were missing when the plane left Boeing's factory. But the door plug had to be reopened in the first place so that workers could repair damaged rivets that came out of Wichita. Since then, the two companies have scrambled to improve their manufacturing quality and rebuild the trust of federal regulators and the flying public. As part of that effort, Boeing is in talks to buy Spirit. Here's Boeing Chief Financial Officer Brian West, speaking at an investor conference in March.
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BRIAN WEST: We believe and Spirit believes that reintegrating these two companies is what's best for safety...
ROSE: This is a dramatic reversal for Boeing. Nearly 20 years ago, the company sold its fuselage factory in Wichita, which then became part of Spirit. Now West says Boeing might have taken outsourcing too far, and it wants that factory back.
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WEST: It's really about focus, and running that business as a factory and stay focused on safety, on quality, and stability.
ROSE: Spirit has made changes, too. The company pushed out its CEO last fall after a series of expensive and embarrassing quality lapses and brought in Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive. Shanahan says the two companies have made big shifts in how they inspect fuselages and where they do any repair work that's necessary.
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PATRICK SHANAHAN: In the short term, we've seen about a 15% improvement in quality.
ROSE: But not everyone is convinced the problems at Spirit will be that easy to fix.
PAREDES: They say the correct things like they've always said. But I know how they really are.
ROSE: Santiago Paredes, the whistleblower, is skeptical. Paredes says the top leadership at Spirit may have changed, but he says many of the managers he clashed with are still there.
PAREDES: They thought I was trying to make them look bad when I wasn't. I was just trying to push a quality product out.
ROSE: Until those managers are gone, Paredes thinks the culture at Spirit won't change. Quality inspectors will be intimidated, and it's just a matter of time, Paredes says, until the next in-flight accident.
Joel Rose, NPR News, Wichita, Kan.
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