I commend astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. At the moment, considering the company’s recent string of catastrophes—and catastrophic news coverage—I would be nervous taxiing from the jetway to the takeoff line on any Boeing aircraft. But these two intrepid souls climbed into a Boeing product and rode it into space. That took guts, folks, and better you than me.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the company’s travails continue. From Fox13 in Seattle:

Boeing agreed in 2021 to pay more than $2 billion, mostly to airlines, to avoid prosecution on a fraud charge. It appeared the case would be dismissed permanently, but the Alaska Airlines door plug blow-out in January over Oregon led to new investigations. Just two weeks ago, the Department of Justice determined that Boeing violated the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, that let the company avoid prosecution. An attorney for one of the victims’ families says the purpose of the meeting was to get feedback from those families on whether to move forward with a fresh prosecution. “DOJ has determined that Boeing violated the conditions of the deferred prosecution agreement. The question remains, ‘What is DOJ going to do about it?’ ” said Mark Lindquist with Mark Lindquist Law, Aviation and Personal Injury. “They can extend the original deferred prosecution agreement, they can make another plea agreement with Boeing, or they can proceed forward with an enhanced prosecution.”

I don’t know about the rest of Boeing’s parts, or whether they’ve stopped functioning at inappropriate times, but it takes some high-quality brass balls to blow off the provisions of a $2 billion deferred prosecution deal.

Lindquist said the DOJ indicated that there are some obstacles to prosecution. Those include a statute of limitations with the crashes happening more than five years ago. Also, potential problems with providing proof in the case. He cited the example of a Boeing employee that was acquitted by a jury in that case. “DOJ looks at the acquittal of Mark Forkner as an example of the risk involved in a trial. Personally, I view Mr. Forkner differently than a top-ranked executive. Jurors acquitted Forkner I think, because he looked like a scapegoat,” he said. Lindquist says despite obstacles, the victims’ families feel it’s time to bring down the hammer. “There was a general sense from the victims’ families that DOJ is not prosecuting this case vigorously enough,” said Lindquist.

In addition, the deepening legal morass seems to have had an adverse effect on the company’s workforce. The Seattle Times, which has owned this story from the jump, working with Der Spiegel in Germany, gives us the tale of one of the primary Boeing whistleblowers who has pretty much run out of steam.

For a decade, in complaints filed internally at Boeing as well as with the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress, Bickeböller documented significant shortfalls in Boeing’s quality control management at suppliers that build major sections of the 787 Dreamliner. The FAA substantiated his claims in complaints in 2014 and 2021 and required Boeing to take corrective action. His latest complaint, submitted in January, alleges Boeing has not properly implemented the fixes it committed to after those earlier complaints. Bickeböller doesn’t point to a single safety issue but rather to a systemically flawed oversight process. He asserts that Boeing lacks control of the manufacturing processes at its suppliers to the extent that it cannot ensure—as safety regulations require—that every plane delivered meets design specifications.
Without systemic checks and oversight, mechanics under stress may take shortcuts to meet production rates, risking quality lapses, Giemulla said. He added that the Alaska Airlines incident in January illustrates this point. Though no one died in that midair blowout of a fuselage panel aboard a 737 MAX 9, the near miss—coming after repeated lapses in quality and safety practices within Boeing’s manufacturing system—stirred a public backlash and intense FAA scrutiny. Giemulla said that Bickeböller, in making his claims more public at this moment of crisis at Boeing, wants to convey “there is a structural problem.”

After thirty-seven years with the company, Bickeböller is leaving. His departure is a high-profile indication of a company, well, coming apart at the seams. From The Guardian:

Its site at Everett, Washington—hailed as the world’s biggest manufacturing building—is at the heart of Boeing’s operation, responsible for building planes like the 747 and 767, and fixing the 787 Dreamliner. One mechanic at the complex, who has worked for Boeing for more than three decades, has claimed it is “full of” faulty 787 jets that need fixing. Many of these jets are flown from Boeing’s site in South Carolina, where the company shifted final assembly of the 787 in 2021 in what was characterized as a cost-cutting measure. “There is no way in God’s green earth I would want to be a pilot in South Carolina flying those from South Carolina to here,” the mechanic, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian. “Because when they get in here, we’re stripping them apart.”

The “cost cutting” in question has to do with moving the assembly facility from Washington to South Carolina, which is a right-to-work state. One of the characteristics of a right-to-work state is that it puts employees—like, say, mechanics—under the kind of stress to take the “shortcuts” that so concerned Bickeböller. Union busting—or, more properly, union dodging—has consequences.

The FAA launched another investigation this month, into production of the 787 Dreamliner, scrutinizing whether Boeing workers in South Carolina completed required inspections on the jet, and whether they “falsified aircraft records,” after Boeing informed the watchdog that it “may not have completed” all checks. Sam Salehpour, an engineer at Boeing, testified in front of Congress in April that the 787 was riddled with quality defects and called for all 787s to be grounded for inspection. Boeing denied his allegations and said it was “fully confident in the safety and durability” of the plane. The mechanic who spoke to the Guardian described how “giant failures” in Boeing’s 787 production line had put enormous pressure on the company as it scrambles to reassure regulators, airlines and passengers. “Right now, we’re in panic mode in Everett,” they said, because Boeing managers “finally figured out that they got more people that have no idea what’s going on than people that do.”

In conclusion, I would like to state for the record that before I let any Boeing aircraft fly me into space, it’ll need to fly me to Providence a few times without falling apart.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.