Following are edited excerpts from
a current report in The Wall Street Journal:Push to improve its safety culture falling short, according to a panel tasked with reviewing the plane maker’s practices.The panel found a disconnect between Boeing’s senior management and others at the company over safety matters and insufficient safeguards to prevent retaliation against employees who flag safety issues, according to a report by the panel issued Monday.
The January blowout of a door plug on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 occurred as the panel was finishing its report. The report didn’t address that or other specific issues that arose but said: “These quality issues amplified the expert panel’s concerns that the safety-related messages or behaviors are not being implemented across the entire Boeing population.”
The panel, composed of government and industry experts in aviation, issued 53 recommendations. They include expanding systems for factory workers to voluntarily report safety problems. The panel also recommended creating an investigation procedure to protect employees against retaliation.
The Boeing safety review was mandated by a law enacted after the two 737 MAXs crashed in 2018 and 2019 and took 346 lives. Accident investigators blamed the MAX crashes largely on a faulty flight-control system that pilots initially didn’t know about and weren’t specifically trained to counteract during in-flight emergencies.
The report faulted Boeing as falling short with its attention to so-called human factors in engineering, which focus on how pilots work with the planes they are flying. The report blamed various corporate decisions for the waning influence of the company’s human-factors specialists.
Boeing is also failing to include adequate pilot input in aircraft design or other high-level decisions, according to the panel.
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