On the heels of the recent mid-air door cover blowout involving a Boeing 737-Max Airliner belonging to Alaska Air, now another issue has cropped up.
Boeing identified “mis-drilled” holes in fuselage of planes being built.
According to sources, including CNN Business, another batch of 50 planes being built are having to be reworked due to a drilling issue.
The company is already behind in delivering the high-demand 737 aircraft, and now 50 planes will have to have a fix. Two holes in the fuselage area were found to not be drilled to Boeing specifics, meaning a delay as they are fixed.
Boeing has been increasingly relying on outside vendors who prepare certain parts of their planes, including cockpits and fuselage sections. In this case, Spirit Aerosystems confirmed it had mis-drilled the holes. Corrections will be made, and officials these are not engineering flight-risk errors. However, Boeing issued statements saying exact specifications must be followed on every part of every airplane they build.
According to CNN Business:
“The news about the mis-drilled holes is just the latest blow to Boeing’s reputation, which has been battered repeatedly over the last five years, most recently by a terrifying accident aboard a 737 Max 9 flight on January 5. And in the wake of that incident, the FAA now says it will be changing the way it oversees Boeing’s manufacturing processes.”
This will further delay orders for the 737-Max aircraft ordered by United, Southwest and Alaska Airlines.
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