The FAA gave the company 90 days to produce a turnaround plan after one of its jetliners suffered a blowout of a side panel in the cabin during a flight in January.told federal regulators Thursday how it plans to fix the safety and quality problems that have plagued its aircraft-manufacturing work in recent years.“This is a guide for a new way for Boeing to do business,” Whitaker said after he met with Boeing CEO David Calhoun and other senior company leaders Thursday.
The FAA limited Boeing production of the 737 Max, its best-selling plane, after the close call involving the Alaska Airlines jetliner. Whitaker said the cap will remain in place until his agency is satisfied Boeing is making progress. Boeing’s recent problems could expose it to criminal prosecution related to the deadly crashes of two Max jetliners in 2018 and 2019. The Justice Department said two weeks ago that Boeing violated terms of a that allowed it to avoid prosecution for fraud. The charge was based on the company allegedly deceiving regulators about a flight-control system that was implicated in the crashes.
The FAA has put more inspectors inside Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems plants and created more inspection points since the Alaska Airlines blowout, according to Whitaker. He acknowledged it’s not certain whether more inspectors would have prevented the blowout but said more eyes would have improved the chances of catching mistakes.