After the door plug of an Alaskan Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max-9 blew out in flight earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration says it will perform a complete audit of the Max-9’s entire production line.
In this episode from 2020, we hear from a Boeing engineer and an aviation analyst about what’s at the root of the safety issues with the 737 Max, troubling the plane then and now.
Guests
Lori Aratani, transportation reporter for the Washington Post covering airports and airlines. ()
Cynthia Cole, a test and systems engineer at Boeing for 32 years, until she retired in 2010. Former president of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA).
Leon Grunberg, sociology and anthropology professor emeritus at the University of Puget Sound. Co-author of “Emerging from Turbulence: Boeing and Stories of the American Workplace Today” and “Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers.”
Interview Highlights
When you were working on a system or project — and something got flagged for a bug, or a design flaw — how did Boeing deal with it? What was the process like?
Cynthia Cole: “I had to sign off on paperwork before we flew. And if I wasn’t ready, I didn’t sign off — and then we had to fix those problems. Most of the time we were so proactive. I mean, my job, I was on call 24 hours a day. I was the mission data expert. And I’d get calls at midnight. I just always left my phone on. And I would get calls at midnight if they were having a problem at shift change, and they needed some expertise. And I mean, we just worked whenever we needed to. And I can tell you, even though we worked wild and crazy hours … we just did it. We didn’t have any attitude about it, because the most important thing was having a safe aircraft. And people worked together, and there would be disagreements. Yet, we would hash it out. You know, there was always this atmosphere of, ‘Let’s get it to work, let’s figure out what’s wrong. Let’s…
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