Congress must force Boeing to be better

Boeing is in the region’s collective DNA.

Even though the company decamped for Chicago in 2001 and is now headquartered in a corporate suburb of Washington, D.C., Boeing still has a special place in our consciousness that goes beyond its statewide workforce of about 60,000.

Call it pride. Pride that earlier generations put Seattle (more specifically, Renton and Everett) on the map by dint of their engineering prowess and manufacturing excellence. Pride that, in many places in the world, the Puget Sound area is still synonymous with pioneering aerospace.

But that swell has soured. A piece of fuselage blew off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet on Jan. 5, terrifying passengers and forcing the aircraft to land. It was the latest in a seemingly never-ending string of problems.

Once again, Boeing let this community down, let its workers down, let its airline customers down. The impact on the flying public is even more profound. Investigators may determine a few missing bolts transformed the Boeing 737 MAX 9 from a technological marvel into a potential death trap.

There are many hands on the controls of this company’s flight path: Boeing’s corporate leaders, its board of directors, Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration.

But given the history and stakes, it will take government regulators — and more importantly their congressional overseers — to hammer Boeing into shape, to make it what it ought to be.

It is unlikely yet another change in Boeing leadership could reform practices, rebuild corporate culture and restore confidence. The invisible hand of the free market pushed Boeing to seek ever-greater profit margins, quality be damned. That terrible dynamic won’t change with another C-suite restructuring.

After all, it was only about five years ago that Boeing executives touted a plan to cut about 900 quality inspectors. It didn’t happen, but the fact the idea was ever floated seems incredible given the latest mishaps.

The difficulty in enforcing accountability is even more troubling considering Boeing isn’t really Boeing. It’s a collection of outsourced suppliers.

Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems builds the fuselage for Boeing’s 737 MAX and substantial sections of aircraft bodies in other Boeing models.

Last October, Spirit, beset by parts defects, replaced its fired CEO with a former Boeing senior vice president. The move didn’t seem to have the desired effect on quality.

After the Jan. 5 calamity, the FAA grounded 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes and is now “investigating Boeing’s manufacturing practices and production lines, including those involving subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems, bolstering its oversight of Boeing, and examining potential system change,” according to a Jan. 17 update.

Kudos go to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., for her diligence. She sent a letter to the FAA on Jan. 11 demanding more information about the agency’s oversight of Boeing, asking to see the last 24 months of notices of FAA quality-systems audits related to Boeing and Spirit.

Last January — about a year before Flight 1282 — Cantwell asked the FAA to initiate a new audit of Boeing’s production systems. The agency responded that no such audit was needed.

In her Jan. 11 letter to the FAA, Cantwell noted: “In short, it appears that FAA’s oversight processes have not been effective in ensuring that Boeing produces airplanes that are in condition for safe operation, as required by law and by FAA regulations.”

Let’s consider that notion again: According to the chair of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, the federal agency in charge of aviation safety cannot guarantee that Boeing produces airplanes that are safe to fly.

Boeing’s glory days are long past. It is too big to fail but too dysfunctional and profit-driven to stop cutting corners on its own.

It will take nothing less than the collective will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives in Congress to push Boeing to improve — meaningfully and permanently.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this editorial misstated the model of the plane involved in the Jan. 5 incident.