Boeing Whistleblowers Say Planes Must Be Grounded
News: The Federal Aviation Administration Takes Another Look
October 25, 2005
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Second in a series of articles
The first signs that The Boeing Company was installing defective airplane parts made by Ducommun Inc. came back in 1994, when assembly line workers at Boeing’s Wichita plant were caught performing an unapproved installation technique known as “bash to fit.”
“Boeing assembly personnel were witnessed improperly redrilling the holes in the bear strap or forcing the parts into position for fastening to the aircraft,” whistleblowers allege in a federal suit against Boeing and Ducommun. Such practices are considered dangerous, as they may pre-stress a part, making it more likely to break during flight and cause a crash.
In 1998, Boeing asked Jeannine Prewitt, an auditor with the company, to investigate the source of the parts problem. In a series of investigations at Ducommun between 1998 and 2000, she and her colleagues discovered, according to their complaint, a pattern of fraud and misconduct, lack of quality control and serious defects in components that are considered critical to flight safety.
In their lawsuit, the whistleblowers charge that 32 Boeing airplanes sold to the U.S. government, mostly for military use, had dangerously defective parts and should be grounded. Mother Jones’ own investigation shows that at least 1,600 Boeing commercial jets made between 1994 and 2001—many still flying—could have the same problems as those on the military jets.
Since the case was unsealed in May, evidence introduced in federal district court in Wichita lends credibility to the whistleblowers’ case that others at Boeing, besides themselves, were concerned that installation of Ducommun parts could compromise safety. Among the key documents is a memo, called a “supplier evaluation report," written September 29, 1999, by Boeing official Salvatore Cerchio.
In the report, Cerchio describes the problem with the bear straps, which are doublers, or reinforcements, used to support doorways, and says he is suspending Ducommun’s authority to inspect its own products.
“Bear straps shipped into Boeing have been found to have a[n] edge trim undersized condition...which may cause the complete lot to be deemed scrap and cause line stoppage at Boeing...,” Cerchio wrote. He also noted other airplane parts that were bent, missing holes, incorrectly marked and otherwise irregular. Cerchio’s move would have had strong financial repercussions for Boeing, which would then have to send its own field inspectors to examine all Ducommun parts before accepting them. Prewitt and the other whistleblowers, Taylor Smith and James Ailes, say that as it became clear that Ducommun’s quality control problems reflected badly on Boeing and could be costly to fix, supervisors toned down their reports. Words like fraud were changed to “misrepresented processes,” they allege, mention of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) violations were stricken from the record, and the group was told not to mention violations during presentations to other Boeing employees.
The day after he wrote the report, Prewitt alleges, Cerchio told her his supervisor instructed him to delete it and replace it with a watered down memo that maintained Ducommun’s authority to supply other parts to Boeing without inspection. In an affidavit filed by Boeing in August, Cerchio says he was never asked to delete the report, and in fact did not have the ability to do so. He also says that after speaking to a supervisor, they decided only to suspend Ducommun from producing the bear straps, not the other parts-so he wrote a new report to that effect, which was also entered into the record. Cerchio and Boeing say that changes in SER drafts, such as this one, are routine. A few days later, Cerchio wrote another report noting, “At this time Boeing does not know if this supplier is in control of their process due to lack of SPC [quality control] data.”
There’s evidence it was a touchy subject. As Mother Jones reported last week, one recently retired Boeing procurement agent said that his supervisor asked him if he could “lose” a document referring to the Ducommun audits. “I informed Mr. [John] Musil that I felt that ‘losing’ the document would be unethical, and I refused to do so,” said Terry L. Haas. “I turned over to Mr. Musil approximately 11 1/2 to 12 inches of documents pertaining to the Boeing tooling audit and Boeing’s claim for an adjustment from Ducommun…. I made sure that I had several witnesses.” Musil maintains that he never intended to withhold the documents and gave them to the company’s lawyers.
Smith, Prewitt and Ailes say that when their audit team met with Ducommun president Bob Hansen, he defended the company by saying, “AHF [Ducommun] violated all of our procedures and Boeing violated all of its procedures, to get these parts in on time.” Hansen no longer works at Ducommun and was not reachable.
After their second audit, Prewitt was recognized for outstanding performance by Boeing Vice President Jeff Turner, who is now president of Spirit Aerostructures, a division of Onex Corp., of Canada, which bought the Boeing facility in June. According to the complaint, Turner gave Prewitt a special incentive award of 40 shares of Boeing stock, based on her outstanding performance in the audit. “Your knowledge and experience with the material process allowed for identification of over $5 million in inappropriate charges to Boeing Commercial Airplanes during the last three to four years,” Turner said.
The award doesn’t mention the safety issues. In fact, the whistleblowers say that they were told repeatedly by Boeing management that they were not to discuss the issue, especially with the FAA, and they were criticized for continuing to push Boeing to address their safety concerns.
“The situation deteriorated to the point that [plaintiffs] were continually under attack by coworkers and management,” they said, noting that suggestions by their colleagues to inspect aircraft in service with Ducommun parts were ignored.
A letter sent by Boeing employee assistance counselor Martha Webb to a psychologist who was treating Smith backs the whistleblowers’ claims. The note, which is quoted in the complaint, said “Throughout the course of the audit, the team discovered problems and discrepancies, which they dutifully prepared to report. Even at this point, they continued to believe…that information would be beneficial, and therefore welcomed by those to whom they would report.
“According to every member of the team….the overall picture that emerges is one of shooting the messenger.... They have been subjected to incidents of verbal abuse, calling into question their own professionalism, ethics and abilities.” Smith did not return telephone inquiries seeking to authenticate the note.
The three whistleblowers worked for years at Boeing before getting involved with Ducommun. Taylor Smith, who now lives in Savannah, Georgia, first worked at the company from 1984 until 1987 as a vendor cost analyst, and was later recruited to return in 1997 as a contract administrator, and worked in the supplier management division until October 2003. Jeannine Prewitt, a Wichita native, worked at Boeing from 1996 through 2003, first as a material management analyst and later as an internal auditor. Prewitt also has a wrongful termination case pending, which the court consolidated with the whistleblower case for discovery. James Ailes, has worked at the company since 1979, and is still employed there. A fourth plaintiff, Robert Hayes, was in the original suit, filed in 2002, but has since dropped out. Smith, Prewitt and Ailes filed an amended complaint on August 29, 2005.
Prewitt and Smith were each demoted, then were laid off.
The whistleblowers claim that Boeing never told the FAA about problems with the aircraft components. Indeed, it appears that the FAA was in the dark at least until 2002, when it began an investigation. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records of the FAA’s 2002 investigation turned up comments noting that FAA personnel found no problem with the parts, yet also noting that they did find “noncompliance.” These documents, however, were heavily redacted and missing at least 62 pages.
The FAA, which concluded last year that there was no safety concern, reopened the case after receiving information from a designee, a qualified FAA representative, whom the whistleblowers hired to evaluate the parts. The Department of Justice (DOJ) chose not to intervene in the case, but also declined to dismiss it, signaling that the agency believes it has merit and reserving the right to intervene at a later date. DOJ’s decision was predicated in part on the Air Force assurance that the aircrafts were flightworthy, and that the military would have accepted them even if the problems had been disclosed. Critics were especially concerned about safety hazards as the planes age.
One longtime FAA inspector who recently retired and has examined the case, said the agency did not follow its own rules for its investigation. The FAA report notes that Boeing did its own material review of the parts and approved them, but did not disclose when that was done, or what action, if any, the company took. A FOIA request to the Department of Defense for records of its Inspector General investigation of the issue is still pending.
In 2001, the FAA issued airworthiness directive NPRM 98-NM-196-AD calling for repetitive inspections of earlier model Boeing 737s to search for fuselage skin cracking. The directive makes no mention of bad parts from Ducommun, but refers to cracks around the bear straps that might be due to hinge cutouts. In written comments on the proposed directive, Boeing said the company did not see any reason to mention the bear straps. In its comments accompanying the final rule, the FAA wrote that, “We infer that the commenter wants to eliminate all references to the areas that are common to the bear strap around the entry and service doors, as specific in the proposed rule. We do not agree.”
Records obtained under FOIA show that the FAA currently has three open enforcement actions involving quality control issues at Ducommun. The agency closed one investigation in June, sending a correction letter to the company. Ducommun declined to comment.
This article has been updated.
Sheila Kaplan is Mother Jones' investigative editor.
