Just posted at Mother Jones: Flight Risk, by Sheila Kaplan
Documents made public in a whistleblower lawsuit filed against Boeing suggest that thousands of unsafe and unapproved parts have been installed on hundreds of commercial jets the company produced between 1994 and 2004.
The scope of the Wichita, Kansas, federal case—which focuses on parts supplied by Carson, California-based Ducommun—is limited to jets built for the government, but Mother Jones has found that the alleged flaws could threaten at least 1,600 commercial airplanes manufactured between 1994 and 2004, many of which are still flying. The suit alleges that Boeing knew the Ducommun parts were faulty but used them anyway.
Read the story–the first in a series–at motherjones.com.
