IF IT AIN'T A BOEING, I AIN'T GOING

 IF IT AIN'T A BOEING, I AIN'T A GOING:

For years, this was the saying amongst the rank and file at Boeing and the flying public in general.  Now, Boeing is becoming a hiss and a byword due to greed, trying to keep to schedule (again, bottom line over safety) and an amazing company that was hijacked and control wrested away from engineers (whose main concern was about safety and performance) and given to the bean counters (whose main concern was stock price and having the most complex  machines in the air using components from the lowest bidders out there).  I know because I had an amazing run there until corruption got the best of the system and I could no longer be part of it.  It took just over two decades for that to happen; and the fall was meteoric.  And quite sad.

If you read the blog back in the start of the decade of 2010, I told a friend of mine that Boeing would eventually cease to exist as a company (maybe under some other name or as a military-only concern) due to corruption and some kind of occult obsession with "luck" that went beyond just crafty marketing.  It got really weird when they rolled out a mostly "prop" made a carbon fiber barrel and of plywood, etc on 07/08/2007 or 787 for the launch date of that iconic jetliner whose vision was quite bold, but whose existence has been plagued by problems related to beans, more than engineering excellence and cutting-edge innovation.  To the point that I refused to work on it until the bean problems had been worked out of it and I was confident that it was safe for the flying public.  Nothing horrifies me more than thinking I had anything to do with something that was responsible for the loss of a human life (been through the whole loss of a single life and that was a bit much, thank you)...  The thought of a whole jet going down and all of the collective hell generated during that event, is more than I care to think about.  How it would not drive a sane man (who survived, but was responsible) crazy, is beyond me.  I have already been there and done that - and my conscience is really starting to light up right now over this whole 737Max door plug blowout incident.  I am writing this article to finally clear the air and get it off my chest and I hope it will encourage others to come forward when they read it in major Seattle newspapers and news outlets.  I love Boeing enough to try and change the culture there while they still can - so they can continue to make and sell reliable products.

In the last couple of days, I have been reading articles on the MAX door plug blowout incident where the FBI has made the statement that this last incident was "criminal".  This implies negligence and this drives the legal definitions into a whole new arena, as well as the potential financial harm to Boeing.  This will finally make them wake up and admit that there was a problem.  I feel I finally have a chance of being heard - and that my testimony can be a driving force in making change at Boeing and possibly saving the company that I loved and cherished, working for over those past 20 years.  Any attempt to forward my narrative in the past, would have been met with a consolidated front that I am just a "disgruntled former employee".  I am not - but instead one who actually dreamed of working for the "lazy B" since I was still a senior in High School.  When asked where I wanted to work after graduation, "Boeing" was always my answer and it never stopped, even when in college and trying to impress the father of the girl I was dating, who was a CFO of the Franklin Quest Institute.  It was a fairy tale ending when I ended up not just at Boeing in 1997, but in Flight Test as a Systems Engineer.  Every adrenaline junkie's dream - and the reason I was happy to get up every morning just to see what exciting cloud-punching adventure the day would bring.  But this recent article on the criminality of what occurred with the 737-MAX, when there was no loss of life, kind of made my blood boil, knowing what I know of criminality with Alaska Airlines and complicitness, when 80+ lives actually were in the balance (click for link).

I was a congregant (lay) minister to a young family in our church back in November 2001 (right after the Sept 11th tragedy).  It was my religious duty to reach out to the D. Dew___ family a minimum of once a month to make sure they had what they needed spiritually and temporally and were thriving.  Our young families had about the same aged kids, but he and she had married later in life, so he had 5-10 years on me.  He was a ramp mechanic for Alaska Air at SEATAC and I was a maintenance engineer with Boeing (our roles were more or less reciprocal; we called out the maintenance actions, the ramp mechanics performed them).  For whatever reason (if not just to clear his conscience with a guy who knew the significance of this problem), he confessed to me after church one Sunday that "it is not a matter of 'if', but 'when' we have a crash at Alaska".  I asked him what he meant by that and he confessed that he had buckled to management pressure to sign off on maintenance that was not being done to the airplane.  As a maintenance engineer, our responsibilities involved breaking down a complex machine and it's maintenance needs into time-based and landing-cycle intervals that would keep the machine in the air.  This complex set of maintenance requirements were spelled out on MPD (Maintenance Planning Document) Task Cards that had the action required (such as "Grease the Horizontal Stabilizer Ballscrew, per AMM 27-41-XX-XX"), and it spelled out the interval of that maintenance such as, every 60 flight hours, every 10 landings, during C or D-checks, etc  As it was, in order to save money, time, schedule, etc the Alaska Air maintenance managers were forcing these line mechanics to initial and date those time cards with false information.  I am sure that, if they did not, they would be marginalized, pushed out and likely lose their jobs.  In a worst-case scenario, where billions and fractional trillions of dollars are involved, they could have a convenient "accident".  I will get into later why this actually became an issue for me as I moved into the 777 production side of Boeing - and how it relates to an actual whistleblower on the 787 line who appears to have been "suicided" conveniently the day before he was supposed to testify before a committee.

Being a relative nobody and not having easy access to FAA reps within Boeing, I just took it under consideration as I really did not know what to do, or even if it had any merit at that point.  One man's opinion against a well-established air carrier?  Well, that was all about to change.  On January 31st, 2002 (just a few months later) I was driving home from my shift at Boeing (and I will never forget where on I-5 I was, nor the time of day), when I heard over the radio that an Alaska jet had gone down that day off the coast of California due to a jammed horizontal stabilizer.  The pilots had heroically fought to keep the airplane controllable until the airframe could no longer take the stresses and the ball nut stripped the acme (square) thread off of the ball screw and the horizontal stabilizer then departed the aircraft, sending the aircraft into the ocean and a hellish end for those poor passengers and heroic pilots.

I have gone over that scenario countless times in my head for the past 22 years.  It is time to clear my head of that 18,000 foot dive inverted as the people screamed for their lives.  The amount of emotional angst of just those 88 people overwhelms me and causes me to awe that the Son of God could take on Himself all of human suffering over all time - a truly incomprehensible and infinite act.  And then there is the pain and suffering of those who love those 88 people.  Unimaginable the magnitude of human suffering over corrupt, bean counting and schedule drivers.  I was not directly responsible for this crash in any way, yet I feel guilt by association to one man I knew who, no doubt, feels enormous guilt.  So what happened to Brother Dew___, you ask?

I have no idea.  Of course, I was extremely excited/curious to know what his take on everything was, so I went to set up a visit to see how his family was doing (they had not been to church in a while, so I was concerned for them).  When I talked to the mechanic's Deborah, she matter of factly told me that she could not visit as her husband had gone AWOL - simply vanished.  She gave me some theories as to where he might be, but he was gone.  I was not aware of any problems in their marriage, but just assumed that I had missed some big clues and that he simply had left her and their four young children.  My source within the Alaska maintenance organization was gone, and over time, with all the layoffs at Boeing (due to the twin tower crashes), that incident faded into the background.  All of the preceding was dwarfed by my wife and I losing our third child to SIDS on April 4th, 2002 and then the loss of my  mother about six months later.  One could say that I had had one helluva year and I mostly wanted to forget that it had ever happened.

I have written several journal pieces on this event, but never one that had all of the relevant details, as this one does.  Next, within the Maintenance Engineering org came the changes.  Within the month before my kid died of SIDS, my manager excitedly called me into his office to tell me that, instead of a 60-day WARN notice (of impending layoff), I was going to receive a pay bump and movement from a Level 2 to a Level 3 engineer.  For a 4.5 year employee, this was unheard of.  Usually, you got that reward after 11 years of service with just a Bachelor's degree or 7 years of service with a Master's degree.  The FAA wanted to completely revamp ALL of the ballscrews on the 737 through the 767 due to a problem with hygroscopic grease (MIL-G-23587) that was causing severe problems at altitude when the moisture within the base grease material (a clay) would freeze and distort the ball return tubes and the balls fall out and leave the airplanes in danger of a crash of a similar mode to that of the recent Alaska ballscrew failure.  Because of this revamping exercise, the FAA overrode the internal layoff rule at Boeing (they were cutting up to the 20 year seniority mark) and compromised with Boeing HR that they could keep any critical skills employee if they were a Level 3 engineer or higher.  Because I was over the Hor Stabilizer and Elevator, my job had been miraculously saved.  I felt as if I had one of the greatest miracles of my life.  I had a young family to take care of and my wife was pregnant with our fourth child.  

Over the course of the next months, as the Alaska investigation continued, it was clear that some shenanigans were going on.  Many of the maintenance executives from Alaska were brought in to lead our Maintenance Engineering deptartment.  Managers at Alaska were made Directors at Boeing and upper Managers at Alaska were made VPs over Maintenance Engineering.  Posts were created for these new managers that were suddenly in the wheelhouse.  For most, this was a non-issue.  For me, along with the sudden disappearance or my church buddy, it smacked of corruption.  As most know, corporate law is similar to civil law in that your spouse cannot be compelled to testify their spouse in a court of law.  Similarly, with Boeing bringing those executives inside the fold, Boeing and Alaska were shielded from embarrassing revelations.  As with Southwest Airlines, Ryannair and many other carriers, at the time Alaska maintained a "Boeing-only" fleet.  This would cement and solidify this agreement and minimize any payouts from Alaska due to criminal negligence due to willful skipping of critical maintenance and it would also shield Boeing from the embarrassment of a faulty design on a critical component that, in the past, McDonnel-Douglas (original designer of the MD-83) had gone with a double ballscrew actuator on their DC-8, but had decided the risk was warranted to go with a single actuator on the MD-83 with no secondary load paths that would mitigate complete failure of the component, and therefore, controllability of the aircraft.  In the case of the Alaska crash, both Boeing and Alaska were clearly responsible - and in the case of Alaska, criminally so.  Of course, the FAA had signed off on the MD-83 (DC-9) design years before, so it literally was in the interests of everyone to just keep this on the down low, pay off some victims for pain and suffering of loved ones, and let it fade into everyone's collective memory.  Except my own memory.  Having simulated some of these events in a flight test scenario, I understand how much terror could be experienced if you did not know if this was just a test.

So why come forward now?  

Number one:  I am no longer under Boeing payroll.  

Number two: The FBI is declaring criminality in this Alaska door plug event when not a single life was lost - and I had been privy to this other gross misconduct with nearly 90 lives lost.  

Number three:  My kids are all launched are no longer a leverage point for me (in the past, when corrupt managers have tried to manipulate me, I have literally gotten the, "Think of your wife and kids!" line - and I took it seriously as the threatening manager was from Jersey and came from a family of mafiosos).  

Number four:  The 787 whistleblower mysteriously offed himself the day before giving testimony on corruption within the system at Boeing S. Carolina.  This kind of pisses me off - and instead of cowering, makes me want to come out swinging.  I swore when I was down in Brazil, that I would fight corruption to my dying day - and I wonder sometimes if I have kept this promise to myself, after seeing all of the corruption down there that left people living in slums with gut-wrenching diseases while those skimming off the top were living in marbled high-rises in the best of circumstances.

Number five:  The time is right, when someone will actually listen to me and my unique view into what happened previously with Boeing/Alaska and just quite possibly might change the corruption vector (both direction and magnitude) at Boeing.  

Number six:  There is enough heat on Boeing at this time, that they HAVE to act and do something.  I am usually sympathetic to the underdog and do not want the ChiComs with their C919 offering to get the upper hand on Boeing, nor make anymore inroads into advanced aviation, in relation to Airbus and Boeing.  But I DO want the flying public to be safe and free from worry while flying western offerings.

Within a few years of the whole Alaska thing and the clear cover up to keep the victims quiet and paid only paltry amounts for loss of companionship, loss of wages and earning potential, pain and suffering - I was talking to a religious leader (equivalent to a Bishop in the Catholic church) at a type of confessional and I was expressing my concerns over what I knew and instead of trying to get me help, he basically advised me to keep my mouth shut and that damaging information like that could end up getting me killed.  Even though he was in the JSF with Boeing (military side), I took him seriously - as I had a young family and had already experienced loss there.  I also was taking in a nice annual salary plus bonuses and did not want that interrupted.

So, I shut my mouth until the next big thing hit that opened that wound back up and made me angry at the endemic corruption within Boeing.  About 2006, I had left Maintenance Engineering and was working in Everett as an MRB (Quality Engineering) Liaison Engineer.  Our job was to repair anything in the factory that was not built to drawing specifications and bring it back to within spec, or order the installation of replacement of defective parts that could not be repaired.  In some instances, this meant the replacement of entire wing halves and other major repairs where damage was beyond allowable limits and a fix was simply not tenable.

On the 777 line in Everett, I had done rotations around most of the various stations where wings were built, installed and where Final Assembly occurred (stuffing of the interiors, landing gear installation, engine hanging, etc).  I was back in my home group and was training a surge of newbies (who had no time with the company; fresh out of school and just starting their rotations).  I had just received my MRB certification (similar to completing an apprenticeship, complete with rigorous training/testing and then mentoring under senior MRB signatories for 12-24 months).  One morning, a tag came in to a gal I was mentoring.  Her tag involved the destruction of a 1/2" thick carbon fiber "T-chord" that would need to be replaced.  On the second shift I was working, a separate tag came in for a "scratch" that QA told me just needed a "blend".  QA listed the scratch as 0.012" deep - or about four pieces of paper thick.  Doing my usual due diligence, I personally went out to inspect the "scratch".  Well, it turned out to be in excess of 0.040" deep, and was in a critical area of structure.  This was right where the horizontal stabilizer hooks onto the airframe.  There is a phenomenon called hidden latent failure, where - if a defect is not properly addressed, it can crack out and the crack slowly grow until it reaches a critical length and then fails catastrophically and suddenly.  In this area, it would mean complete loss of the airframe with all souls on board which number in the 300-500, depending on configuration and cabin layout.  So I took it back to QA (first shift) and asked "Lou" to change the defect description to the 0.040" depth to accurately reflect the problem.  Lou kind of freaked out and I began to suspect something was amiss.  Meanwhile, my newbie confidant came to me and wanted to get my opinion on this carbon fiber damage.  When I looked at the location, I about peed my pants - same exact location as my damage.  Same side of the airplane.  I knew the two were connected, but how?  I knew they had just installed the Hor Stab on the 777 on the third shift, so I stayed over past my 1am clockout and started asking around.  I could tell by body language and such that all of the mechanics on that crew were mum.  The closer I got to the crane crew, the more pushback I got so I pulled an installation mechanic aside (literally into a dark corner) and asked him questions until he finally started to speak (after sharing my Alaska story - and how guilt likely drove my friend nuts).  I assured him that his statements would be safe with me and after, pointing out that he could lose his job or worse if he came forward, he spilled his guts.  The prior night, the crane crew was "flying" the horizontal stabilizer into place before installing the tailcone.  As they got about less than two feet away from the mating part of the body with the horizontal stabilizer, one of the six lifting straps (three on left, three on right) broke and the whole 7,000 pound+ stabilizer (the size of a 737 wing) came crashing into that critical area of 777 structure.  On the horizontal stabilizer, there are three points that hold the stabilizer on.  The ballscrew at the front (middle) and two pivot points on the rear spar of the assembly on either side.  If any of those points are compromised, you get the same effect that happened with Alaska (where the critical control surface comes off and the plane is basically an expensive lawn dart, complete with hundreds of screaming humans).

I had enough information that the next day before leaving first shift, I approached Lou and asked him to completely revamp the tag to place the two defects together since they were related.  This is when he started getting "spicey" with me, calling me names and then finally dropped the "you know, the last guy who did something like you are doing ended up getting run down in the parking lot".  I am not making this stuff up - it is surreal to me every time I think of it.  Of course, being threatened just raised my hackles and I knew there was much more to this.  Probably the biggest factor was that the crane crew screwed up with that busted strap.  Those straps are life-limited and load limited.  I did not get any proof, because everyone was telling me to drop it and no one would have cooperated, but the strap was likely worn beyond use and this incident would have triggered an OSHA investigation at the very least with possible FAA oversight when the airplane damage was factored in.

In order to cover my ass, I backed myself up with calling out to the floor (very calculatedly) one of the "two Chucks" - our "Stress Gods", as they were affectionately called.  If one of them could back me up, there was nothing a corrupt QA or anyone else could do.  They reported directly to the FAA.  Anyone of a corrupt nature feared them.  Funny thing was that, with that much power, the "two Chucks" were the nicest guys around.  One was the personable Chuck Anderson and the other was what I called "Savant Chuck" because he could literally tell if structures were in danger of failure by just by thinking about it.  He had so much experience and such, it was almost scary.  I only feared approaching Savant Chuck if my calculations were amiss and he could shoot a hole in my proposed repair (which he never did).  When Chuck Anderson came out to the airplane and reviewed my case, he just shook his head and said that they were already having failures in the 767 Hor Stab pivot points and that the 777 with hidden latent, plastic deformation damage there was just a ticking time bomb.  When they went to design the structure on the 777, they just scaled up the 767 design to account for the increased loads, etc.  So, in other words, the failures they saw in the 767 after 30 years of service, were going to manifest themselves on the 777 in a similar fashion.  Any damages there would only decrease the service life of that structure.

After iron-cladding my case for a lengthy repair (with a 20 page powerpoint presentation and Chuck's recommendations), I was told I was meeting with the Factory General Manager.  Even though I had done my homework, I was told by a 40 year colleague that I would not be employed by Boeing in two-week's time.  He was very threatening and I took him seriously because he would often socialize after hours with my first and second level managers, who had similar time under their belts.  The next day, I was marched up to the fifth floor with my Lead, FL Manager and Second Level Manager to get grilled by the Factory General in his walnut-paneled office.  He got in my face and asked me who I thought I was to slow down 2.3 billion worth of product on the floor in the 777 line.  I was thinking to myself what kind of education did this guy have in regards to materials science and if he even knew the difference between elastic and plastic deformation, or if he even knew that there were three forged and machined lugs in that layup, made from the strongest 7 series aluminum made by man and covered by a stainless swiper seal rub strip that could potentially hide (uninspectable) damage to that lug.  This has been a hot bed situation in the MRB world and HAS brought down a 747 among many other aircraft.  Hidden latent failures are the fear of every maintenance and structures engineer.

As we left that office, my feet were prunes in my dress shoes from sweating so profusely and I went home drained emotionally and told my wife to get ready in case I got thrown to the curb for standing up and doing the right thing.  When we left the office of the factory general, I will never forget my second level telling me that "this is too hot for me, you are on your own"....  Grrr....  At that point, I started plotting my escape to the 747 line where the -8 was just coming online and they could not keep up with the number of MRB actions required to keep the line moving.  In that environment, it is only so long before they find some reason for "cause" to build a case and fire you - even though you are a model employee and just seek to do what is the best thing for the airplane and the flying public (stock price be damned).

Long story short, Chuck Anderson and I "won that battle", but I believe we both ultimately lost the war.  I am not sure why, but about a month after that incident, Chuck Anderson left Boeing for some kind of extended leave that was about two years long.  In his absence, things went to hell in the Stress dept and it was chaos.  Even Chuck "Savant" Lackey could not keep up.  When I was on the 747-8 line, Chuck Anderson suddenly was back in the Stress ranks.  I pressed him to know why he had been gone for so long and he would not budge other than it was for "personal reasons".  I wonder if he had been involved in some kind of breakdown over the politics he was exposed to with his job.  I will probably never know.  As a side note, when "Savant Chuck" finally did retire a few years later and was out on his first day of retirement, he went kayaking with his wife on the Yakima River and while in a rather placid section of the river and near the bank, with no witnesses, he supposedly overturned and drowned.  I had never been even mildly suspicious before, but with the 787 whistleblower suddenly committing suicide the day before giving damning testimony, I have to give credence to the possibility of foul play (click link for Chuck Lackey's death announcement).  The problem with someone like Chuck Lackey is that they literally carry every piece of messy dirt that is dredged up in the day-to-day of the factory.  The benign stuff - and the nefarious stuff.

Has that 777 crashed?  Nope, they repaired it 70% per my instructions and I chose not to push them on the other 30% of my instructions that they glossed over.  If it ever does crash due to a hor stab failure, I will raise utter hell over it and will not rest until I am dead or until it is acknowledged that the shoddy repair had something to do with it.  People need to be held accountable for their shitty attitudes and actions.  The bean counters that sit in their ivory towers, running a once-proud company into the ground need to pay for their insolence and arrogance.  Every time one of these bean counters gets run out, I cheer.  From the last engineer/womanizer Phil Condit to the first in a long string of McDonnell Douglas bean counter execs that came in and ruined the company (Harry Stonecipher - that sold off Spirit Aerosystems and gutted the company for stock price), it has been a pleasure to see them go.  It will be a pleasure to see real engineers return to leadership positions.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON ROOTING OUT CORRUPTION AT BOEING:

What do I see as a possible solution to the problems at Boeing?  A large poster in every cube farm with the name and number or website where a rank and file can report corruption within the system - and a rewards system where the biggest whistleblowers are given some kind of compensation from a "victims fund" in memorial to those from the likes of the Alaska crash.  Also, access to an independent (and well-heeled) law firm where the employee can sue if they are black-listed for speaking out or that will represent them with investigative power if they end up "taking their lives" for no reason at all.  The existing SPEEA employee system does not work and there are no mechanisms in place to relieve pressure when the management heat is on over the existing corrupt cost/schedule/delivery/stock price drum beat.