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https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/
boeing-manufacturing-737-max-alaska-door-plug-spirit-18f7e233

'This Has Been Going on for Years.' Inside Boeing's Manufacturing
Mess.

Outsourcing worried engineers and sparked battles over quality before
a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines plane midflight

The site of this month's midair door-plug blowout on this Boeing 737
MAX 9 is behind the wing, outlined in red.
The site of this month's midair door-plug blowout on this Boeing 737
MAX 9 is behind the wing, outlined in red. Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/
Getty Images
By Sharon Terlep
and Andrew Tangel
Jan. 13, 2024 12:01 am ET

Listen to article

(2 minutes)

Long before the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on Jan. 5, there
were concerns within Boeing about the way the aerospace giant was
building its planes. Boeing, like so many other American
manufacturers, was outsourcing more and more of the components that
went into its complex machines.

A Boeing aerospace engineer presented a controversial white paper in
2001 at an internal technical symposium. The engineer, John
Hart-Smith, warned colleagues of the risks of the subcontracting
strategy, especially if Boeing outsourced too much work and didn't
provide sufficient on-site quality and technical support to its
suppliers. 

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Copyright (c)2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com.