The top U.S. aviation regulator said Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration should have been more aware of manufacturing problems inside Boeing before a panel blew off a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
“FAA’s approach was too hands-off — too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told a Senate committee.
Whitaker said that since the Jan. 5 blowout on the Alaska jetliner, the FAA has changed to “more active, comprehensive oversight” of Boeing. That includes, as he has said before, putting more inspectors in factories at Boeing and its chief supplier on the Max, Spirit AeroSystems.
Whitaker made the comments while his agency, the Justice Department and the National Transportation Safety Board continue investigations into the giant aircraft manufacturer. The FAA has limited Boeing’s production of 737 Max jets to 38 per month, but the company is building far fewer than that while it tries to fix quality-control problems.
They have a massive backlog of orders. They can not take a single new order and still have orders to fill for years.
Now, if airlines start to cancel orders, that will hit Boeing more directly. But those airlines would take financial hits themselves, too, for canceling. And they still need more planes, so they will just end up placing new orders and be on Airbus’s backlog instead.
This seems to confirm the backlog (a shocking 5,600) but also the decline in new orders to just 4 in May; no Max’s for two months; and even a cancelation.