Posted on 05/27/2005 2:44:08 PM PDT by Righty_McRight
WICHITA, Kan. - Three senior Boeing Co. employees have filed a lawsuit against the aircraft manufacturer claiming the company ignored numerous defective parts used to build airplanes.
The three employees of Boeing's commercial aircraft division in Wichita brought the lawsuit in March on behalf of the U.S. government, alleging that Boeing was aware of nearly 2,000 defective parts from Ducommun Inc. of California used in 32 of the company's airplanes.
The lawsuit became public Thursday after the U.S. Justice Department completed its investigation.
A federal court filing said the parts ended up on $1.5 billion worth of planes delivered to the U.S. Air Force and Navy and foreign military forces, including ones in Japan, Italy, Turkey and Australia.
The lawsuit contends the parts did not pass minimum Federal Aviation Administration safety requirements and were used on 737s, 747s, 757s and 767s made in Wichita and delivered for sale from March 1998 through November 2004.
James Ailes of Wichita; Jeannine "Gigi" Prewitt of Derby; and Taylor Smith, now of Savannah, Ga., filed the lawsuit. Their attorney said they would not comment beyond the lawsuit.
Craig Martin, a spokesman for Boeing in Seattle, said corporate officials did not learn about the lawsuit until recently and could not comment on specifics.
"Boeing has a superb record of safety and a very high reputation with our customers," Martin said.
Ducommun executives were unavailable to comment, according to officials with the Carson, Calif., manufacturer of parts for numerous aircraft.
The lawsuit said in 1999 Boeing found Ducommun's documents for making the parts did not conform to FAA requirements.
A Boeing field representative wrote a report to suspend Ducommun's delivery of parts to the Wichita plant, the lawsuit says, but the computer report was deleted the next day.
"Ducommun continued to deliver bogus, defective and nonconforming parts to Boeing Wichita," according to the lawsuit.
Ailes, Smith and Prewitt claim in the lawsuit that Ducommun kept two sets of books for manufacturing parts - "fake books," for Boeing and the FAA and "real books" for Ducommun.
The three investigators say they "became the subjects of harassment, threats and intimidation" when they filed reports in 2000 criticizing Boeing's use of defective parts.
The lawsuit seeks at least $10,000 for each false claim made by Boeing to the U.S. government concerning the quality and safety of the aircraft.
ping
Use the defective aircraft for target practice, then force Boeing to replace them, free of charge, or lose all existing and future contracts with the US government. Make the defective parts cost Boeing far more than replacing them would have cost and they'll never do it again.
I don't suppose waiting for the truth to come out has any part in your elaborate plan?
Just because three disgruntled employees say something does not make it true. If the parts were so bad that they didn't pass the FAA certifications, a quiet word to the FAA inspectors would have solved the entire matter.
There is more here than meets the eye. For instance, nowhere is the nature of the defect even hinted at. We there holes in fuel tanks? Or was it simply an "i" not dotted or a "t" not crossed on some FAA form?
As a plane owner, I can tell you that a certificated airworthy part does not mean it's good or bad, just made IAW paperwork rules.
You could make cement life preservers and have them certificated as made IAW all requirements called for. They will still drown the user. Just to a specification drowning.
I've got enough airorthiness directives from the FAA on one part, requiring this or that to comply with the directive. As new airworthy specialists come on line at the FAA, they issue new directives, countering the ones from previous airworthiness specialists. I've had several unairworthy parts made even more unairworthy after the FAA gets thru detailing the required fix. All seven or eight times!
As I read the article I am lookiing foe specifics. I don't find specifics. The lack of specifics IN A NEWS ARTICLE is interesting. I recall something about 'who' what' 'when' and 'where' being neccessary to a NEWS article. This piece is a 'statistical' article. That is; it is meant to plant an idea without actually lying. The complanints didn't write the article themselves--that is interesting too....
I haven't peeked at your profile yet but I'll make a guess. You've never worked for the government nor a government contractor.
bump
If you have a 727 or 737 or any other jet with run-out engines beyond TBO, don't spend a dime to overhaul them! Just remove them, crate them up and ship them to Turkmanistan, where there is a rebuild/overhaul station doing business. They solvent wash, clean up, and retag the engine in the same condition it arrived in as now being airworthy. It gets shipped back stateside, installed, and logged in the planes books as zero time engines.
It's quite a lucrative business. Rather hard on the mechanics who have to do all this because it's still IAW FAA rules. If that repair facility in Turkmanistan has been certificated, it's just peachy.
Now if you're Connie Culletta or United Airlines, what do you think they do to cut expenses yet comply with FAA rules?
Wonderful. You know, until we stop bailing out the airlines, we'll never get fiscally responsible people into positions of power in the major airlines. People who cut engine maintenance to feed their multi-million dollar bonuses are, by no means, fiscally responsible. Perhaps when airplanes start falling from the skies people will wake up to things like this.
I was referring to the fact that first you have to find out the motivation for the "Boeing employees".
The lawsuit seeks at least $10,000 for each false claim made by Boeing to the U.S. government concerning the quality and safety of the aircraft.
Money is normally the first motivation, the second is usually that an insider has an axe to grind. Usually the two coincide. Is there a problem with the parts? Maybe. Are these three doing this from the goodness of their hearts? No way.
That is a unique and wonderful solution to the problem. I'm for it.
In the case of proven platform planes with millions of hours and flight cycles recorded worldwide, it's mostly a paperwork thang as you earlier mentioned. Something like the contracted company didn't magnaflux the parts before shipment by a certified lab or something like that. It may have been a new vendor that Boeing might have omitted a specification that should have been on the specs but they forgot. It happens a lot. Usually the parts and processes in making them is all traceable and can be fixed by an inspection or paperwork entry during the next 100 hour inspection. It just will make someone look very bad.
Bump to Cal.
Ping to the rest of you.
Why am I not surprised that so many small planes fall out of the sky?
I was directly in the middle of the "F-16 Kapton wiring" issue many years back. In short, chaffing of the wiring harnesses, and the resulting electrical shorts, could cause the Kapton insulation to catch fire. I remember watching a crying widow, whose pilot husband had died, supposedly of a terrible Kapton wire fire, saying General Dynamics KNEW of the problem, and did nothing. The facts were;
1. All aircraft have wire chaffing, period. Stretch an airframe with 9 G's, you have chaffing. (This is the GD "knew" part)
2. Kapton insulation could burn when exposed to excessive arcing. (The problem was that when electrical shorts of that magnitude were encountered, the pilot was pulling the exit handle anyway. Fire was just a side effect.)
3. Kapton wire is no longer used. We the taxpayer footed the bill. The widow is rich. The widow's lawyers are millionaires many time over.
NJ, you keep inferring this is a taxpayer/military screwjob by Boeing. Re-read the freaking article.
From the article: "The three employees of Boeing's commercial aircraft division in Wichita brought the lawsuit in March on behalf of the U.S. government, alleging that Boeing was aware of nearly 2,000 defective parts from Ducommun Inc. of California used in 32 of the company's airplanes."
You're adressing non-valid points. Some Boeing customers may have an axe to grind, but neither the military nor taxpayers do.
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