to the FAA, resulting in “a loss of
negotiating power”.
“The DERs were in a position to tell a
meeting what the FAA is and is not going to
allow and that would be the end of it,” says
Sorscher. “Under ODA the applicant, in this
case Boeing, effectively creates a
mirror version of the FAA within its
own organization. So, most of the
problem resolution happens solely on
Boeing’s side.”
Sorscher believes that the ODA
system makes it more likely that the
concerns of certification engineers
within an organization are sidelined
by the overall momentum of a
development program. In addition,
when a problem cannot be resolved
in-house and needs FAA input,
Boeing’s technical staff are separated
from the FAA’s technical staff by a tier
of management on both sides. This
means that it’s not unlikely that a
technical issue raised at Boeing might not ever reach the
FAA technical staff and instead “be resolved entirely at
the managerial level”.
Dreikorn says, “The FAA delegated oversight of the
inspection. It’s just too many degrees of separation.”
According to Sorscher, getting a handle on what has
gone wrong with the ODA program involves an
understanding of the forces that first brought it into
existence. As a labour representative Sorscher was part
of the stakeholder transition team that managed Boeing’s
switch to ODA.
“ODA was part of a philosophy that wanted to get
government out of the way, and let industry solve its own
problems,’” says Sorscher. “This same deregulation
happened at the Securities and Exchange Commission, at
the Food and Drug Administration and the Department
of Agriculture.”
Around the time of the ODA’s introduction there was
also a change in the workplace culture at Boeing that
compounded the problem, claims Sorscher.
28 MARCH 2020 \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
“When I began at Boeing it was a
collaborative workplace,” he says. “There
was an expectation that you would sacrifice
your narrow set of interests for the overall
well-being of the program, and I saw this
happen over and over again.”
Sorscher believes a close examination of
media reports of the interactions between
Boeing staff during the Max
certification process reveals clear
examples of them “coordinating badly”
with each other.
CULTURE CHANGE
Dreikorn believes there was a change
in the culture at Boeing after the
move of its headquarters from its
Seattle manufacturing base in 2001.
“Boeing lost its aerospace core when it
moved from Seattle to Chicago and
became a capital investment company,
as opposed to an aircraft maker,” says
Dreikorn. “From then on the signals
from on high were that the
organization was more about profit
and schedule as opposed to technology and safety.”
The financial hit Boeing has taken because of the
Max groundings has shaken up the aircraft maker’s
management enough to reexamine the workings of its
business. The company is trying to address its mistakes.
With the ouster of CEO Dennis Muilenburg in December
there has been a change in tone, with new boss Dave
Calhoun acknowledging the firm has been its “own
worst enemy” and admitting that the Max crisis has
shaken confidence in the company among Boeing staff.
Boeing did not respond to requests for comment on
this article but said in a recent statement that “the
ungrounding of the 737 Max will begin during
mid-2020”. But ultimately this is in the hand of the FAA
and other regulators. Meanwhile Dreikorn believes the
best outcome of the crisis would be a return to a
certification process where delegates are chosen by the
FAA, returning the responsibility to individuals rather
than the entire company. “Because when everybody is
accountable, nobody is accountable,” he says. \\
Certification
“ODA was part
of a philosophy
that wanted to
get government
out of the way”
4 // Boeing’s 737 Max 8 was
certified by the FAA in 2017,
the airplane is seen here
taking off over Lake
Washington (Photo: Matthew
Thompson/Boeing)
5 // The wreckage of a
Boeing 747 on the ground
– there have been 15 fatal
crashes involving 747s since
its entry into service in 1989
(Photo: Daniel - stock.adobe.
com)
6 // Stan Sorscher, labour
representative at the US
Society for Professional
Engineering Employees in
Aerospace and former
Boeing employee
4
6
5
/AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM