Faa Is Satisfied With Boeing Production Says Company Isn’t Delivering Unsafe Airplanes

Boeing is not delivering unsafe or substandard planes, the Federal Aviation Administration said in explaining an agency inspector’s comment that plane-inspection conditions at company plants were “out of control.”

The FAA “will not hesitate to stop delivery of any aircraft it believes has safety problems,” the agency said in a Thursday statement.

The FAA issued the statement in response to a Wall Street Journal story Thursday that said a senior FAA inspector in Seattle considered conditions for plane inspections “out of control” at Boeing’s Everett and Renton plants.

The comment was in a May letter to Boeing’s Commercial Airplane Group from Vi Lipski, the FAA’s Seattle manufacturing inspection manager. The letter and Boeing’s response were released by the FAA after the Journal story appeared.

Boeing responded to Lipski’s letter on Oct. 8, telling the FAA it had established a team “to resolve chronic problems.”

The FAA also released an internal memo from Lipski, dated Oct. 24, that said he worried his “out of control” phrase might be misconstrued.

“The FAA’s use of the phrase in no way relates to the Boeing production-quality system for assembling airplanes,” he wrote.

“The phrase was directly pointed to the paperwork flow and timing process that Boeing uses to notify the FAA of design changes to an airplanes’s interior.”

FAA officials declined comment Thursday, but the agency statement noted a series of meetings with Boeing on the inspection problems.

“The FAA expressed its concern in May about Boeing’s process for notifying the FAA of last-minute aircraft cabin design changes for subsequent FAA inspection,” the statement said.

“The FAA held several meetings at both the staff and senior management levels with Boeing over the summer to discuss remedies. The FAA is satisfied that Boeing is improving its compliance with its internal quality control systems - the issue that the FAA first raised with Boeing.”

Boeing spokeswoman Evonne Leach said the company welcomed FAA’s comments about the aircraft-inspection process.

“All this happened five months ago. We were ramping up. They brought some issues forth, which were corrected,” Leach said.

“We are meeting or exceeding our quality control and customer standards,” she said.

“Safety was never the issue with the FAA. Their out-of-control comment had to do with late notification of design changes and paperwork. It was never about the safety of our products.”