Why the FAA still can't fix Boeing

Boeing has said it would have to rework 50 737 MAX jets because of newly discovered misdrilled holes

- Andrew Tangel and Alison Sider

After two Boeing 737 MAX crashes five years ago that killed everyone aboard both jets, air-safety regulators cranked up the heat on the plane maker.

The Federal Aviation Administration, under fire for being too soft on Boeing, assigned more people to oversee the company's production. FAA inspectors, not Boeing's own employees, would now do the final safety check on each 737 MAX. Boeing would add back quality inspections it had stopped doing. Two FAA inspectors would keep tabs on Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing's troubled supplier of door plugs and other equipment.

When the problem-plagued 737 MAX was finally cleared to fly again in 2020, the FAA's then chief Steve Dickson called it "the most heavily scrutinized transport aircraft in aviation history," telling reporters: "I am fully confident that the aircraft is safe, and I would put my own family on it." 

Those comforting words look a lot less reassuring after a door plug blew out midair on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX on Jan. 5, and it emerged that the plane likely had rolled off the factory floor weeks earlier without the bolts necessary to hold it in place. "That can't happen," Dickson, now a consultant, said on Saturday about the blowout. He still believes the aircraft is safe, he said, "but that assumes they're put together properly." 

On Sunday, Boeing said it would have to rework 50 undelivered 737 MAX jets because of newly discovered misdrilled holes.

Now the same old questions are resurfacing about the effectiveness of the FAA and its largely hands-off-regulatory system for overseeing Boeing. The agency has so few people watching over Boeing relative to the size of its production operations that a former government official familiar with the oversight likened the process to looking through a keyhole.