ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Boeing has been under intense pressure since a door plug panel blew off one of its jets in midair earlier this year. So has Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that builds the fuselage for the Boeing 737 in Wichita, Kan. Both companies say they've made changes to improve quality. Spirit has not allowed any media access to that plant until now. NPR's Joel Rose got an exclusive look.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: It takes more than 200,000 fasteners to hold a 737 together.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRILL RUMBLING)
ROSE: A lot of those fasteners are installed manually by Spirit mechanics, especially where they connect different pieces of the fuselage, in a part of the factory called integration.
TIM HAMM: Up here is where we put the two halves together, front and back.
ROSE: That's Tim Hamm. He's a master mechanic who's worked at Spirit for 13 years. It's his job to oversee newer employees and to make sure those fasteners are installed correctly, level with the skin of the plane.
HAMM: You can run your finger down and feel how smooth they are, they got to be.
ROSE: This factory on the southern edge of Wichita has been making the fuselage for the Boeing 737 since the 1960s, more than 12,000 planes in all. But it's never faced scrutiny quite like this as Spirit and Boeing work to rebuild the trust of federal regulators and the flying public.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRILL RUMBLING)
ROSE: Unfinished fuselages float overhead, suspended from the ceiling as workers move around the floor on golf carts and cargo bikes. At one point, Hamm says, this factory was turning out more than 50 fuselages per month.
HAMM: We just do what we were told. If there's 53 of them a month to do, we stayed, and we got them done. We worked, and we got every one of them done every day.
ROSE: The pace slowed sharply in January after a door plug panel blew out of a 737 Max jet in midair. Federal investigators believe that four key bolts were missing when the plane left Boeing's factory in Renton, Wash., thousands of miles away. But investigators say that panel had to be reopened in order to repair damaged rivets that were installed here in Wichita. Since then, the FAA has capped production of the 737, and Hamm says Spirit is only turning out roughly 30 fuselages per month.
HAMM: And now it's slowing down, and it's going to be a good thing for the company. It's going to help them out as well as quality and the product they're putting out again. It's going to get better, whole lot better.
ROSE: Hamm says there's a new push to make sure all the work is right before the fuselage moves to the next station in the factory to make sure Boeing has added more inspectors in Wichita. Here's Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun speaking to CNBC from Boeing's factory in April.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DAVE CALHOUN: We will only accept - they will only ship a conforming fuselage, which means it comes in this door in near-perfect shape, and then it moves through this factory at a much reduced cycle.
ROSE: Boeing and Spirit leaders both say the number of defects is down since January, but that does not explain why so many defects were escaping from the factory to begin with. The answer may be tied up in the long and troubled history between the two companies. Larry Straub teaches management at Newman University in Wichita.
LARRY STRAUB: It's really hard to know where one begins and the other ends, to be honest with you.
ROSE: This 737 factory in Wichita used to be owned by Boeing until the company sold it off in 2005, and it became part of Spirit. Since then, the two companies have often clashed as Boeing pushed its supplier to save money. Straub says that pressure trickled down to some of his MBA students who work at Spirit.
STRAUB: There's always tremendous, tremendous pressure on costs out there. There's a point where that's healthy, but there's a point where it can break over, and it becomes unhealthy.
ROSE: NPR spoke to nine former and current Spirit employees for this story. Some told us that quality at the Wichita plant had been declining for years as business majors replaced engineers in the ranks of management. And many agreed that some of the blame lies with Boeing, which was constantly pushing Spirit to keep costs low and production rates high. Now Boeing has shifted direction. It's in talks to buy Spirit and reintegrate the two companies. Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan says a lot has changed already.
PATRICK SHANAHAN: We've made changes in how we inspect, where we inspect and how we do that together.
ROSE: Shanahan took over at Spirit last year after a series of embarrassing and expensive quality problems. On an earnings call in May, he said quality at the Wichita factory is up by 15%.
SHANAHAN: I think a good portion of the hard work is done.
ROSE: But some former and current Spirit employees say there's still more hard work ahead. They say the company lost a lot of experienced employees to layoffs and early retirement when production was slowed after two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 and again during the COVID pandemic.
KARMEN POTTS: Definitely. A lot of people that I worked with took the buyout.
ROSE: Karmen Potts has been working at the 737 factory in Wichita for 28 years.
POTTS: That experience, just working in the field of aircraft - it can't be replaced. And I feel like the new people that's coming on - they're going to have to get on board with staying off their phones, paying attention to what they're doing. I do feel the effects of a lot of people leaving Spirit that had that experience. That's priceless.
ROSE: Still, Potts is proud of the work her team is doing, and she says she does not see a lot of defects on their section of the fuselage.
POTTS: I feel like we do it the right way. I feel like our inspectors are really good. And if there is a mistake made, we go back. We fix it.
ROSE: Lately, Potts says, a lot of people in this factory are nervous. They're not sure what's going to happen if Boeing re-acquires the plant, and they're worried about the slower pace of production. Spirit announced a few weeks ago that it would cut more than 400 hourly employees because there just isn't as much work to do.
POTTS: It's a different pace now.
ROSE: Is that good?
POTTS: No. We like work. That means we could stay employed.
ROSE: Potts says she's more than ready for the pace at this factory to speed up again.
Joel Rose, NPR News, Wichita, Kan. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
