Why Africa won't shut the door on Boeing

January’s explosive decompression of a Boeing 737-9 caused shock waves throughout the US manufacturer and its suppliers.

The in-flight loss of a door plug occurred shortly after take-off from Seattle’s SeaTac Airport. Miraculously, there were no fatalities, but the accident occurred due to a failure by a Boeing employee – the company has not been able to identify the individual – to re-install retaining bolts on the door plug, which covered an emergency exit that was not required on that particular model of 737.

The plug had been removed at Boeing’s Renton factory to fix a fault that had not been picked up at the Wichita factory of fuselage subcontractor Spirit Aerosystems. After the fault was fixed, the plug was replaced… but without three of the four required retaining bolts. The door eventually worked loose over the course of 154 subsequent flights, before blowing off over Seattle.

According to Elizabeth Lund, senior vice-president of quality at Boeing Commercial Aircraft, an individual or team did not create the necessary paperwork to alert staff that the bolts had been removed to allow the door plug to be opened.

The investigation into the incident has uncovered a litany of faults: in fuselages arriving from Boeing’s tier one supplier Spirit Aerosystems; a lack of training for personnel on the Renton assembly lines; and complicated processes and procedures that allowed faults to creep in.

Aware that its reputation was on the line, Boeing responded. It is bringing Spirit Aerosystems back in-house (Spirit was previously part of Boeing before being sold off in the 1990s), has put in place more basic training for new employees without previous aviation experience, beefed up mentoring and on-the-job training, and a “much more systemic check” of all such details on the aircraft has been put in place.

For example, rather than waiting until fuselages arrive at Renton from Spirit before checking them for defects, that checking process now takes place – with increased Boeing oversight – before they are loaded onto railway cars to make the journey to Washington state. That is already showing benefits in reducing the number of faults, Lund said.

The company says that its production philosophy is changing from prioritising getting aircraft out of the factory door as quickly as possible, to an intense focus on quality.

Production rates of the 737, which were supposed to be increasing steadily over the next few years, fell to as low as 18 a month earlier this year and have been capped by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at 38 – the rate existing prior to the Alaska Airlines incident – until the FAA is satisfied that Boeing has got a grip of the situation.

So, what does all this mean for African airlines?  Probably less than in other regions of the world.

Relatively few African carriers buy new aircraft direct from Boeing. Many tend to acquire second-hand machines.

The two largest carriers with an interest in Boeing deliveries are Ethiopian and EgyptAir. Ethiopian ordered 20 737-8s and 11 787-9s at the 2023 Dubai Airshow but, mindful of the delays affecting Boeing’s output even then, said that it would lease in aircraft to get it through the next few years until deliveries started to flow from the US.

EgyptAir, meanwhile, announced at the same show that it would be going straight to a lessor, Air Lease Corporation, for 18 737-8s, thus enabling earlier deliveries from early 2025 through 2026. Air Algérie has eight 737-9s on order, but these are not scheduled for delivery until 2027, giving Boeing time to fix its problems in the intervening period.

Will Boeing’s problems deter African airlines from placing future orders with the US manufacturer? Probably not; both Boeing and Airbus have huge order backlogs – place an order for a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320neo today and you are unlikely to have it in service much before the end of the decade.

African airlines that want to order from Boeing will probably take comfort from the fact that, by the time the new aircraft arrive, the company’s current problems will – hopefully – have been ironed out.