Boeing finds misdrilled holes on 737 Max; could delay production

Boeing has found another issue with its 737 Max planes

The company said that a supplier told them that “two holes may not have been drilled exactly to our requirements,” The New York Times reported.

The fuselage is supplied by Spirit AeroSystems which said that an employee noticed that the holes were not correct. Boeing assembles the pieces made by Spirit AeroSystems and other companies into a complete plane, CNN reported.

“Once notified, we began immediate actions to identify and implement appropriate repair solutions,” Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems, told the Times.

Stan Deal, the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial plane unit, said it was “not an immediate flight safety issue,” adding that the planes currently flying can continue to do so, but “we currently believe we will have to perform rework on about 50 undelivered airplanes,” CNN reported.

The company is developing a plan and will find out how long it will take to correct the issue in the near future, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Spirit AeroSystems last year misdrilled holes in the aft bulkhead of some MAX planes. That issue led to delays, the newspaper reported.

Boeing has had a series of incidents, the latest being a door plug that blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5. The official cause of the issue has not been determined and prompted a temporary grounding of some 737 Max 9 aircraft in the United States, the Times reported.

“Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened. Whatever the specific cause of the accident might turn out to be, an event like this simply must not happen on an airplane that leaves one of our factories,” CEO David Calhoun told investors last week. “We simply must be better.”

Boeing 737 Max planes were also involved in two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019 which killed 346 people. All 737 MAX planes were grounded for more than a year and a half after the incidents, CNN reported.