‘This Has Been Going on for Years.’ Inside Boeing’s Manufacturing Mess.

Long earlier than the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on Jan. 5, there have been issues inside Boeing about the way in which the aerospace large was constructing its planes. Boeing, like so many different American producers, was outsourcing increasingly of the parts that went into its complicated machines.

A Boeing aerospace engineer offered a controversial white paper in 2001 at an inner technical symposium. The engineer, John Hart-Smith, warned colleagues of the dangers of the subcontracting technique, particularly if Boeing outsourced an excessive amount of work and didn’t present enough on-site high quality and technical help to its suppliers.