Title: Boeing: Corporate Rap Sheet | Corporate Research Project
Headings: Boeing: Corporate Rap Sheet
Boeing: Corporate Rap Sheet
Boeing

Content: Product Safety. Because of its years of dominance in the commercial aircraft market, Boeing was frequently at the center of controversies over air safety. For example, after a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed during a domestic flight in 1985, killing 520 people, Boeing admitted that it had performed faulty repairs on the plane’s rear safety bulkhead. For more than a decade after that, there were repeated reports of defects in the company’s planes. In 1989 the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of engine monitoring and fire alarm systems on more than 700 Boeing 737s—all of those built since the end of 1980—after one of those jets crashed in Britain as a result of malfunctions in two engines. In 1989 the FAA proposed a then-record fine of $200,000 against Boeing for failing to promptly report the discovery that fire extinguishers on two 757s were faulty. In 1994 the Seattle Times, after reviewing 20 years of reports submitted to the FAA, concluded that more than 2,700 Boeing 737s then in service were flying with a defective part that could cause the plane’s rudder to move unpredictably, possibly turning the aircraft in the opposite direction being steered by the pilot. In 1997 the FAA ordered an immediate change in the fuel pumps in all 747s and proposed a change in the wiring of older planes of that model. In 1998 the FAA grounded more than 170 older 737s after finding damage to fuel-pump wiring in some of the planes. In 1999 the FAA proposed a penalty of $392,000 against Boeing for failing to notify regulators of a safety defect in the fuel valves of its 757 jets.