Boeing 737 MAX crisis escalates: More and more parts are leaving subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems with defects, insiders claim – and improved stats are due to ‘staff being too scared to report issues to bully bosses’

Claims are growing over quality control problems at key Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems after an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX flight nearly crashed.

Spirit, the maker of the door plug that exploded on the Alaska flight, operates a plant in Wichita, Kansas, that makes stretched fuselages for troubled planes.

Current and former Spirit employees spoke Wall Street Journal that plant workers are rushing to meet unrealistic quotas and that raising safety concerns is discouraged, if not outright punished.

“Spirit knows that if you make too much noise and cause too many problems, you will be moved,” Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after noticing improperly drilled holes in fuselages.

“It doesn’t mean you ignore things completely, but they don’t want you to find everything and write it down.”

Spirit, the maker of the door plug that exploded during a flight in Alaska, operates a plant (above) in Wichita, Kansas, where it makes the long fuselage for the 737 MAX.

Spirit CEO Patrick Shanahan (center) previously spent 31 years at Boeing and served as acting secretary of defense in the Trump administration.

Dean recounted a pizza party held at the Wichita plant to celebrate a decline in the number of reported defects, saying that chatter over food quickly escalated into the observation that the successes were due only to problems related to under-reporting.

Dean’s complaints are included in a shareholder lawsuit filed against Spirit in December that alleges the company failed to disclose defects.

Spirit told the Journal he categorically denies the allegations in the lawsuit and said he remains “focused on the quality of every aircraft that leaves our facilities.”

A Boeing spokesman referred DailyMail.com’s questions to Spirit, saying “we have nothing to add.” Spirit did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.

The Journal report noted that Boeing owned the Wichita plant until 2005, when it was transferred to Spirit as part of the plane maker’s outsourcing strategy to focus on final assembly to boost profits.

Spirit’s revenue is heavily dependent on Boeing, and the two companies have sparred over costs, quality and production rates.

Boeing executives have acknowledged that the company is ultimately responsible for the safety and quality control of all aircraft it sells, regardless of problems with suppliers.

The latest investigation into the 737 MAX comes after one of the planes, just eight weeks off the assembly line, nearly suffered a crash last week when a plug used to fill an inactive escape door exploded in flight.

Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 suffered a catastrophic accident on Friday when a door plug suddenly fell out and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing.

The Alaska Airlines plane, which had been in service for only eight weeks, took off from Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 5 and was flying at 16,000 feet when a panel came off the plane.

The pilots flew the plane back to Portland, with passengers suffering only minor injuries.

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration extended its grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX 9 aircraft indefinitely to allow for new safety inspections and announced it would tighten oversight of Boeing itself.

The FAA said it would need another round of inspections before it would consider returning the planes to service.

Under stricter controls, the regulator will review the Boeing 737 MAX 9 production line and suppliers.

He will also consider having an independent organization take over from Boeing some aspects of the safety certification of new planes that the FAA previously assigned to the plane maker.

The FAA said the continued grounding of 171 aircraft of the same configuration as in the incident was done “for the safety of American travelers.”

Boeing Co. fuselage sections. 737s sit in the Spirit AeroSystems assembly facility in Wichita, Kansas, in this file photo.

A worker applies sealant to a cargo door frame during assembly of the lower fuselage of a Boeing 737 at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas, in a file photo.

The regulator said on Monday the grounding would be lifted following a review, before saying more work needed to be done on routine checks.

The FAA said Friday that 40 of the planes must be re-inspected, then the agency will review the results and determine whether there is enough safety to allow the MAX 9 to resume flying.

Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two U.S. airlines that fly the plane, have been forced to cancel hundreds of flights over the past week due to the grounding.

Alaska and United on Friday canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday, and United canceled several additional flights in the following days.

Boeing shares fell 2.2 percent on Friday and fell nearly 12 percent after the Alaska Airlines incident.

Confidence in Boeing has been shaken since twin MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people, prompting Congress to pass sweeping reforms to certify new planes.