‘Suspicious’ Damage Found on Boeing Jets

Boeing Co. said Thursday that “suspicious” damage was found to electrical wires of as many as 10 jetliners undergoing final assembly at a Seattle-area plant and that the FBI has launched an investigation into possible tampering.

The damaged wires on the 737s were repaired and no other cases have been found. But the company said it is conducting an internal probe to determine what or who inflicted the damage to the world’s most popular commercial airplane.

The company, which recently shocked its hometown of Seattle by deciding to move its headquarters to Chicago, balked at some analysts’ suggestion that the damage may be sabotage. But Boeing noted that the wiring problems were “not common in the normal course of manufacturing.”

The 737 is assembled at a mammoth factory in Renton, Wash. Relations with workers there have been strained since the company announced it would move some operations to Wichita, Kan., and rumors that the facility would be closed have been rampant in recent months.

A Boeing spokeswoman said each aircraft showed one incident of damage, and that it occurred in a different place on each plane. The damage was found during the testing that is part of the jetliner assembly process.

“I can’t really go into the specifics of what the damages were, but the frequency and the type of damage lead us to say it’s suspicious,” said Sandy Angers, a Boeing spokeswoman.

Angers said Boeing mechanics first found the damage two weeks ago on seven aircraft.

“It gave our manufacturing managers pause to check for earlier incidents where we have had wire damage,” Angers said. “That’s when we found three additional incidents, but that doesn’t mean it could be related.”

Boeing said it notified the Federal Aviation Administration, which in turn contacted the FBI. Tampering with an aircraft is a federal offense.

Incidents in which employees are suspected of causing intentional damage to airplanes is rare. In 1989, four MD-80 jetliners under assembly at a McDonnell Douglas plant in Long Beach were damaged by vandals who wrecked aircraft control systems, wires and a windshield. A few years earlier, charges were brought against people who tried to damage jet engine production at a French company during a labor dispute.

“It’s either a flaw in their manufacturing process or sabotage,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, director of aviation consulting at Teal Group Corp., a Fairfax, Va., research firm. “It’s very unusual to have a sequence of comparable damages.”

Boeing said it has stepped up security at the Renton plant, where it also builds 757s.

There are some 36 miles of wiring in a 737, which consists of 357,000 parts fastened together by more than 600,000 bolts and rivets. The plane takes about two weeks to assemble and undergoes four different “functional” tests during the final production. The tests include powering up all electronic components.

It was during one of the functional tests that the damaged wiring was found. Initially, the damage was found on a single wire, a Boeing executive said.

“An internal investigation is underway to determine probable cause, and if possible, the responsible party or parties,” the company said. “If it is determined that these incidents of wire damage were caused intentionally, Boeing will take swift, immediate action.”

The 737 is the No. 1-selling commercial jetliner of all time. Boeing has produced nearly 4,000 of them since the first one flew in 1968. Boeing introduced a second generation of the plane in 1995 with the 126-passenger 737-700. The line now includes the smaller, 110-passenger 737-600, the 162-passenger 737-800 and the 189-passenger 737-900.

There are more than 825 737s in the air at any given time, with one taking off from an airport every six seconds, Boeing said.