Boeing to pay $17 million to settle plane production issues

Boeing Co will pay $17 million in penalties under a Federal Aviation Administration settlement after it installed equipment on 759 Boeing 737 MAX and NG aircraft that contained sensors that were not approved, the FAA said on Thursday.

The FAA said the settlement separately covers the planemaker’s submission of 178 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft for airworthiness certification when the aircraft potentially had non-conforming slat tracks installed, and improperly marked those slat tracks.

Boeing has agreed to a number of corrective actions, including conducting safety risk-management analyses to determine "whether its supply-chain oversight processes are appropriate and whether the company is ready to safely increase the Boeing 737 production rate," the agency said.

The company must strengthen procedures to ensure it does not install any aircraft parts that fail to conform to their approved design, the FAA said.

Boeing said the "penalties stem from issues that were raised in 2019 and which we fully resolved in our production system and supply chain. We continue to devote time and resources to improving safety and quality performance across our operations."

If Boeing does not complete corrective actions in a timely fashion, the FAA can levy up to $10.1 million in additional penalties, Reuters reported.

Boeing must also revise production procedures to enable the FAA "to observe production rate readiness assessments, (and) the data on which the company bases the assessments, and the results of the assessments."