The U.S. Air Force will begin accepting Boeing KC-46As later this month and the company’s senior leadership is “embarrassed” by the foreign object debris (FOD) problem at its Everett, Washington, facility, according to the service's acquisition chief.
The service halted delivery of the KC-46A Pegasus a second time on March 23 after additional FOD was discovered on the brand-new tankers.
“Think of this as the second tip of the same iceberg—when we stopped the line the first time we found foreign object debris in unsealed areas of the tanker,” Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters April 9.
Roper met with Boeing senior leadership April 5 to review the KC-46 corrective action, and said he is pleased the company is taking the issue seriously.
“Both Boeing and [the Defense Contract Management Agency] opened up every sealed area on every aircraft and approved that corrective action plan before we resume acceptances,” Roper said. “When we see many months of FOD-free deliveries, then we’ll be willing to say that the quality assurance culture at Everett is back.”
Boeing is committed to delivering FOD-free aircraft and the issue is a company priority, company spokesman Chick Ramey said in an April 2 statement.
“Although we’ve made improvements to date, we can do better,” he said. “We are currently conducting additional company and customer inspections of the jets and have implemented preventative action plans.”
The company has implemented additional training, more rigorous cleaning practices and FOD awareness days to stress the urgency of the problem.
The service initially put a hold on KC-46 acceptance in late February after a FOD incident, followed by a March 11 announcement that it had lifted the hold and approved Boeing’s corrective action plan.