An internal audit conducted by Boeing in December, at the urging of regulators, has identified some new safety issues with the aerospace company’s troubled 737 Max planes.
A report by the New York Times said the audit looked at every facet of the plane. Boeing has halted production of the aircraft as it continues to work to fix flaws with the model. “As part of the work to return the Max to service, the company and regulators have scrutinized every aspect of the jet, uncovering new potential design flaws,” the Times article stated.
Among the problems identified by the audit are potential wiring problems where bundles of wires may be too close together and could cause a dangerous short during flights. Boeing is still investigating whether it needs to conduct a fix of the problem on the roughly 800 737 Max planes it has already built.
The 737 Max has been grounded since March, after two crashes killed 346 people. The crashes were caused in part by new software on the Max, MCAS, which triggered erroneously and sent the planes into nose dives. Boeing has developed a fix for the software, but it has not yet been approved, and the process of returning the plane to service has taken much longer than Boeing expected.
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“We are working closely with the F.A.A. and other regulators on a robust and thorough certification process to ensure a safe and compliant design,” Gordon Johndroe, a Boeing spokesman, said in a statement. “We identified these issues as part of that rigorous process, and we are working with the F.A.A. to perform the appropriate analysis. It would be premature to speculate as to whether this analysis will lead to any design changes.” 