Boeing delays some 737 MAX deliveries after new quality defect

Feels like management is being extra careful but if the plane is a dog and has been optimised to keep the bean counters happy. Maybe these quality issues will crop up for years ?

It's better than nothing, but it looks to me it should have been flagged _by Boeing_ when they received the parts.

At face value, absolutely.

The cynic in me sees it slightly differently: once more under the scrutiny of the FAA (still trying to cover its own ass ever since the MAX crash debacle they contributed to), Boeing scrambled to find the most obvious problems that would show up in the up and coming investigation. Miss-drilled rivets would be the first one, as it was, according to some internal source, the original production problem with the Alaska Airlines MAX. And instead of having the FAA do the obvious thing of ordering a delivery stop, (tanking the share values even further) they put on a big show of internal investigation and overly cautious preemptive delivery stop to mitigate their share value loss.

Language elements such as "While this potential condition is not an immediate flight safety issue" (spoiler alert: it is, see that Alaska Airlines flight) and minimizations such as "two holes may not have been drilled exactly to our requirements", should immediately trigger your BS detectors.

It's bad, and they know it. And as internal sources are pointing out, it has been bad for a long time, and they have know it for a long time. So, in short, no, there is no reason to believe, at present, that they are drastically going to change their ways.

Link to the previous HN thread and article mentioning the rivet holes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39111494