I visited the Airbus facility in Hamburg, about 20 years ago. They showed us lots of "scrap bins" at the various production lines. And "scrap bins" is what they called those indeed.
I particularly recall one with titanium (AFAIR) Hi-Lok bolts[1] that didn't pass the xray for defects. They told us those would be melted.
They looked flawless and were all brand new, nicely anodized. We were allowed to grab a few each, as souveniers. These are not cheap (I think the guys said they cost around 10 EUR each, at the time, but I may misremember) and a plane uses a shitload of them.
Now lets say you're out for whatever reason. That would halt your production line. If your safety culture is shitty, you may decide to just use those Hi-Loks that passed xray with 95% or whatever threshold suits you overcoming your shortage ...
And the above sounds to me like that's what the whisteblower suggested happened at Boeing.
I particularly recall one with titanium (AFAIR) Hi-Lok bolts[1] that didn't pass the xray for defects. They told us those would be melted.
They looked flawless and were all brand new, nicely anodized. We were allowed to grab a few each, as souveniers. These are not cheap (I think the guys said they cost around 10 EUR each, at the time, but I may misremember) and a plane uses a shitload of them.
Now lets say you're out for whatever reason. That would halt your production line. If your safety culture is shitty, you may decide to just use those Hi-Loks that passed xray with 95% or whatever threshold suits you overcoming your shortage ...
And the above sounds to me like that's what the whisteblower suggested happened at Boeing.
[1] https://www.lisi-aerospace.com/en/product/hi-lok-and-hi-lite...