The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.
Are these facilities not regularly audited by a 3rd party to maintain their ISO certifications? The stuff mentioned in the article (key card feeler gauge...WTF!?) would/should have been caught in any routine audit.
That's absolutely insane...why is it not a requirement to have audits performed by a third party, or the FAA themselves? This is laughably ridiculous, especially for an industry that claims to be focused on safety and quality.
Dude. Regulatory agencies are corrupt as heck. There's no incentive to be a good auditor and actually dig deep to find issues and lots of incentive to have no findings. They're all buddies with the management.
We get AS9100 audits routinely. Also, for sub-tiers, we get customer audits.
The key card is fucking hilarious and I am going to give some friends some shit for that. But, no, every process isn't fully audited constantly. Any employee in visual distance should have called that shit out, though. It's not hard to get a feeler gauge stack or even a custom ground go/no go. Though would they know to check their feeler stack with a mic? Not likely if they think using a key card is reasonable.