[jordanb]

The issue was actually the door plug scandal. It showed that Boeing's QC was compromised in their factory and they were not able to properly certify that the aircraft were being built as designed.

As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.

[rogerrogerr]

SC wasn't really involved in this. The fuselage came from Spirit in Kansas, and final assembly happened in Renton.

[epolanski]

Does it matter? As a customer of the plane (and traveller) I'd like QA to be top notch and I would expect it to be final inspection at assembly stage.

[rogerrogerr]

I'm just correcting the false statements (probably an honest mistake) in the comment that said "this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory"

[jimbob45]

Noob here, would that not also have potentially been found during routine maintenance inspections?

[bombcar]

It was such a way that you had to disassemble the entire thing to see it wasn't assembled correctly - routine maintenance is looking for wear items, not usually "they didn't put any bolts in".