A few years ago, I had read that certain airlines demanded planes manufacturered in Washington rather than South Carolina, and I wonder if that information actually ends up being a useful signal for better quality planes.
https://www.postandcourier.com/business/airline-surveys-poin...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/production-problems-prompt-broa...
The one with the blown door plug supposedly came off the Renton assembly line. No one is safe.
And frankly this time we're talking about the worst of the worst, the basic first step of making airplanes : being able to ensure parts of it doesn't fall off for no reason. This is not a design issue, not a cost cutting "they didn't put enough sensors" reason, this is straight up "their manufacturing is bad and their QA is not able to catch it", ... These things have barely started flying and 5 of those are already affected (well, 6 ...), this is absurd.
Sure MBA taking over tends to kill engineering companies ability to make great product, but even Hewlett Packard is still able to make printers that print (they suck, but that's by choice from them)...
I've seen a lot of confusion that its a systemic problem
If you expand the scope a bit, Boeing's had nasty assembly and manufacturing problems across its whole model lineup. I highly doubt this is a one off problem.
It's only the Max 9s that have the option of the door plug, if the installed seat count is below the threshold where an additional exit is required.