Boeing ERASED video of workers ‘fixing’ Alaska Airlines door plug six months before it blew off mid flight and have no records of repairs were done, NTSB claims

Boeing has deleted security footage showing “repairs” being made to an Alaska Airlines flight months before a door plug blew out at 55,000 feet, sparking a major federal investigation into airline safety.

National Transportation Safety Board officials, who are investigating the incident, noted in a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the Boeing 737-9 aircraft underwent rivet repairs in September 2023.

The door plug blew out during the flight over Oregon on January 5, leading to an emergency landing.

NTSB leaders said the broken door plug had been opened months earlier during the repair work, but Boeing has been unable to locate records of the work.

‘To date, we still do not know who carried out the work to open, reinstall and close the door plug of the accident aircraft. Boeing has informed us that they cannot locate the documents documenting this work,” Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, wrote in the letter.

“A verbal request has been made by our detectives to obtain security camera footage in order to obtain this information; however, they were told that the images had been overwritten.

“The lack of that data will complicate the NTSB’s further investigation.”

Homendy stated in her letter that she had a phone conversation on March 3 with Boeing CEO David Calhoun, who personally confirmed that the company has “no record of the work performed.”

The NTBS launched both a criminal and a civil investigation into Boeing after the flight.

Boeing was plagued by several high-profile safety incidents in the weeks after the Alaska Airlines flight, which shifted the focus to its production processes.

The NTSB’s revelations come after an investigation found that the plane’s engineers were concerned about two warnings the day before the Jan. 5 flight.

Rather than retire the Boeing 737 Max 9, the aircraft decided to undertake three more flights the next day that would end in Portland, Oregon, the site of an Alaska Airlines maintenance facility.

A New York Times investigation found that the airline chose to keep the plane in service with hundreds of passengers despite the warning signs, which the company claims may have had nothing to do with the plug door blowing out.

The Boeing plane had only been in service for a few months and had sounded two alarms in the days before the incident, warning of problems with the plane’s pressurization system.

However, the airline said three warnings would be needed in that period to trigger more immediate action, and it was decided the plane could still carry several hundred passengers before entering for checks.

The airline has also reportedly maintained that the warnings did not meet the level required to be removed from service, and has said there is no evidence that the warning lights were related to the door bursting.

“From my perspective as a safety guy, looking at all the data and all the leading indicators, there was nothing that would cause me to make a different decision,” Max Tidwell, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of safety and security, told the New York Times.

Still, the warnings were enough to worry engineers, and they called for the plane to undergo urgent safety checks on January 5 to determine the cause of the warnings using a “predictive tool.”

The aircraft agreed to send it for maintenance, but decided it had to fly three more flights in between then, although some restrictions had been placed on the aircraft.

This included a ban on long-haul flights over water, such as transatlantic flights, or to remote destinations in the event of an emergency landing.

On the second of the three additional scheduled flights, the plug door blew out.

Boeing has denied wrongdoing in the case.

A former Boeing technician at Boeing’s North Charleston plant told DailyMail.com yesterday how employees were under “constant” pressure to find quick fixes and fail to document errors.

Joseph Clayton, who worked for Boeing between 2013 and 2019, told DailyMail.com that “end-level management pressured people to do things that were distasteful, such as performing undocumented maintenance.”

“As an AMP technician, everything has to be documented, but they would say, ‘Just put a nut and bolt in it and fix it without addressing the problem,’” Clayton recalls.

“Almost everyone there has had to do something that’s wrong,” he said.

It comes after the death of whistleblower John Barnett, who was in the middle of a lawsuit related to the production of the 787 Dreamliner at the same factory, which opened in 2009.

The lawsuit alleged that under-pressure workers deliberately installed “substandard” parts on Boeing 787s, and that management swept defects under the rug to save money.

The 62-year-old died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, South Carolina’s Charleston County coroner’s office confirmed Tuesday.

“If you said ‘no’ and tried to do it the right way, they would say you were being rebellious,” Clayton told DailyMail.com of management’s attitude to production issues.

‘I asked them to put everything in an email, but of course they never sent that email.

“As flight engineers, we are more liable for mistakes than regular employees,” he said.

Adding: ‘I am liable for deferred maintenance going back twenty years, so you must have it documented.’

Clayton described the compelling and frightening experience of leaving the multibillion-dollar company in 2019.

‘When I left I had an NDA, so I can only speak in vague terms. Technically it wasn’t a condition of my leaving, but they gave me two weeks’ pay if I signed it.

“I knew that as soon as I planned to leave, I needed an escape plan in case I got rolled by them.

“They took a lot of people who wanted to do the right thing, even if it takes longer, and they sent them to the ’19th section’ and put you there and forgot about you,” he said of his colleagues who spoke out.

“It’s a multi-billionaire company, so there’s no telling what could happen,” Clayton said when asked about his concerns about his and other whistleblowers’ safety.

“I’m sad about my friend on the flight line,” Clayton said of Barnett.

“Working with John he was a good guy, it’s one of those things where you don’t know what could happen day to day in that place.

‘The pressure is changing and coming from different directions. They’re good at getting away with what they do, they know what they’re doing, they’ve been doing it for a long time to get away with it.”

“I still have friends who work there and they say it’s still the same as it used to be, except for slightly better pay and benefits.”

Boeing did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment on Clayton’s allegations.