Boeing says it can’t find work records related to door panel that blew out on Alaska Airlines flight

SEATTLE– Boeing has acknowledged in a letter to Congress that it can find no records of work on a door panel that exploded during an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon two months ago.

“We conducted an extensive search and found no such documentation,” Ziad Ojakli, executive vice president and government lobbyist at Boeing, wrote to Senator Maria Cantwell on Friday.

The company said its “working hypothesis” was that records of the panel’s removal and reinstallation on the 737 MAX final assembly line in Renton, Washington, were never created, even though Boeing’s systems required it.

The letter, previously reported by The Seattle Times, followed a contentious Senate committee hearing Wednesday in which Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board sparred over whether the company had cooperated with investigators.

Safety Board Chairman Jennifer Homendy testified that for two months Boeing repeatedly refused to identify employees working on the door panels of Boeing 737s and failed to provide documentation of a repair job that involved removing and reinstalling the door panel.

“It’s absurd that two months later we don’t have that anymore,” Homendy said. “Without that information, it raises concerns about quality assurance, quality management and safety management systems” at Boeing.

Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, demanded a response from Boeing within 48 hours.

Shortly after the Senate hearing, Boeing said it had given the NTSB the names of all employees working on 737 doors — and had previously shared some of them with investigators.

In the letter, Boeing says that it has already made it clear to the safety council that it cannot find the documentation. Until the hearing, it said: “Boeing was not aware of any complaints or concerns about a lack of cooperation.”

Boeing has been under increasing scrutiny since the Jan. 5 incident in which a panel sealing a space for an auxiliary emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines Max 9. Pilots were able to land safely and no injuries were reported.

In a preliminary report last month, the NTSB said four bolts that hold the door plug in place were missing after the panel was removed so workers could repair nearby damaged rivets last September. The rivet repairs were made by contractors from Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, but the NTSB still does not know who removed and replaced the door panel, Homendy said Wednesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently gave Boeing 90 days to indicate how it will respond to quality control issues raised by the agency and a panel of industry and government experts. The panel found problems in Boeing’s safety culture, despite improvements made after two Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.

Related Post