Nearly three weeks after a hole opened in a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, terrifying passengers, new details about the jet’s production are intensifying scrutiny of Boeing’s quality control practices.
About a month before the Max 9 was delivered to Alaska Airlines in October, workers at the Boeing plant in Renton, Wash., opened and later reinstalled the panel that would be blown off the plane’s fuselage, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Officials opened the panel, known as a door plug, because work needed to be done on its rivets — which are often used to join and secure parts on airplanes — said the person, who requested anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly. while the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
The request to open the plug came from employees of Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier that builds the fuselage for the 737 Max in Wichita, Kan. After Boeing officials complied, Spirit employees based at Boeing’s Renton plant repaired the rivets. Boeing employees then reinstalled the door.
An internal system that tracks maintenance at the facility, which assembles 737s, shows the request for maintenance but does not contain information about whether the door plug was inspected after it was replaced, the person said.
Details could begin to answer a critical question about why the door plug disconnected from Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon minutes after takeoff on Jan. 5 . The door plug was placed where an emergency exit door would be if a jet had more seats. To stay in place, the plug relies primarily on a pair of bolts at the top and another pair at the bottom, as well as metal pins and pads on the sides.
The Seattle Times reported earlier Wednesday that Boeing had removed and reinstalled the door plug.
The FAA on Wednesday approved detailed guidelines for how airlines must inspect door plugs on about 170 grounded planes. The guidelines tell airlines to re-torque the fasteners in the door plug, check the bolts and parts of the plug and repair any damage they find. Airlines can start flying the jets again after the inspections are complete.
United Airlines said it will begin inspecting its 79 Max 9 planes under the new guidelines and plans to start using them again on flights on Sunday. Alaska Airlines said it plans to return “a few planes” to service on Friday and is expected to complete inspections on all 65 of its Max 9 jets next week.
Also Wednesday, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun met privately with lawmakers in Congress. It was the second time in recent years that the company and its leaders had to answer for serious problems with its planes. In 2018 and 2019, two 737 Max 8 crashes killed 346 people.
“The American flying public and Boeing line workers deserve a leadership culture at Boeing that puts safety before profits,” Washington State Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Democratic chairwoman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said Wednesday. He added that he would hold hearings “to investigate the root causes of these security deficiencies.”
How the panel was installed at the Boeing factory will almost certainly be the focus of federal investigations. In addition to the NTSB, the FAA is looking into the incident and manufacturing practices at Boeing and Spirit.
Citing the open NTSB investigation, Boeing referred questions to the agency, which declined to comment. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Boeing’s handling of the door stopper. A spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems said the company remains “focused on the quality of every airframe that leaves our facility.”
John Cox, a former airline pilot who runs a safety consultancy, said the new information about the door plug, if true, would be a sign of a “process failure” and raise questions about Boeing’s entire manufacturing operation .
“Are there similar issues in other areas besides the door?” he said. “You have to look at the whole assembly process.”
The FAA said Wednesday it would not allow Boeing to expand production of any new 737 Max series planes, a mainstay of the company’s commercial plane business, until the agency was satisfied that quality control had improved.
Mr Calhoun suggested this month that a manufacturing fault was responsible for the door plug explosion. But it was not clear whether the error, which Mr. Calhoun referred to as a “quality escape,” occurred at Boeing’s Renton plant or at Spirit’s Wichita facility, where the door plug was first installed.
The incident has raised new concerns about Boeing’s quality control among investors, airline executives, pilots, passengers and others, in addition to regulators. Boeing’s share price has fallen 14 percent since the explosion.
In recent days, several airline executives have been sharply critical of the company, a major supplier they rarely complain about publicly.
“I’m angry,” Ben Minicucci, chief executive of Alaska Airlines, told NBC News on Tuesday, adding that the airline had found loose bolts on “many” of its Max 9s. “My demand from Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs internally.”
Scott Kirby, chief executive of United Airlines, told CNBC on Tuesday that “the Max 9 landing is probably the straw that broke our camel’s back.” He also said he was concerned that Boeing would not be able to deliver another 737 Max plane the airline had ordered, the Max 10, soon. This model has not yet been certified by the FAA
“We’re going to make at least one design that the Max 10 won’t have,” Mr. Kirby said.
For now, Boeing remains in damage control mode. Mr. Calhoun visited the Spirit AeroSystems plant last week — a factory the plane maker sold in 2005. And Boeing said this week it planned to hold a “quality shutdown” on Thursday, during which teams production, delivery, and support would stop working to take quality classes.
The company said it plans to implement similar shutdowns at all of its commercial aircraft factories and manufacturing facilities in the coming weeks.
James Glandz, Sadul Nerkar and Bernhard Warner contributed to the report.
