Current:Home > MarketsWitnesses will tell a federal safety board about the blowout on a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year -EliteFunds
Witnesses will tell a federal safety board about the blowout on a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year
Poinbank Exchange View
Date:2025-04-10 11:57:40
Investigators will question Boeing officials during a hearing starting Tuesday about the midflight blowout of a panel from a 737 Max, an accident that further tarnished the company’s safety reputation and left it facing new legal jeopardy.
The two-day hearing could provide new insight into the Jan. 5 accident, which caused a loud boom and left a gaping hole in the side of the Alaska Airlines jet.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said in a preliminary report that four bolts that help secure the panel, which is call a door plug, were not replaced after a repair job in a Boeing factory, but the company has said the work was not documented. During the two-day hearing, safety board members are expected to question Boeing officials about the lack of paperwork that might have explained how such a potentially tragic mistake occurred.
“The NTSB wants to fill in the gaps of what is known about this incident and to put people on the record about it,” said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. The agency will be looking to underscore Boeing’s failures in following the process it had told the Federal Aviation Administration it was going to use in such cases, he said.
The safety board will not determine a probable cause after the hearing. That could take another year or longer. It is calling the unusually long hearing a fact-finding step.
Among the scheduled witnesses is Elizabeth Lund, who has been Boeing’s senior vice president of quality — a new position — since February, and officials from Spirit AeroSystems, which makes fuselages for Max jets.
Spirit installed the door plug — a panel that fills a space created for an extra exit on some planes — on the Alaska Airlines jet, but the panel was removed and the bolts taken off in a Boeing factory near Seattle to repair rivets.
The NTSB’s agenda for the hearing includes testimony about manufacturing and inspections, the opening and closing of the door plug in the Boeing factory, safety systems at Boeing and Spirit, and the FAA’s supervision of Boeing.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker has conceded that his agency’s oversight of the company “was too hands-off — too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections.” He has said that is changing.
The plane involved had been delivered to Alaska Airlines in late October and had made only about 150 flights. The airline stopped using the plane on flights to Hawaii after a warning light indicating a possible pressurization problem lit up on three different flights.
The accident on flight 1282 occurred minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, as the plane flew at 16,000 feet (4,800 meters). Oxygen masks dropped during the rapid decompression, a few cell phones and other objects were swept through the hole in the plane, passengers were terrified by wind and roaring noise, but miraculously no one was injured.
The pilots landed safely back in Portland. The door plug was found in a high school science teacher’s backyard in Cedar Hills, Oregon.
No one from the airline was called to testify this week before the NTSB. Goglia, the former safety board member, said that indicates the agency has determined “that Alaska has no dirty hands in this.”
Tension remains high between the NTSB and Boeing, however. Two months after the accident, board Chair Jennifer Homendy and Boeing got into a public argument over whether the company was cooperating with investigators.
That spat was largely smoothed over, but in June a Boeing executive angered the board by discussing the investigation with reporters and — even worse in the agency’s view — suggesting that the NTSB was interested in finding someone to blame for the blowout.
NTSB officials see their role as identifying the cause of accidents to prevent similar ones in the future. They are not prosecutors, and they fear that witnesses won’t come forward if they think NTSB is looking for culprits.
So the NTSB issued a subpoena for Boeing representatives while stripping the company of its customary right to ask questions during the hearing.
The accident led to several investigations of Boeing, most of which are still underway.
The FBI has told passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight that they might be victims of a crime. The Justice Department pushed Boeing to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud after finding that it failed to live up to a previous settlement related to regulatory approval of the Max.
Boeing, which has yet to recover financially from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019, has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019. Later this week, the company will get its third chief executive in 4 1/2 years.
Testimony from NTSB hearings is not admissible in court, but lawyers suing Boeing over this and other accidents will be watching, knowing that they can seek depositions from witnesses to cover the same ground.
“Our cases are already solid — door plugs shouldn’t blow out during a flight,” said one of those lawyers, Mark Lindquist of Seattle. “Our cases grow even stronger, however, if the blowout was the result of habitually shoddy practices. Are jurors going to see this as negligence or something worse?”
veryGood! (421)
Related
- Appeals court scraps Nasdaq boardroom diversity rules in latest DEI setback
- Environmental groups ask EPA to intervene in an Alabama water system they say is plagued by leaks
- Migrant mothers arriving in New York find support, hope — and lots of challenges
- Brendan Malone, longtime NBA coach and father of Nuggets' Michael Malone, dies at 81
- Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
- 5 Things podcast: Israel hits Gaza with slew of airstrikes after weekend Hamas attacks
- Scrutiny of Arkansas governor’s $19,000 lectern deepens after new records are released
- Man arrested for throwing rocks at Illinois governor’s Chicago home, breaking 3 windows, police say
- 'Squid Game' without subtitles? Duolingo, Netflix encourage fans to learn Korean
- Students speak out about controversial AP African American Studies course: History that everybody should know
Ranking
- Realtor group picks top 10 housing hot spots for 2025: Did your city make the list?
- Israel-Hamas war death toll tops 1,500 as Gaza Strip is bombed and gun battles rage for a third day
- American in Israel whose family was taken hostage by Hamas speaks out
- See Gerry Turner React to Golden Bachelor Contestant’s “Fairytale” Moment in Sneak Peek
- IRS recovers $4.7 billion in back taxes and braces for cuts with Trump and GOP in power
- Nashville officer fatally shoots man with knife holding hostage, police say
- Who is KSI? YouTuber-turned-boxer is also a musician, entrepreneur and Logan Paul friend
- Environmental groups ask EPA to intervene in an Alabama water system they say is plagued by leaks
Recommendation
Elon Musk's skyrocketing net worth: He's the first person with over $400 billion
Judge’s order cancels event that would have blocked sole entrance to a Kansas abortion clinic
USPS proposes 5th postage hike since 2021 — a move critics call unprecedented
Ron DeSantis to file for New Hampshire primary Thursday
Most popular books of the week: See what topped USA TODAY's bestselling books list
2 top Polish military commanders resign in a spat with the defense minister
USPS proposes 5th postage hike since 2021 — a move critics call unprecedented
Biden says 14 Americans killed by Hamas in Israel, U.S. citizens among hostages: Sheer evil