Boeing urged to co-operate with federal inquiry into 737 Max mid-air blowout
▶ Pressure mounts on plane maker after it was accused of refusing to identify employees who worked on door panels
US Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg has called on Boeing to co-operate with a Department of Justice investigation into the blowout of a door panel on a 737 Max 9 jet operated by Alaska Airlines.
Federal investigators have contacted some passengers and crew who were on the January 5 flight, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“We respect the independence of [the] DOJ and NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] doing their own work, but we’re not neutral on the question of whether Boeing should fully co-operate with any entity: NTSB, us or DOJ,” Mr Buttigieg said.
“They should, and we expect them to.”
The report followed evidence given before Congress by NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy, who said Boeing had refused to identify employees who worked on door panels on 737 aircraft.
She also said the US plane maker did not provide documents on a repair job that included the reinstallation of the door panel that failed.
Boeing said it had provided the information to the NTSB after the Senate hearing.
“Early in the investigation, we provided the NTSB with names of Boeing employees, including door specialists, who we believed would have relevant information,” the plane maker said last Wednesday.
“We have now provided the full list of individuals on the 737 door team, in response to a recent request.” Boeing also added that if the repair job was undocumented, there would be no paperwork to share.
The Justice Department has also convened a grand jury with the power to issue subpoenas for interviews and documents, the Washington Post reported.
In a preliminary report, the NTSB found that four bolts that should have prevented the door panel blowout were apparently missing.
The NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration are also investigating other safety practices at Boeing.
The plane maker failed 33 out of 89 tests during an FAA audit of its 737 Max production process after the blowout incident, The New York Times reported on Monday.
Its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, the maker of fuselage parts for 737 Max jets, passed six of 13 audits and failed the rest, it said.
Earlier this month, Boeing said it was in talks to reacquire Spirit AeroSystems, which it spun out in 2005, marking a shift in the plane maker’s outsourcing stance.
The reintegration of Spirit would address safety concerns, which came to a head after the Alaska Airlines incident.
“We believe that the reintegration of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems’ manufacturing operations would further strengthen aviation safety, improve quality and serve the interests of our customers, employees and shareholders,” Boeing said at the time.
The 737 is Boeing’s most popular aircraft.
However, the Alaska Airlines panel blowout is the latest incident to affect the 737 Max, which was grounded for two years in March 2019, after a defect in its flight stabilising system led to two fatal crashes.
In February, the FAA gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to improve quality and meet safety standards after the Alaska Airlines incident.
Emirates airline president Tim Clark called for changes earlier this month at Boeing after a series of technical issues in the past couple of months brought regulatory focus back on the US plane maker.
Emirates, the world’s biggest long-haul airline and one of Boeing’s biggest customers, also said it would send its own engineers to observe the production process of Boeing’s 777 aircraft, as well as that of Spirit, after the latest safety issues.