NTSB says Boeing isn’t sharing files on jet panel

Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board argued Wednesday over whether the company has cooperated with investigators looking into the blowout of a door-plug panel on one of its planes during a flight in January.

The NTSB chair, Jennifer Homendy, told a Senate committee that for two months Boeing repeatedly refused to identify employees who work on door panels on Boeing 737s. Investigators want to interview them.

Homendy also said the company has failed to provide documentation about a repair job that included removing and reinstalling the panel on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered the blowout — or even whether Boeing kept records.

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

“That is utterly unacceptable,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a committee member.

After the hearing, Boeing responded that it gave the NTSB the names of all employees who work on 737 doors — and had shared some of them with investigators.

The NTSB fired back, saying that Homendy “stands behind her accurate testimony” to the Senate Commerce Committee.

It is still not clear whether Boeing kept records about who removed the plug — a panel that takes the place of extra emergency doors when those doors are not required — on the Alaska plane last September.

Boeing has been under increasing scrutiny since the Jan. 5 incident in which a panel that plugged a space left for an extra emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines Max 9. Pilots were able to land safely.