U.S.: 40 Boeing jets have been inspected

Federal officials have briefed a congressional committee on their investigations into a jetliner that lost a panel of its fuselage in midflight this month and revealed that airlines have inspected 40 identical Boeing planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it will review information from those inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets while it develops a maintenance process before letting the planes carry passengers again.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, and FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker spent two hours briefing members of the Senate Commerce Committee in Washington on Wednesday as questions continue to swirl around how the panel of an Alaska Airlines jetliner blew off while traveling 16,000 feet above Oregon. The officials indicated that their separate investigations of Boeing and the accident are in the early stages.

“Nothing was said about penalties or enforcement, but when there is an end result, I have no doubt but that there will be consequences,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, in an interview after the closed-door session.

Moran said Whitaker indicated that the FAA is focusing “on the challenges that Boeing has faced over a longer period of time, of which this incident, this potential disaster, was only one component.”

During the briefing, “there was also interest in trying to make sure that the FAA is doing its job in its oversight,” Moran said.

The FAA and NTSB declined to comment on the briefing.

Separately, Homendy said her agency will look into how exactly the panel was produced by Spirit AeroSystems and installed on the Alaska Airlines plane. She told reporters after the briefing that the panel was manufactured in Malaysia by Boeing’s leading supplier.

That development puts more attention on Boeing’s global supply chain. Over a period of many years, the company outsourced much if its manufacturing.