Current:Home > reviewsWitnesses will tell a federal safety board about the blowout on a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year -ValueMetric
Witnesses will tell a federal safety board about the blowout on a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year
View
Date:2025-04-13 15:42:49
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! (77556)
Related
- Angelina Jolie nearly fainted making Maria Callas movie: 'My body wasn’t strong enough'
- Kim Kardashian says Kourtney is on 'bed rest' after older sister missed her birthday party
- Step Brothers' Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly Reunite and Surprise Snoop Dogg for His Birthday
- Britney Spears' Full Audition for The Notebook Finally Revealed
- Juan Soto to be introduced by Mets at Citi Field after striking record $765 million, 15
- ‘Superfog’ made of fog and marsh fire smoke blamed for traffic pileups, road closures in Louisiana
- Snoop Dogg gets birthday surprise from 'Step Brothers' Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly
- Trapped in Gaza for 2 weeks, hundreds of American citizens still not able to leave
- Blake Lively’s Inner Circle Shares Rare Insight on Her Life as a Mom to 4 Kids
- Man accused of killing 15-year-old was beaten by teen’s family during melee in Texas courtroom
Ranking
- Olympic women's basketball bracket: Schedule, results, Team USA's path to gold
- US journalist denied release, faces lengthy sentence in Russia on foreign agent charges
- Tanzania signs a controversial port management deal with Dubai-based company despite protests
- Taylor Swift, Brittany Mahomes cheer on Travis Kelce at Chiefs game with touchdown handshake
- Federal court filings allege official committed perjury in lawsuit tied to Louisiana grain terminal
- Large waves pound the northern Caribbean as Hurricane Tammy spins into open waters
- Man wounds himself after Georgia officers seek to question him about 4 jail escapees, sheriff says
- 2nd man charged with murder in 2021 birthday party gunfire that killed 3, injured 11
Recommendation
Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie return for an 'Encore,' reminisce about 'The Simple Life'
DeSantis PAC attack ad hits Nikki Haley on China, as 2024 presidential rivalry grows
Taylor Swift and Brittany Mahomes Are the Real MVPs for Their Chiefs Game Handshake
Why Jason Kelce Approves of Wife Kylie and Their Daughters Rooting for Travis Kelce's Team
Newly elected West Virginia lawmaker arrested and accused of making terroristic threats
At least 4 dead after storm hits northern Europe
Prosecutor: Ex-police chief who quit in excessive force case gets prison term for attacking ex-wife
Turkey’s president submits protocol for Sweden’s admission into NATO to parliament for ratification