The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal inquiry into the Boeing plane blowout that caused a big hole in an Alaska Airlines plane in January, as reported by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
Based on documents and sources, the newspaper mentioned that the investigators are reaching out to some passengers and crew, including pilots and flight attendants, from the January 5th flight.
The Boeing The Alaska Airlines plane experienced the blowout seven minutes after leaving Portland, Oregon, leading the pilots to execute an emergency landing. Following the incident, Boeing, which involved a panel detaching from a Max 9 jet, has faced increased scrutiny. Thankfully, there were no severe injuries.
Alaska Airlines stated, “It’s normal for the DOJ to be investigating in a situation like this. We are fully cooperating and do not believe we are being targeted in the investigation.”
Boeing chose not to comment, and the DOJ did not immediately respond to a comment request.
The investigation, as reported by the Journal, will support the Department's assessment of whether Boeing abided by a previous settlement related to a federal inquiry into the safety of its 737 Max aircraft after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
In 2021, Boeing had agreed to pay $2.5 billion, including a $244 million fine, to settle an investigation into the crashes of flights operated by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines. The company also blamed two employees for deceiving regulators about flaws in the flight-control system.
Boeing admitted in a letter to Congress that it cannot find records for work done on the door panel of the Alaska Airlines plane.
Ziad Ojakli, Boeing's executive vice president and chief government lobbyist, wrote to Sen. Maria Cantwell on Friday, “We have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation.”
The company suggested that the records regarding the panel’s removal and reinstallation on the 737 MAX final assembly line in Renton, Washington, were possibly never created, despite Boeing's systems mandating it.
This letter, earlier reported by The Seattle Times, followed a contentious Senate committee hearing where Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board argued about whether the company had cooperated with investigators.
The chair of the safety board, Jennifer Homendy, testified that Boeing had repeatedly refused to identify employees working on door panels on Boeing 737s for two months and failed to provide documentation related to a repair job that involved removing and reinstalling the door panel.
Homendy expressed, “It’s ridiculous that two months later we still don't have that information. Without that information, it raises concerns about the quality assurance, quality management, and safety management systems at Boeing.”
Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, demanded a response from Boeing within 48 hours.
Shortly after the Senate hearing, Boeing claimed to have given the NTSB the names of all employees working on 737 doors, and had previously shared some of them with investigators.
Boeing stated in the letter that it had previously told the safety board that it could not locate the documentation. Boeing claimed that until the hearing, it was not aware of any complaints or concerns about a lack of collaboration.
In a preliminary report last month, the NTSB stated that four bolts used to keep the door plug in place were missing after workers removed the panel to repair damaged rivets. The rivet repairs were done by contractors working for Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, but the NTSB still does not know who removed and replaced the door panel, Homendy said Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration recently gave Boeing 90 days to explain how it will address quality-control issues identified by the agency and a panel of industry and government experts. The panel uncovered problems in Boeing’s safety culture despite improvements made after two Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, resulting in 346 deaths.
