Boeing faced fresh criticism from a federal regulator on Thursday over revelations about the ongoing investigation into a harrowing January flight in which one of the company’s 737 Max planes lost a panel, exposing passengers to howling winds at about 16,000 feet. .
Speaking to reporters at the company’s factory in Renton, Washington, Boeing executive Elizabeth Lund gave new details Tuesday about how the plane involved in the incident left the factory apparently without four critical bolts that secure the panel, known as door plug, in place.
Boeing said the information was not for release until Thursday morning, under a mutual agreement that allowed reporters in attendance to edit the detailed briefing.
But on Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board reprimanded the company for sharing investigative information and speculating about the cause of the incident, saying Boeing had “flagrantly violated” the agency’s rules on active investigations. The agency said it would provide details of that breach to the Justice Department, which is investigating the January flight.
“As a party to many NTSB investigations over the past few decades, few entities know the rules better than Boeing,” the agency said in a statement.
The NTSB also said it would revoke Boeing’s access to the agency’s investigative information and that the company would not be able to ask questions of other participants in an August hearing. The agency said it confirmed Boeing’s breach after receiving a copy of the press release.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the NTSB review.
The January incident on an Alaska Airlines flight caused no serious injuries, but raised new concerns about the quality of Boeing planes more than five years after two fatal crashes involving the Max. In response, Boeing announced changes aimed at improving quality and safety, including expanding training, simplifying designs and processes, and reducing supplier defects.
Boeing held Tuesday’s briefing, followed by a tour of the factory, to show the progress it has made so far in improving quality. Ms. Lund also offered new details about the events leading up to the incident.
When the fuselage of the plane involved in the January flight arrived at Boeing’s factory in the summer of 2023, five rivets did not meet specifications. As the plane passed through the factory, Boeing and Spirit discussed how to address the problem, Ms. Lund said at the briefing this week. When they decided the rivets needed to be replaced, work on the plane was nearing completion.
The panel was removed to correct nearby rivets, but no one documented this removal. Later, a team known as a “motion crew” prepared the aircraft to bring it out, closing the painting, he said. It was not that crew’s responsibility to replace the bolts securing the door and the lack of documentation meant no one else knew how to replace the bolts, Ms Lund added.
The panel, which fit snugly in the gap it covered, survived about 500 flight hours before exploding on the Alaska Airlines flight.
Asked by a reporter about the people involved, Ms. Lund said “the ‘who’ is absolutely the responsibility of the NTSB” and declined to comment further. The agency disagreed with that characterization, saying it “focused on the probable cause of the accident, without assigning blame to any individual or assessing liability.” This approach is crucial to such investigations because it encourages people with information to come forward without undue fear of retribution.
The January incident was another blow to Boeing’s reputation after two Max 8 plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The crashes led to a worldwide ban on Max that lasted about 20 months. the plane started flying again in late 2020.
For years after the crashes, Boeing executives assured regulators, airlines and the public that they had made sweeping changes to improve the quality and safety of its planes. But the January incident — and reports from current and former employees of shoddy work and bad management decisions, as reported by the New York Times and others — suggest the changes he made then didn’t go far enough.
One of the most significant changes Boeing has made since January was that the fuselages of 737 Max planes undergo more stringent inspection before being shipped to Renton, near Seattle, for final assembly. The airframe is manufactured in Wichita, Kan., by Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier Boeing is expected to acquire soon.
That change went into effect a few months ago and has resulted in significantly fewer major defects that need to be repaired at the Boeing factory, said Ms. Lund, the senior vice president for quality in Boeing’s commercial airplane division. The supplier inspections also allowed Boeing to build the Max more quickly once the bodies arrived at its factory.
The company is also producing fewer planes than planned because the Federal Aviation Administration, its main regulator, limited its production rate after the January flight.
“We’ve strengthened our presence at the supplier, we make sure the parts are perfect where they’re shipped, we inspect them there, they rework them there and then we ship the parts,” Ms Lund said. “The benefits have been really huge.”
Ms. Lund said the previous Max crisis forced Boeing to reform its engineering practices, but that the most recent incident required improvements to the manufacturing process.
“When this accident occurred, it gave us an opportunity to look at a different area,” he said.
Other improvements the company has made, Ms. Lund said, include more training for new hires before they start working on airplanes and expanded on-the-job training. The company sent more than 160 workplace coaches, including veterans and retired engineers, to help younger workers get up to speed.
The company is also accelerating efforts to simplify a number of designs and processes, Ms. Lund said. Boeing increased inspections and internal monitoring and put a renewed emphasis on encouraging workers to speak up about concerns, collecting thousands of new comments and recommendations to improve quality.
Boeing is also trying to reduce tasks performed out of sequence, known as traveling tasks, which can increase the risk of errors and cause other problems. The company said it had imposed stricter requirements that had to be met before the planes could go on the production line. That and other changes helped the company reduce the amount of work it traveled by more than 50 percent, Ms. Lund said.
