While it feels like Boeing has been the subject of an endless stream of worrying quality control discoveries, it’s been 18 months since a door plug blew out on a Boeing 737 Max at 14,830 feet over Portland, Oregon. The National Transportation Safety Board released its report on the incident on Tuesday. The agency didn’t pull punches in laying blame on the aerospace giant and also noted the four missing bolts that were never found, likely thrown away.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was only six minutes into its flight after taking off from Portland International Airport when the door plug came loose and fell to the ground below. Luckily, no one was seated next to the hole in the fuselage. The plane safely returned to the airport and all 177 people onboard escaped injury. It took two days to find the plug and that’s when it became apparent that the bolts were missing. The plug had been slowly moving upward during previous flights. During the incident, the plug reached a point where the bolts would’ve hit a dozen stop pads to hold it. If just one of the bolts had been fitted, it would have kept the door plug in place.
Boeing’s failure were the blowout’s probable cause
The NTSB stated that the incident’s probable cause was “Boeing’s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight.” The four missing bolts were removed during the manufacturing process to facilitate rework on the aircraft, but were never reinstalled. However, many unanswered questions remain due to the absence of proper documentation from Boeing.
There’s no record of who removed and reinstalled the door plug, meaning that the Boeing employee was never identified and questioned by investigators about the company’s working conditions and procedures. The NTSB found that only one Boeing employee had prior experience removing door plugs out of the two dozen workers on the 737 Max door team, NPR reports. That one employee happened to be on vacation in September 2023 when the work on the incident’s plane occurred. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said:
“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA — should have been preventable. This time, it was missing bolts securing the MED plug. But the same safety deficiencies that led to this accident could just as easily have led to other manufacturing quality escapes and, perhaps, other accidents.”
The report doesn’t mark the end of the stiff regulatory scrutiny that Boeing is under. Investigations are still underway for the fatal crash of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad, India earlier this month. The wide-body airliner appeared to lose engine power while taking off and plummeted into the dining hall of a nearby medical college. The crash killed 241 people aboard the plane and 19 people on the ground. There was a sole survivor who walked away from the wreckage.
