Josh Funk
Jennifer Homendy’s National Road Safety Board Chairman said Tuesday that the heroic actions of the crew on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 ensured that everyone survived the horrifying incident last year when the door plug panel jumped off the plane shortly after takeoff in January 2024.
But Homendy said if Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration did enough to ensure the safety of the Boeing 737 Max plane, “the crew didn’t have to be heroes because this accident would never happen.”
She said the last 17 months of investigations have discovered a bigger problem than the revelation that the bolts that secure what is known as door plug panels have been removed and that they will not be replaced during repairs.
According to Homedy, Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg has improved safety a lot since he got a job last summer, but there’s more to be done. The board is expected to approve some recommendations at its meeting Tuesday.
The blowout on Alaska Airlines Flight Flight 1282 came just minutes after taking off from Portland, Oregon, sucking objects from the cabin and creating a vacuum of roaring air that was scattered across the ground below, along with the remains from the fuselage. One flight attending the seven passengers and one flight suffered minor injuries, but no one was killed. The pilot was able to safely land the plane at the airport.
The oxygen mask fell and the phone rang out
The accident occurred when the plane flew 16,000 feet (4,800 meters). During the rapid decompression, several phones and other objects were swept through the airplane holes as the oxygen mask fell, causing 171 passengers to compete with the wind and roaring noise.
The first six minutes of a flight to Ontario International Airport in Southern California were routine. The Boeing 737 Max 9 was in the middle of a cruise altitude, with passengers explaining the loud “boom” and the wind was so strong that it moved over 400 mph (640 kph) as the shirt ripped off someone’s back.
“We knew something was wrong,” Kelly Bartlett told The Associated Press in the days after the flight. “We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how serious it was. We didn’t know if we were going to crash.”
A 2-foot x 4-foot (61cm x 122cm) fuselage covering the surgical emergency exit behind the left wing was blown away. Only seven seats in the flight were unavailable, including the two seats closest to the opening.
The missing bolts focus on Boeing’s manufacturing
The blown panels were created and installed by supplier Spirit Aerosystems. It was removed at the Boeing factory so workers could repair damaged rivets, but no bolts were replaced to help secure the door plugs. It is not clear who deleted the panel.
In a preliminary report, NTSB said four bolts were not replaced after repair work at the Boeing plant, but the company said the work was undocumented.
Investigators determined that the door plug was gradually moving upwards on Flight 154 before the incident before the incident.
A Boeing Factory worker said NTSB investigators felt pressured to work too quickly and were asked to perform unqualified tasks, such as opening and closing door plugs for specific planes involved. Only one of the 24 people on the door team had previously deleted one of these plugs, and the person was on vacation when it was airplane.
Boeing door installers said they were never asked to take shortcuts, but everyone faced pressure to keep the assembly line moving.
“That’s how mistakes happen. People try to work too quickly,” he told investigators. The installer and other workers were not named in the documentation regarding the probe.
Investigators said Boeing has not done enough to train new workers who don’t have a manufacturing background. Many of the workers hired after the two crashes involving the 737 biggest planes, had no experience with that.
However, NTSB staff also said Boeing doesn’t have strong enough safety practices to ensure that the door plugs are properly reinstalled. The FAA testing system said it does not do a suitable job in manufacturing to catch systemic disorders.
Boeing 737 Max Issue
The Max version of Boeing’s bestselling 737 plane has been a permanent source of trouble for the company since killing one in Indonesia in 2018 and a total of 346 people in Ethiopia in 2019 as two jets crashed.
Investigators determined that these crashes were caused by a system that rely on sensors that provide defective measurements to push the nose down, and that the pilot was unable to regain control. After the second crash, MaxJet was grounded worldwide until the company redesigned the system.
Last month, the Justice Department reached a deal that allowed Boeing to avoid criminal prosecutions that allegedly mislead US regulators about the maximum before the two crashes.
However, Federal Aviation Administration regulators concluded Boeing’s largest production of 737 with 38 jets a month, while investigators ensured the company has strengthened its safety practices.
Boeing hired Autoberg last year to create a new position to help quality senior vice presidents improve manufacturing.
The company returned to the news earlier this month. At that time, the 787 that Air India flew crashed shortly after takeoff, killing at least 270 people. Investigators have not determined what caused the crash, but so far they have not found flaws in models with strong safety records.
Associated Press writer Clearrash from Portland, Oregon contributed to this report.
Original issue: June 24th, 2025, 11:39am EDT
