Witnesses will tell a federal safety board about the blowout on a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year
The National Transportation Safety Board is about to hold a two-day hearing into the blowout of a panel from the side of a Boeing 737 Max airliner
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
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