Not ‘a PR campaign’ for Boeing: NTSB begins hearing about midflight blowout

The National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) two-day hearing could reveal new insights into the Jan. 5 midflight blowout of a panel from a Boeing 737 Max. The powerful accident on Alaska Airlines flight 1282 happened just minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, as the plane climbed to 16,000 feet, causing a loud boom and left a large hole in the side of the jet, terrifying both passengers and crew members.

According to the NTSB’s already released 3,000 pages of documents about the incident, seven passengers and one flight attendant suffered minor physical injuries, but also suffered significant mental anguish.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy addressed those passengers and crew members as the hearing began.

“On behalf of the entire agency we are so sorry for all that you experienced during this very traumatic event,” Homendy said. “This was quite traumatic for the crew and the passengers and injuries we can’t see that we don’t often talk about can have profound lasting impacts on lives and livelihoods.”

NTSB investigators have already said in a preliminary report that Boeing workers failed to replace four bolts that helped secure the panel, which is called a door plug, after a repair job.

Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems originally installed the door plug which was removed from the Alaska Airlines jet to repair rivets. The hearing, that started on Tuesday and will continue through Wednesday, includes sworn testimony from top-brass at Boeing, Spirit and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Association of Machinists.

Among the first witnesses called Tuesday was Spirit Senior Vice President Terry George and Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s senior vice president for quality of commercial airplanes. George explained under oath that just five years ago 95% of factory employees had experience working with sheet metal, but now that number is closer to just 5%.

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Lund shared details about Boeing’s safety and inspection processes and about the impact COVID-19 had on production and worker experience before turning her attention on worker safety and training programs.

“We made improvements, but quite frankly what we heard from our workforce loud and clear this year when we began our quality and safety stand downs was that we had more work to do,” Lund said. “Since that time, starting with this year we have made significant enhancements both to our foundational training as well as to our structural on the job training.”

However, International Association of Machinists’ President Lloyd Catlin painted a different picture about worker training. “We’ve never been impressed with Boeing’s training at all since somewhere around 2008,” Catlin said. “Prior to the January 5th door plug blowout Boeing’s training at their foundational training center was in really bad shape. There have been changes but I don’t know that there’s been enough.”

Tuesday, witnesses were expected to testify about events that led up to the Jan. 5 incident, including what investigators say was Boeing’s lack of focus on inspections and missing repair documents related to the Alaska Airlines jet.

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Instead, at one point, NTSB Chair Homendy accused Lund and other panelists of dancing around details directly related to the incident. “A word of caution here. This isn’t a PR campaign for Boeing,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “What we want to know is what happened… leading up to what happened in January.”

Nobody from Alaska Airlines is scheduled to testify during this week’s hearing which could be a clear indicator the NTSB has determined it does not bear any responsibility in the incident.

It could be a year before the NTSB releases and full report.

Boeing, which has yet to recover financially from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019, has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019. Later this week, the company will get its third chief executive in 4 1/2 years.

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Testimony from NTSB hearings is not admissible in court, but lawyers suing Boeing over this and other accidents will be watching, knowing that they can seek depositions from witnesses to cover the same ground.

“Our cases are already solid — door plugs shouldn’t blow out during a flight,” said one of those lawyers, Mark Lindquist of Seattle. “Our cases grow even stronger, however, if the blowout was the result of habitually shoddy practices. Are jurors going to see this as negligence or something worse?”

Contributing: The Associated Press

Luke Duecy is a reporter for KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories here and email him here.