The fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 7.NTSB/Reuters
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Wednesday that inspections of an initial group of 40 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes have been completed, a key hurdle to eventually ungrounding the planes after a Jan. 5 incident in which a cabin panel broke off in midflight on a new Alaska Airlines jet.
On Friday, the FAA had said 40 of 171 grounded planes needed to be re-inspected before the agency would review the results and determine if it is safe to allow the Boeing MAX 9s to resume flying. The FAA on Wednesday said it will “thoroughly review the data” before deciding if the planes can resume flights.
The incident has shaken confidence in Boeing’s planes a few years after a pair of crashes killed 346 people and sparked investigations into the company’s production processes. On Wednesday, the heads of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which made the panel, met with Spirit employees in Kansas, while regulators answered questions from U.S. senators in a closed-door hearing in Washington.
Boeing BA-N shares have lost roughly 20% of their value since the beginning of the year.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA briefed senators on the Commerce Committee for more than an hour on the investigation into why the MAX 9 cabin panel – a door plug for an unused emergency exit on those planes – blew out, leaving a gaping hole.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the board still did not know what went wrong, but was casting a wide net for potential issues, and said the NTSB will be looking at numerous records related to the door plug.
Homendy said the door plug on the MAX 9 was produced by a Spirit AeroSystems facility in Malaysia. She said the NTSB is looking at the door plug transfer from Malaysia to Wichita, Kansas, and then onto the fuselage, along with the shipment by rail to Boeing’s Renton, Washington, facility and Boeing’s “quality assurance” work.
U.S. Senator J.D. Vance said the door plug “gets put on and taken off a lot and it is not really clear at what step of the process there was a failure here.”
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell said she plans to hold a hearing on the issue and wants to make sure the FAA is ensuring strong oversight of Boeing.
“This investigation needs to find out where the mistake was, what caused this accident, and critically what needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Senator Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the panel.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun visited Spirit AeroSystems’ production facilities in Wichita on Wednesday for an employee town hall alongside that company’s CEO, Pat Shanahan.
Speaking to about 270 factory workers, engineers and other staff, Shanahan said Spirit would “make changes and improvements” and “will restore confidence.”
Calhoun said: “We’re going to get better, not because the two of us are talking, but because (of) the engineers at Boeing, the mechanics at Boeing, the inspectors at Boeing, the engineers at Spirit, the mechanics at Spirit, the inspectors at Spirit.”
The two executives answered several questions from employees, ranging from how lessons from the incident could influence future airplane designs, and whether Spirit and Boeing were united on a path forward, said a source in the room.
Calhoun and Shanahan also toured the Wichita production plant, said Spirit AeroSystems spokesman Joe Buccino.
The idea for the town hall stemmed from Calhoun, who suggested speaking directly with Spirit’s work force, two sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. Boeing declined to comment.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two U.S. carriers that use the aircraft and completed the inspections, have had to cancel hundreds of flights this month, with Alaska cancellations now continuing through Friday.
United declined to comment.
Boeing on Tuesday named retired U.S. Navy Admiral Kirkland H. Donald to advise the plane maker’s CEO on improving quality control.