NTSB imposes sanctions on Boeing over revelations in 737 Max investigation

Boeing faced renewed criticism from a U.S. safety regulator on Thursday over revelations about its ongoing investigation into a thrilling flight in January in which a panel was lost on one of the company’s 737 Max planes, exposing passengers to howling winds at an altitude of around 16,000 feet.

In an interview with the press at a company plant in Renton, Washington, on Tuesday, Elizabeth Lund, a Boeing executive, revealed new details about how the plane involved in the incident apparently left the factory without the four critical screws that secured the plate known as the door plug.

Boeing said the information would not be released until Thursday morning as part of a customary agreement to give reporters in attendance time to process the detailed briefing.

But on Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board reprimanded the company for sharing investigative information and speculating about the cause of the incident. Boeing “flagrantly violated” the agency’s rules for ongoing investigations. The agency said it would provide details of the violation to the Justice Department, which is investigating the flight in January.

“Because Boeing has been involved in many NTSB investigations over the past decades, few know the rules better than Boeing,” the agency said in a statement.

The NTSB also said it would strip Boeing of access to the agency’s investigative information and that the company would not be allowed to ask questions of other participants at a hearing in August. The agency said it confirmed Boeing’s violation after receiving a transcript of the press conference.

Boeing apologized in a statement for the unsolicited comment.

“We deeply regret that some of our comments, which were intended to clarify our responsibility for the accident and explain our actions, exceeded the NTSB’s role as a source of investigative information,” the company said. “We apologize to the NTSB and stand ready to answer any questions as the agency continues its investigation.”

The incident on an Alaska Airlines flight in January resulted in no serious injuries but raised new doubts about the quality of Boeing’s planes, more than five years after two fatal Max crashes. In response, Boeing announced changes to improve quality and safety, including expanding training, simplifying plans and procedures and reducing supplier defects.

Boeing held a news conference on Tuesday, followed by a factory tour, to showcase the progress the company had made so far in improving quality. Ms. Lund also provided new details about the events leading up to the incident.

When the fuselage of the plane involved in the January flight arrived at Boeing’s factory in the summer of 2023, five rivets were out of specifications. As the plane was being transported through the factory, Boeing and a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, which had manufactured the plane’s fuselage, discussed how to fix the problem, Ms. Lund said in the meeting this week. By the time they decided the rivets needed to be replaced, work on the plane was nearly complete.

The panel was removed to fix the nearby rivets, but no one documented this. Later, a team known as the “move crew” prepared the plane for transport outside and closed the panel, she said. It was not that crew’s job to replace the bolts that secured the door, and due to a lack of documentation, no one else knew how to replace the bolts, Ms. Lund added.

The panel, which fit snugly into the gap it covered, lasted about 500 hours of flight before it burst on the Alaska Airlines flight.

When asked by a reporter about the people involved, Ms. Lund said “the ‘who’ is absolutely the responsibility of the NTSB” and declined further comment. The agency disagreed with that characterization, saying it had “focused on the probable cause of the accident and not on assigning blame to any individual or assessing liability.” That approach is critical to such investigations because it encourages people with information to come forward without undue fear of retribution.

Ms. Lund was promoted in February as part of a leadership restructuring to her current role as senior vice president responsible for quality for all of Boeing’s commercial airplanes. Most recently, she was responsible for commercial airplane production programs. Prior to that, she held other leadership positions, including supply chain development and strategy.

The January incident was a new blow to Boeing’s reputation, following two crashes of Max 8 aircraft in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The crashes led to a global grounding of the Max that lasted about 20 months; the aircraft resumed flight operations in late 2020.

For years after the crashes, Boeing executives assured regulators, airlines and the public that they had made sweeping changes to improve the quality and safety of their planes. But the January incident — and accounts from current and former employees of botched work and poor management decisions, reported by The New York Times and others — suggest that the changes made then did not go far enough.

One of the most significant changes Boeing has made since January is requiring the fuselages of its 737 Max planes to undergo more rigorous inspection before being shipped to Renton, near Seattle, for final assembly. The fuselage is manufactured in Wichita, Kansas, by Spirit, which Boeing is set to take over soon.

That change went into effect several months ago and has resulted in significantly fewer serious defects to be fixed at Boeing’s factory, Lund said. The inspections at suppliers have also allowed Boeing to produce the Max more quickly once the bodies arrive at the factory.

The company is also producing fewer aircraft than planned because its main regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), limited the production rate after the January flight.

“We have increased our presence at the supplier. We make sure that the parts are flawless where they are delivered. We inspect them there, they are reworked there and then we ship the parts,” said Ms. Lund. “The benefits have really been huge.”

Ms Lund said the previous Max crisis had forced Boeing to reform its design procedures, but the latest incident had required improvements in the production process.

“When this accident happened, we had the opportunity to look at another area,” she said.

Other improvements the company has made include more training for new employees before they start working on aircraft and expanded on-the-job training, Lund said. The company sent more than 160 workplace trainers, including experienced and retired mechanics, to help new employees get up to speed.

The company is also accelerating efforts to simplify a number of plans and procedures, Lund said. Boeing has increased inspections and internal monitoring and renewed emphasis on encouraging workers to voice their concerns. Thousands of new comments and recommendations for quality improvement have been collected.

Boeing is also trying to reduce the amount of work done out of sequence, known as travel work, which can increase the risk of errors and cause other problems. The company said it has introduced stricter requirements that must be met before planes can move through the production line. That and other changes have helped the company reduce the amount of travel work by more than 50 percent, Ms. Lund said.