Global Fastener News

The National Transportation Safety Board released transcripts of interviews with Boeing employees describing a chaotic push to finish building the 737 Max that suffered a midair blowout in January.

The catastrophic failure occurred January 5 when a door plug blew off a new Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 at 16,000 feet, imperiling 171 passengers and 6 crew members. The NTSB determined that the door plug was missing four bolts meant to secure it in place.

In interviews, some workers described recurring problems that slowed them down and resulted in work being done out of the normal order, causing pressure to mount.

“Somewhere, ’22 or ’23, we were replacing doors like we were replacing our underwear: forward doors, cargo doors, E/E bay doors,” one team leader told investigators. “The planes come in jacked up every day. Every day.”

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said documents and interviews with Boeing employees show that the company has known for years about problems in its manufacturing program, including defects in Spirit’s fuselages, which forces workers to do work out of sequence. But Boeing didn’t start refusing noncompliant fuselages and increase the number of Boeing inspectors at the Spirit factory until after the incident occurred.

In a preliminary report released by the NTSB in February, investigators determined that four bolts designed to hold a panel in place were not reinstalled after the part was removed so fixes could be made to the plane’s fuselage. Investigators have been unable to locate the paperwork showing who removed the bolts and why they weren’t reinstalled. Boeing officials claim no such paperwork exists.