| From: roto | 3/1/2024 11:58:38 AM | | | | | | a bunch of sodbusters.. no way !!
Boeing in talks to buy beleaguered supplier Spirit Aero, WSJ reports
Updated Fri, March 1, 2024 at 8:42 AM PST
(Reuters) -Boeing Co is in talks to buy Spirit AeroSystems, the beleaguered supplier reeling from a string of quality lapses, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Shares of Spirit jumped 16.2% in morning trading, while those of Boeing fell 1%.
Spirit, which was spun off from the U.S. planemaker in 2005, has hired bankers to explore strategic options and has had preliminary discussions with Boeing, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Spirit is also exploring selling operations in Ireland that make parts for Airbus, according to the report. Spirit's market cap stood at $3.3 billion as of Thursday's close, according to LSEG data.
Boeing and Spirit declined to comment.
Boeing and Spirit, which builds the entire 737 fuselage, are under scrutiny from investors, regulators and lawmakers after a door plug detached from a 737 MAX 9 in flight.
The latest quality lapse has turned into a reputational crisis for Boeing, which postponed providing a financial forecast for 2024 when it reported quarterly results in January.
Spirit has, meanwhile, struggled with quality issues at its factories, pressuring deliveries and cash flows.
(Reporting by Abhijith Ganapavaram and Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)
finance.yahoo.com |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: John Koligman | 3/2/2024 6:24:35 PM | | | | | | The FAA has identified more safety issues on Boeing’s 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner
 
By Gregory Wallace and Chris Isidore, CNN
5 minute read
Updated 5:27 PM EST, Fri March 1, 2024
A Boeing employee works on the engine of a 737 MAX on the final assembly line at Boeing's Renton plant.
Ellen M. Banner/Pool/The Seattle Times/AP
Washington DCCNN —
The Federal Aviation Administration has flagged more safety issues for two troubled families of Boeing planes, the latest in a series of issues at the embattled aircraft maker.
The issues involve engine anti-ice systems on the 737 Max and larger 787 Dreamliner. While the FAA flagged the issues in a filing in mid-February, it drew greater attention on Friday because of a Seattle Times article.
The safety regulator continues to allow both models of the plane to fly despite the potential problems. Both issues are moving through the FAA’s standard process for developing airworthiness directives — rather than an emergency process — signaling that the agency and plane maker do not believe the issues are serious enough to require the planes to stop flying immediately.
But another safety issue is the last thing that Boeing needs at this moment, two months after a door plug on a 737 Max blew out on an Alaska Air flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the jet shortly after take-off. The Max has had a series of problems over the last five years, including two fatal crashes that between them killed 346 people in late 2018 and early 2019, which led to a 20-month grounding of the jet.
The importance of de-icingWhile it might seem as if de-icing equipment is less important in summer months, the cold temperatures at high altitudes at which commercial jets fly, combined with the amount of moisture in clouds that they must fly through, make the de-icing equipment necessary twelve months a year.
“You’re not protected by Mother Nature’s seasons,” said Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association. “Airworthiness directives aren’t issued unless you have an unsafe condition that need to be addressed. It’s ominous. It may be manageable on a temporary basis. But it’s not a solution.”
The FAA said the newly disclosed Max issue could cause the jet’s engines to stop working. An electrical issue “could result in loss of thrust on both engines due to damage from operation in icing conditions.” The fix includes replacing wiring in a panel above the pilots’ heads.
The issue was discovered during a Boeing engineering analysis three years ago and is “a remote concern that has never been seen during decades of service” in both the current and previous generations of 737, said Jessica Kowal, a Boeing spokeswoman. The company said it disclosed the issue to airlines and the FAA at the time, and provided a fix.
The 2021 discovery lines up with the company’s order that year to ground some Max planes because of a different electrical problem. The Boeing Max — at the time, only recently back in service after the nearly two-year grounding prompted by two fatal crashes — underwent an extensive electrical system analysis.
A different issue with the DreamlinerLess than a week after publicly publishing the 737 Max notice, the FAA reported a separate anti-icing issue with the 787 Dreamliner. It said a damaged seal could cause heat damage to an engine inlet — and risk serious damage to the plane.
In 2018, an outer covering of an engine cowling that broke loose on an earlier version of a 737 jet shattered a window on a Southwest Airlines flight. The passenger sitting next to that window, Jennifer Riordan, 43, was expelled through the broken window. While other passengers were able to bring her back inside, she died as a result of blunt impact trauma of the head, neck and torso.
Boeing is working on redesigning the part on the 787 Dreamliner engine to prevent further issues, Kowal said. The issue was discovered on fewer than two dozen of over 1,000 Dreamliners in service, she said.
The FAA described neither issue as a production quality problem — which is its current focus at Boeing following the January in-flight blowout.
The FAA orders have not yet taken effect, but said they would apply to about 315 planes, including both Maxes and Dreamliners.
Series of safety and quality questionsBoeing drew criticism from lawmakers after the January 737 Max mid-flight blowout for having asked the FAA to certify new models of the 737 Max despite a different flaw in the anti-ice system. The company ultimately withdrew that request, which will delay its plans to deliver the new planes to its airline customers.
But it continues to build existing models of the jet with the same engine de-icing flaw that is delaying certification of the next Max versions.
RELATED ARTICLEBoeing was once known for safety and engineering. But critics say an emphasis on profits changed that
In addition to the de-icing equipment issue, Boeing has been stung by numerous questions about the quality and safety procedures at its factories.
The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into the causes of the incident and already found that four bolts needed to hold the door plug in place were missing when the plane left a Boeing factory in October.
The FAA is also demanding that Boeing come up with a plan to improve its quality controls for its aircraft manufacturing.
And the Justice Department is investigating whether the incident is a violation of a settlement it reached in 2021 to defer prosecution on charges that it defrauded the FAA during the original certification of the 737 Max before two fatal crashes resulted in a 20-month grounding of the plane.
The NTSB has yet to determine blame or fault for the door plug incident on the Alaska Air flight. That will come later in its investigation, perhaps a year or more from now. But Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors in January, “ We caused the problem, and we understand that. Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened.” |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Thomas M. | 3/7/2024 8:47:01 PM | | | | | | A United Airlines Boeing plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Texas just minutes into its flight after flames exploded from one of its jet engines.
Shocking video shows the bright orange sparks shooting several feet out from beneath the left wing of the airplane, just inches away from the passenger windows.
The intense flames were so hot that they appeared almost white against the night sky.
nypost.com
Tom |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: John Koligman | 3/9/2024 11:50:02 PM | | | | | | U.S. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Boeing
The investigation is tied to an incident on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Boeing also told a Senate panel that it cannot find a record of the work done on the Alaska plane.
A panel on one of Boeing’s Max 9 planes blew out on a flight in early January.Credit...NTSB/via Reuters
  
By Niraj Chokshi, Glenn Thrush and Mark Walker
March 9, 2024Updated 7:30 p.m. ET
The Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation into Boeing after a panel on one of the company’s planes blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January, a person familiar with the matter said.
The airline said it was cooperating with the inquiry. “In an event like this, it’s normal for the D.O.J. to be conducting an investigation,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.” Boeing had no comment.
On Jan. 5, a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet operated by Alaska Airlines blew out in midair, exposing passengers to the outside air thousands of feet above ground. There were no serious injuries resulting from that incident, but it could have been catastrophic had the panel blown out minutes later, at a higher altitude.
The panel is known as a “door plug” and is used to cover a gap left by an unneeded exit door. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the plane may have left Boeing’s factory without the plug bolted down.
The criminal investigation was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The Justice Department has previously said it was reviewing a 2021 settlement of a federal criminal charge against the company, which stemmed from two fatal crashes aboard its 737 Max 8 plane. Under that agreement, Boeing committed to paying more than $2.5 billion, most of it in the form of compensation to its customers. The Justice Department agreed to drop the charge accusing Boeing of defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration by withholding information relevant to its approval of the Max. It was not immediately clear if the criminal investigation was related to the review of the 2021 settlement or a separate inquiry.
The deal was criticized for being too lenient on Boeing and for having been reached without consulting the families of the 346 people killed in those crashes. The first occurred in Indonesia in late 2018. After the second in Ethiopia in early 2019, the Max was banned from flying globally for 20 months. The plane resumed service in late 2020 and has since been used in several million flights, mostly without incident — until the Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.
On Friday, Boeing informed a congressional panel that it had been unable to find a potentially important record detailing its work on the panel that later blew out.
The company had been asked to produce any documentation it had related to the removal and re-installation of the panel. In a letter to Senator Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Boeing said it had conducted an extensive search but could not find a record of the information being sought by the Senate panel and by the safety board.
“We likewise have shared with the N.T.S.B. what became our working hypothesis: that the documents required by our processes were not created when the door plug was opened,” the Boeing letter reads. “If that hypothesis is correct, there would be no documentation to produce.”
In the letter, Boeing also said that it had sent the N.T.S.B. all of the names of the individuals on the 737 door team on March 4, two days after it was requested.
The door plug was opened in September at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., to repair damaged rivets on the plane’s fuselage, according to a document reviewed by The New York Times. Rivets are often used to join and secure parts on planes. The request to open the plug came from contractors working for Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier that makes the body for the 737 Max in Wichita, Kan.
According to the document, on Sept. 18, a Spirit AeroSystems mechanic was assigned to begin work to repair the rivets and the door plug was being opened so that the repairs could be made. The document shows that the repairs were completed two days later and the approval was given to close the door back up.
The document contained no details about who was assigned to reinstall the door plug or whether it was inspected after it was replaced. It does not contain any other information about which Boeing employees were involved in removing and replacing the door plug.
The blowout on the Jan. 5 flight once again elicited harsh scrutiny of Boeing’s practices, with lawmakers publicly criticizing the company. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the incident, but suggested in a preliminary report that Boeing may have delivered the plane to Alaska without installing the bolts necessary to hold the door plug in place.
The F.A.A. has since increased inspections at the factory where Boeing makes the Max and has capped how many planes the company can make each month. An F.A.A. audit found quality lapses at Boeing, and the agency has given the company a few months to develop a plan to improve quality control.
Last month, an expert panel assembled by the F.A.A. released a long-awaited report stemming from the Max crashes. It concluded that Boeing’s safety culture was still lacking, despite improvements in recent years. |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: John Koligman | 3/12/2024 12:29:45 PM | | | | | | Southwest is getting screwed here. NOT a good idea to be totally dependent on one aircraft produced by one vendor.
Southwest Airlines cuts capacity, and rethinks 2024 financial forecast, citing Boeing problems
PUBLISHED TUE, MAR 12 20247:17 AM EDTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Leslie Josephs @LESLIEJOSEPHS
KEY POINTS
- Southwest said it would reevaluate its 2024 financial forecast because of Boeing’s delivery delays this year.
- Airline CEOs have been frustrated by repeated setbacks at Boeing that have delayed deliveries of new planes.
- Boeing is facing a quality control crisis in the wake of a blown fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.
Boeing 737 MAX airplanes are seen parked at a Boeing facility on August 13, 2019 in Renton, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
Southwest Airlines said Tuesday that it will have to trim its capacity plans and reevaluate its financial forecasts for the year, citing delivery delays from Boeing, its sole supplier of airplanes.
The Dallas-based airline said Boeing informed Southwest’s leaders that it should expect 46 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes this year, down from 58. Southwest had expected Boeing to deliver 79 Max planes, including some of the smallest model, the Max 7, which hasn’t yet won certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Because of the delays, Southwest said in a filing that it is “reevaluating all prior full year 2024 guidance, including the expectation for capital spending.”
Southwest’s statements, ahead of a JPMorgan industry conference on Tuesday, are the latest sign of how Boeing’s quality control crisis and production problems — both before and after a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight in January — are weighing on some of its best customers.
“We all need Boeing to be better,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said at the conference.
Alaska Airlines said in a filing Tuesday that its 2024 capacity is “in flux due to uncertainty around the timing of aircraft deliveries as a result of increased Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Justice scrutiny on Boeing and its operations.”
Last week, United told staff that it would have to pause pilot hiring this spring because of late-arriving aircraft from Boeing, CNBC reported. Southwest said it has stopped hiring pilots, flight attendants and other employees this yearand expects to end 2024 with lower headcount than last year.
Southwest shares were down more than 12% in morning trading. The airline said leisure bookings in the first quarter were weaker than expected and forecast unit revenue to be flat to up no more than 2% compared with a year earlier, down from a January estimate of a rise of as much as 4.5%.
Boeing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: John Koligman | 3/12/2024 1:24:48 PM | | | | | | F.A.A. Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues
The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.
The Federal Aviation Administration deployed as many as 20 auditors at Boeing, which builds the 737 Max at its plant in Renton, Wash.Credit...Jason Redmond/Reuters
By Mark Walker
Reporting from Washington
Published March 11, 2024Updated March 12, 2024, 10:25 a.m. ET
??????? ???????
A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.
The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.
The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.
For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.
The F.A.A. also conducted 13 product audits for the part of the inquiry that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades, and seven resulted in failing ones, the presentation said.
At one point during the examination, the air-safety agency observed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document that describes some of the findings. That action was “not identified/documented/called-out in the production order,” the document said.
In another instance, the F.A.A. saw Spirit mechanics apply liquid Dawn soap to a door seal “as lubricant in the fit-up process,” according to the document. The door seal was then cleaned with a wet cheesecloth, the document said, noting that instructions were “vague and unclear on what specifications/actions are to be followed or recorded by the mechanic.”
Asked about the appropriateness of using a hotel key card or Dawn soap in those situations, a spokesman for Spirit, Joe Buccino, said the company was “reviewing all identified nonconformities for corrective action.”
Jessica Kowal, a spokeswoman for Boeing, said the plane maker was continuing “to implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen safety and quality, and build the confidence of our customers and their passengers.”
In late February, the F.A.A. gave the company 90 days to develop a plan for quality-control improvements. In response, its chief executive, Dave Calhoun, said that “we have a clear picture of what needs to be done,” citing in part the audit findings.
Boeing said this month that it was in talks to acquire Spirit, which it spun out in 2005. Mr. Buccino said on Monday that Spirit had received preliminary audit findings from the F.A.A. and planned to work with Boeing to address what the regulator had raised. He said Spirit’s goal was to reduce to zero the number of defects and errors in its processes.
“Meanwhile, we continue multiple efforts undertaken to improve our safety and quality programs,” Mr. Buccino said. “These improvements focus on human factors and other steps to minimize nonconformities.”
The F.A.A. said it could not release specifics about the audit because of its active investigation into Boeing in response to the Alaska Airlines episode. In addition to that inquiry, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused the door panel to blow off the plane, and the Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation.
During the F.A.A.’s examination, the agency deployed as many as 20 auditors at Boeing and roughly half a dozen at Spirit, according to the slide presentation. Boeing assembles the 737 Max at its plant in Renton, Wash., while Spirit builds the plane’s fuselage at its factory in Wichita, Kan.
The audit at Boeing was wide ranging, covering many parts of the 737 Max, including its wings and an assortment of other systems.
Many of the problems found by auditors fell in the category of not following an “approved manufacturing process, procedure or instruction,” according to the presentation. Some other issues dealt with quality-control documentation.
“It wasn’t just paperwork issues, and sometimes it’s the order that work is done,” Mike Whitaker, the F.A.A. administrator, said at a news conference on Monday. “Sometimes it’s tool management — it sounds kind of pedestrian, but it’s really important in a factory that you have a way of tracking tools effectively so that you have the right tool and you know you didn’t leave it behind. So it’s really plant floor hygiene, if you will, and a variety of issues of that nature.”
One audit dealt with the component that blew off the Alaska Airlines jet, known as a door plug. Boeing failed that check, according to the presentation. Some of the issues flagged by that audit related to inspection and quality-control documentation, though the exact findings were not detailed in the presentation.
The F.A.A.’s examination also explored how well Boeing’s employees understood the company’s quality-control processes. The agency interviewed six company engineers and scored their responses, and the overall average score came out to only 58 percent.
One audit at Spirit that focused on the door plug component found five problems. One of those problems, the presentation said, was that Boeing “failed to provide evidence of approval of minor design change under a method acceptable to the F.A.A.” It was not clear from the presentation what the design change was.
Another audit dealt with the installation of the door plug, and it was among those that Spirit failed. The audit raised concerns about the Spirit technicians who carried out the work and found that the company “failed to determine the knowledge necessary for the operation of its processes.”
Other audits that Spirit failed included one that involved a cargo door and another that dealt with the installation of cockpit windows.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington. More about Mark Walker |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (3624) | 3/12/2024 7:59:30 PM | | From: John Koligman | | | | Exactly what I was thinking! In addition, I'm no aviation expert, and I'm sure warning lights in the cockpit are common, but I still found it disturbing that multiple iterations of a pressurization warning kept the plane flying.
Alaska Airlines Flight Was Scheduled for Safety Check on Day Panel Blew Off
The 737 Max remained in service for a day after the airline’s engineers, concerned about warning lights, scheduled it to come in for maintenance. During that period, a door plug came off in flight.
The Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that had a door plug blow out midflight focused new attention on Boeing’s manufacturing processes and the safety procedures followed by airlines.Credit...Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Mark Walker and James Glanz
March 12, 2024Updated 6:02 p.m. ET
A day before the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, engineers and technicians for the airline were so concerned about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening and undergo maintenance, interviews and documents show.
But the airline chose to keep the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 9, in service on Jan. 5 with some restrictions, carrying passengers until it completed three flights that were scheduled to end that night in Portland, Ore., the site of one of the airline’s maintenance facilities.
Before the plane could complete that scheduled sequence of flights and go in for the maintenance check, the door plug blew out at 16,000 feet, minutes after embarking on the second flight of the day, from Portland to Ontario International Airport in California.
The plane landed safely and no one was seriously injured, but the incident focused new attention on Boeing’s manufacturing processes and the safety procedures followed by airlines.
The scheduling of the maintenance check on the plane has not previously been reported. It demonstrates that the airline chose to keep the plane in service while it made its way toward the maintenance facility rather than flying it to Portland without passengers.
Alaska Airlines confirmed the sequence of events. But the airline said the warnings it had on the plane did not meet its standards for immediately taking it out of service.
Donald Wright, the vice president for maintenance and engineering for Alaska Airlines, said the warning signals — a light indicating problems with the plane’s pressurization system — had come on twice in the previous 10 days instead of the three times the airline considers the trigger to take more aggressive action.
Alaska Airlines has repeatedly asserted that there is no evidence that the warning lights, which could also be caused by electronic or other problems, were related to the impending plug blowout.
“From my perspective as the safety guy, looking at all the data, all the leading indicators, there was nothing that would drive me to make a different decision,” Max Tidwell, the vice president for safety and security for Alaska Airlines, said in an interview.
The airline’s engineers had called for the plane to undergo a rigorous maintenance check on Jan. 5 to determine why the warning lights were triggering based on their use of “a predictive tool” rather than on the number of times the warning lights had gone off, the airline said.
While it kept the plane in service, the airline did put restrictions on it following the recommendation of the engineers. It restricted the plane from flying long-haul routes over water, like to Hawaii, or remote continental areas in case of the need for an emergency landing.
Extensive evidence of a potential problem with the plane had been accumulating for days and possibly weeks, according to interviews with the airline and records of the investigation into the blowout. In addition to the flashing lights, investigators say the door plug had been gradually sliding upward, a potentially crucial link in the accumulating string of evidence. The airline said its visual inspection in the days leading up to the blowout did not reveal any movement of the door plug.
A door plug is a panel that goes where an emergency exit would be located on a plane with the option of expanding the number of passenger seats.
A preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board last month said that four bolts meant to secure the door plug in place were missing before the panel came off the plane. It outlined a series of events that occurred at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., that may have led to the plane being delivered without those bolts being in place.
Mark Lindquist, a lawyer representing passengers on the Jan. 5 flight, said the series of mishaps involving the Alaska Airlines jet were alarming, adding that both the carrier and Boeing, the 737 Max 9’s manufacturer, would struggle to explain the events in court.
“When jurors find out they’d actually been cautioned by engineers to ground the plane and they put it into commercial rotation instead, jurors will be more than mystified — they’ll be angry,” Mr. Lindquist said.
In his court filing, Mr. Lindquist said that passengers on a previous flight heard a “whistling sound” coming from the area of the door plug. The documents say passengers brought the noise to the attention of the flight attendant, who then reported it to the pilots. When asked about the report, Alaska Airlines said it could not find any record of a report of whistling coming from the plane.
Almost a week before the blowout, the 737 had been taken out of service on Dec. 31 because of an issue with the front passenger entry and exit door. Records show the plane resumed service on Jan. 2. However, on Jan. 3, a pressurization warning light was triggered during at least one of the plane’s flights. Alaska Airlines officials said the plane was inspected by engineers and the carrier determined it was safe enough for the plane to continue flying.
The next day, the same light was again triggered.
A spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines said it was then that engineers and technicians scheduled the deeper inspection of the plane for the night of Jan. 5 in Portland. But the airline chose to keep the plane flying with passengers as it made its way across the country that day.
The revelations about the warning signs of a potential problem have raised questions about whether routine inspections should have been able to weave together various indications of an issue and avert the incident.
Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters last week that over the 154 flights the plane had flown since entering service in the fall, small upward movements of the door plug had left visible marks, and possibly created a gap between the panel and the fuselage.
Alaska Airlines officials said they did not notice any unusual gaps between the door plug and the plane’s fuselage during inspections on the days leading up to the door plug coming off.
Additional evidence includes the pressurization system lights on previous flights and the unconfirmed reports of a whistling noise.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington. More about Mark Walker
James Glanz is a Times international and investigative reporter covering major disasters, conflict and deadly failures of technology. More about James Glanz
READ 132 COMMENTS |
| | Boeing keeps setting new highs! When will it split? | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| |
