Boeing admits it can’t find records on the Alaska Airlines door plug work
Dominic Gates | March 8, 2024 at 8:33 pmBoeing leadership admitted Friday in a letter sent to Sen. Maria Cantwell that it cannot find any record of the work done on the 737 MAX final assembly line in Renton to open and reinstall the panel that blew out Jan. 5 on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
Boeing’s presumption is that no record was ever created.
“We have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation,” wrote Ziad Ojakli, Boeing executive vice president and the company’s chief government lobbyist. . . .
. . . After two days of obfuscation, one fact is now clearer from Boeing’s letter: Boeing simply doesn’t have the records the NTSB wants detailing the botched job of opening and reinstalling the door plug in Renton.
It looks like no records were kept, or, if they were, they were deleted. Either way, this is a serious, potentially illegal, lapse in standard aviation manufacturing quality processes.
The second major issue in contention, who actually did the work, is mysteriously unclear.
The NTSB has repeatedly asked Boeing for the names of employees involved in the work, and as of noon Friday, Homendy told The Air Current, “We still don’t know who did the work on the door plug.” . . .
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-admits-it-cant-find-records-on-the-alaska-airlines-door-plug-work/
Not only can they not produce the records, they also claim that video surveillance of their maintenance shop has been overwritten.