Boeing has said it plans to make design changes to prevent a future midair cabin panel blowout like the one in an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight in January which spun the plane-maker into its second major crisis in recent years.
\nBoeing\u2019s senior vice president for quality, Elizabeth Lund, said on Tuesday the plane-maker is working on design changes that it hopes to implement within the year and then retrofit across the fleet.
\nInvestigators have said the plug in the new Alaska MAX 9 was missing four key bolts.
\n\u201cThey are working on some design changes that will allow the door plug to not be closed if there\u2019s any issue until it\u2019s firmly secured,\u201d Lund said during the first of a two-day National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigative hearing in Washington, DC.
\nLund\u2019s comments followed questioning on why Boeing did not use a type of warning system for door plugs that the plane-maker includes on regular doors which sends an alert if it is not fully secure.
\nThe Alaska Airlines incident badly damaged Boeing\u2019s reputation and led to the MAX 9 being grounded for two weeks, a ban by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on expanding production, a criminal investigation and the departure of several key executives. Boeing has promised to make significant quality improvements.
\nThe NTSB also released 3,800 pages of factual reports and interviews from the ongoing investigation.
\nBoeing has said no paperwork exists to document the removal of four key missing bolts. Lund said Boeing has now put a bright blue and yellow sign on the door plug when it arrives at the factory, which says in big letters, \u201cDo not open\u201d and adds a redundancy \u201cto ensure that the plug is not inadvertently opened\u201d. It also has new required procedures if the door plug needs to be opened during production.
\nA flight attendant described the moment of terror when the door plug blew out. \u201cAnd then, just all of a sudden, there was just a really loud bang and lots of whooshing air, like the door burst open,\u201d the flight attendant said. \u201cMasks came down, I saw the galley curtain get sucked towards the cabin.\u201d
\nLund and Doug Ackerman, vice president of supplier quality for Boeing, are testifying on Tuesday during the hearings scheduled to last 20 hours over two days. Ackerman said Boeing has 1,200 active suppliers for its commercial aeroplanes and 200 supplier quality auditors.-Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boeing has said it plans to make design changes to prevent a future midair cabin panel blowout like the one in an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight in January which spun the plane-maker into its second major crisis in recent years. Boeing\u2019s senior vice president for quality, Elizabeth Lund, said on Tuesday the plane-maker …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":null,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":null,"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[98,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-companies","category-featured-en"],"yoast_head":"\n