from Revolver News:
Yet another Boeing aircraft experiences a close call in the air.
This mishap comes less than a month after the FAA grounded Boeing’s notoriously ill-fated 737 Max aircraft after an emergency door blowout on an Alaska Air flight. A subsequent investigation revealed that the airplane door had been missing bolts—that’s a comforting thought!
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Four bolts were missing from a door panel that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight last month while the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane was flying over Oregon, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The bolts are there to prevent the non-operational panel, known as a door plug, from moving upward, the NTSB said. But last year, before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines, the door panel had to be opened and four bolts removed at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory to replace damaged rivets nearby, the report says.
As part of the investigation, the agency found that the “absence of contact damage or deformation” around holes associated with vertical movement bolts indicates that four bolts of the door panel were missing before the panel moved up off the stop pads, according to the report.
It’s unclear why the bolts were missing. Records show that the rivets were replaced, but photos obtained from Boeing Co. by the NTSB show that the door panel was put back without bolts in three visible locations. The fourth location is obscured in the photo by insulation, the NTSB said.
Boeing this time is at least paying lip service to accountability, as the head of the 737 Max program has resigned in the wake of this latest near disaster.
Boeing announced Wednesday that the head of its 737 MAX program is departing the aviation giant less than two months after a major safety incident temporarily grounded 171 planes.
Ed Clark, an 18-year Boeing veteran is “leaving the program,” Boeing Commercial Aviation (BCA) chief Stan Deal said in a memo released by the company. Katie Ringgold has been named as his replacement.
The move comes after a 737 MAX operated by Alaska Airlines suffered a mid-flight blowout of an air panel on the fuselage on January 5, triggering an emergency landing with the plane left with a gaping hole in the cabin. [Yahoo News]
This is, of course, not the first issue with the 737 Max. Within the space of a year, in October 2018 and March 2019, two Boeing 737 Max airplanes tragically crashed with no survivors.
Several documentaries explore the possibility that Boeing knew there was an issue with this model of aircraft but swept it under the rug as a cost-cutting measure.
