NTSB wraps up 'door plug' hearing as new Boeing CEO takes over

A new CEO takes the helm of the Boeing Company today, tasked with turning around an aerospace giant besieged by safety lapses, by production mistakes and delays, and by massive financial losses.

“I’m excited to dig in,” Robert “Kelly” Ortberg exclaimed to employees as he walked the factory floor this morning in Renton, Wash., just outside of Seattle, where the company assembles the 737 Max jetliner.

Ortberg takes over a day after the National Transportation Safety Board wrapped up a sometimes contentious two-day investigative hearing on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 — the Boeing 737 Max plane that had a door plug panel blow out in mid-air shortly after taking off from Portland last January.

No one was seriously hurt in the incident, but the blowout created a gaping hole in the fuselage of the plane, sucking debris, passengers’ phones and even the clothes some were wearing out into the evening sky, while oxygen masks dropped from the panels above their seats.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the incident could've been catastrophic and that it traumatized those on board who, for about 15 frightening minutes, didn't know if the plane would be able to return to the Portland airport safely.

“Injuries we can’t see, which we often don’t talk about, can have profound and lasting impacts on lives and livelihoods,” Homendy said in her opening remarks as the NTSB continues to investigate how the blowout happened.

She said the incident was completely preventable had Boeing addressed long-standing problems with safety protocols and oversight.

"There have been numerous, numerous Boeing audits, FAA audits, compliance reviews, compliance actions, plans, noting a history of unauthorized work, unauthorized removals, and here we are," Homendy told reporters during a break in the hearing on Thursday. “We have a situation where an accident should’ve never occurred because it should've been caught years before."

Investigators determined early on that the door plug blew out because a worker or a team of Boeing workers failed to reinstall four bolts needed to secure the door plug in place. But after more than 20 hours of testimony during the hearing and seven months of investigating, the NTSB and Boeing still haven't been able to figure out who those workers were or how the 737 Max jetliner was able to leave the factory without the safety critical bolts.

Boeing officials testified that it's still not clear which worker or workers failed to replace the bolts after the door plug was removed and then reinstalled so mechanics could fix a separate manufacturing defect, because no paperwork documenting the task was ever created.

The incident comes just a few years after two 737 Max plane crashes, killing a total of 346 people, which investigators blame partly on Boeing's design flaws. Noting these past safety problems on the design side and now on the production side led NTSB member Todd Inman to ask this during the hearing: "Is it just me, or are we seeing a game of whack-a-mole every five or 10 years on issues related to safety?"

Boeing employees who work on the 737 Max production line painted a picture of chaos and dysfunction. According to transcripts of their interviews with investigators, one worker called Boeing's safety culture "garbage." Others described intense pressure to speed up production and rush their work, with one worker saying, “That’s how mistakes are made." And some said they were told to perform work they hadn't been trained to do, including removing and reinstalling door plugs like the one that blew off the Alaska Airlines jet.

Machinists union local President Lloyd Catlin said it's nothing new: "We've had extensive issues with safety and quality at the Boeing company going back to 2014, 2016."

Boeing safety executives told the NTSB that the allegations of pressure are concerning.

"In aerospace, there sometimes is operational pressure," said Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president for quality. "There's operational pressure to release your airplane on time. There's operational pressure to build and deliver an airplane. What can never happen is to sacrifice quality or safety for operational pressure."

Lund and the other Boeing executives spent much of their time touting safety management changes implemented after the Jan. 5 door plug blowout. But the NTSB chair wasn't having it.

"A word of caution here: this isn't a PR campaign for Boeing," Homendy said. "What we want to know is what happened leading up to this, leading up to what happened in January."

The NTSB also grilled executives from Spirit AeroSystems, the fuselage supplier with a history of manufacturing defects needing to be fixed on the Boeing factory floor, and they questioned officials from the Federal Aviation Administration on whether they've provided sufficient oversight. FAA representaive Brian Knaup said yes, but he distanced the agency from Boeing's troubled safety culture.

"We believe we conducted effective oversight of the Boeing company," Knaup said. "Safety culture isn't a compliance thing. Our job is to ensure compliance to the regulations, and we continue to do that today."

Knaup added that the FAA has increased inspections and doubled the number of pending enforcement cases since the door plug blowout at 16,000 feet.

The NTSB investigation continues.