Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun addressed, Friday’s mid-air panel blowout from an Alaska Airlines jet, acknowledging the Plane-maker made a mistake and telling staff it would work with regulators to make sure it “can never happen again.”
The statements were Boeing’s first public acknowledgment of error since the incident on Friday left the 737 MAX 9 plane with a gaping hole.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two US carriers that use the temporarily grounded planes, have found loose parts on similar aircraft, raising fears such an incident could have happened again.
Boeing told staff that findings of loose bolts in airplanes were being treated as a “quality control issue” and checks were under way at Boeing and supplier Spirit Aerosystems, sources familiar with the matter said.
Boeing has ordered its plants and those of its suppliers to ensure such problems are addressed and to carry out broader checks of systems and processes, they said.
“We’re going to approach this, number one, acknowledging our mistake,” Calhoun told employees, according to an excerpt released by Boeing. “We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.”
Calhoun also told Boeing employees the company will “ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe.”
He praised the Alaska Airlines crew that swiftly moved to land the 737 MAX 9 plane with only minor injuries to the 171 passengers and six crew.
Calhoun, who was a Boeing board member when all MAX jets were grounded worldwide in 2019, paid tribute to Alaska Airlines for quickly grounding its 737 MAX 9 jets, adding he knew “how hard it is to ground planes, much less the fleet,” the sources said.
Calhoun said the accident had shaken Boeing customers and “shook me to the bone,” the sources quoting him saying.
Boeing has suffered numerous production issues since the full-blown grounding of the 737 MAX family in March 2019 that lasted 20 months, following a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed nearly 350 people.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded 171 planes after Saturday’s incident, causing numerous flight cancellations. The panel that blew off Alaska Air Flight 1282 replaces an optional exit door on 737 MAX 9 planes used by airlines that have denser seating configurations.
Boeing has checked the service records of earlier Boeing 737-900ER aircraft that had a similar door plug, but all have undergone extensive maintenance since being delivered and none has shown a sign of similar problems.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both said they had found loose parts on multiple grounded aircraft during preliminary checks, raising new concerns about how Boeing’s best-selling jet family is built and its approval process.
The airlines have not yet started official inspections of their grounded aircraft. Boeing was still working out inspection guidelines to ensure safety lapses are fixed.
Boeing was revising its instructions for inspections and maintenance, which the FAA must still approve before checks can begin on the 171 grounded planes.
Boeing met delivery targets but ended 2023 in second place behind rival Airbus for the fifth year running, according to Boeing data and industry sources.
Boeing delivered 528 jets. Airbus will announce 735 deliveries for 2023 later this week, sources revealed the news.
Boeing booked 1,314 net new orders, up 70 per cent. However, the company faces an aggressive timetable for production.
The FAA could also take a harder line on certifying designs for other models, including required changes to the MAX 7. Boeing has sought an exemption to allow certification before the design changes that analysts say is much less likely now.
The FAA said it continues to inspect each new 737 MAX before an “airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery,” when it typically delegates the final sign-off on individual airplanes to the manufacturer.
The FAA did not directly answer questions about how it typically inspects those bolts before approving delivery.
Probes will also include Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage for Boeing 737 planes. Spirit has a technical team working with the US National Transportation Safety Board on the investigation, a source told Reuters.
