Boeing Angers safety officials with disclosures on 737 Max incident

Boeing faced fresh criticism from a federal safety agency on Thursday over revelations about the ongoing investigation into a harrowing January flight in which one of the company’s 737 Max planes lost a panel, exposing passengers to howling winds at an altitude of about 16,000 feet.

Elizabeth Lund, a Boeing executive, spoke to reporters at a factory in Renton, Washington, on Tuesday. She provided new details about how the plane involved in the incident left the factory, apparently without four key bolts holding the panel, called a door plug, in place.

Boeing said the information would not be released until Thursday morning, under a joint agreement that gave the reporters present time to digest the detailed briefing.

But on Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board reprimanded the company for sharing investigative information and speculating about the cause of the incident, saying Boeing had “blatantly violated” the agency’s rules on active investigations. The agency said it would provide details of the violation to the Justice Department, which is investigating the January flight.

“As a party to numerous NTSB investigations over the past decades, few entities know the rules better than Boeing,” the agency said in a statement.

The NTSB also said it would revoke Boeing’s access to the agency’s investigative information and would bar the company from asking questions of other participants at an August hearing. The agency said it confirmed Boeing’s violation after obtaining a transcript of the news conference.

In a statement, Boeing apologized for speaking out of turn.

“We deeply regret that some of our comments, intended to clarify our responsibility for the accident and the actions we are taking, went beyond the NTSB’s role as a source of investigative information,” the company said. “We apologize to the NTSB and stand ready to answer any questions as the agency continues its investigation.”

The January incident on an Alaska Airlines flight caused no major injuries but raised new concerns about the quality of Boeing’s planes, more than five years after two fatal crashes involving the Max. In response, Boeing announced changes aimed at improving quality and safety, including expanding training, simplifying plans and procedures, and reducing supplier defects.

Boeing held the briefing on Tuesday, followed by a tour of the plant, to show the progress it had made so far in improving quality. Ms. Lund also provided new details about the events leading up to the incident.

When the body of the plane involved in the January flight arrived at Boeing’s factory in the summer of 2023, five rivets did not meet specifications. As the plane made its way through the factory, Boeing and a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, which manufactured the plane’s body, discussed how to tackle the problem, Ms. Lund said at the briefing this week. By the time they decided the rivets needed to be replaced, work on the aircraft was nearing completion.

The panel was removed to attach the nearby rivets, but no one documented that removal. Later, a team known as a “move crew” prepared the plane to be taken outside, closing the panel, she said. It was not that crew’s responsibility to replace the latches that secured the door and the lack of documentation meant no one else knew how to replace the latches, Ms Lund added.

The panel, which fit snugly into the opening it covered, survived for about 500 hours of flight before exploding during the Alaska Airlines flight.

Asked by a reporter about the individuals involved, Ms. Lund said that “the ‘who’ is absolutely the responsibility of the NTSB” and declined to comment further. The agency disagreed with that characterization, saying it was “focused on the probable cause of the accident, not placing blame on any individual or assessing liability.” That approach is critical to such investigations, because it encourages individuals with information to come forward without undue fear of retaliation.

Ms. Lund was promoted as part of a leadership change in February, assuming her current role as senior vice president, overseeing quality for all of Boeing’s commercial airplanes. Most recently, she was responsible for commercial airplane production programs. Before that, she held other leadership roles, including overseeing supply chain development and strategy.

The January incident was another blow to Boeing’s reputation after two crashes of Max 8 planes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The crashes led to a worldwide ban on the Max that lasted about 20 months; the aircraft began flying again in late 2020.

For years after the crashes, Boeing executives assured regulators, airlines and the public that they had made sweeping changes to improve the quality and safety of their planes. But the January incident — and current and former employees’ accounts of shoddy work and poor management decisions, as reported by The New York Times and elsewhere — suggested that the changes the company made then hadn’t gone far enough.

One of the most significant changes Boeing has made since January was requiring fuselages on 737 Max planes to undergo more rigorous inspection before they are shipped to Renton, near Seattle, for final assembly. The fuselages are made in Wichita, Kansas, by Spirit, which Boeing is expected to acquire soon.

That change took effect a few months ago and has resulted in significantly fewer major defects needing to be fixed at Boeing’s factory, Ms. Lund said. The supplier inspections have also allowed Boeing to make the Max faster once the bodies arrive at the factory.

The company is also producing fewer planes than planned because the Federal Aviation Administration, its top regulator, limited the production rate after the January flight.

“We have strengthened our presence at the supplier, we make sure the parts are perfect where they are shipped to, we inspect them there, they machine them there, and then we ship the parts,” Ms. Lund said. “The benefits are really enormous.”

Ms Lund said the earlier Max crisis had forced Boeing to reform its engineering practices, but the more recent incident required improvements in the production process.

“When this accident happened, we had the opportunity to look at a different area,” she said.

Other improvements the company has made, Ms. Lund said, include more training for new employees before they start working on planes and more extensive on-the-job training. The company sent more than 160 workplace coaches, including experienced and retired technicians, to help new employees get up to speed.

The company is also accelerating efforts to simplify a range of plans and procedures, Ms. Lund said. Boeing has stepped up inspections and internal oversight and placed renewed emphasis on encouraging employees to raise concerns, collecting thousands of new comments and recommendations on how to improve quality.

Boeing also has tried to reduce out-of-sequence work, known as traveled work, which can increase the risk of errors and other problems. The company said it had imposed stricter requirements that had to be met before planes could leave the production line. Those and other changes have helped the company reduce traveled work by more than 50 percent, Ms. Lund said.