Boeing has deleted security footage showing ‘repairs’ on an Alaska Airlines plane months before a door stopper blew out at 16,000 feet, sparking a massive federal investigation into the airline’s safety.
Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident, noted in a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the Boeing 737-9 plane underwent rivet repairs in September 2023.
The door stopper blew out mid-flight over Oregon on January 5, prompting an emergency landing.
NTSB officials said the door plug that failed was opened during repair work months earlier, but Boeing has been unable to locate records of the work.
“So far we still don’t know who did the work of opening, reinstalling and closing the door plug on the accident plane. Boeing has informed us that they are unable to locate the records documenting this work,’ Jennifer Homendy, NTSB chair, wrote in the letter.
Boeing has deleted security footage showing ‘repairs’ being carried out on the ill-fated Alaska Airline plane months before a door stopper blew out at 16,000 feet, the NTSB claimed
On January 5, the door plug blew out on a flight over Oregon, causing an emergency landing and a massive federal investigation into airline safety
‘A verbal request was made by our investigators for security camera footage to assist in obtaining this information; however, they were informed that the recordings were overwritten.
“The absence of these records will complicate the NTSB’s investigation going forward.”
Homendy stated in her letter that she had a phone call with Boeing CEO David Calhoun on March 3, who personally confirmed that the company ‘has no records of the work that was done.’
NTBS has launched both a criminal and civil investigation into Boeing following the flight.
Boeing has been plagued by several high-profile safety incidents in the weeks following the Alaska Airlines flight that drew more attention to its manufacturing processes.
The NTSB’s revelations come as an investigation found the plane’s engineers were concerned about two warnings the day before the January 5 flight.
Instead of taking the Boeing 737 Max 9 out of service, the airline decided it would begin three more flights the next day that would end in Portland, Oregon, the site of an Alaska Airlines maintenance facility.
A New York Times investigation found that the airline chose to keep the plane operating with hundreds of passengers on board despite the warnings, which the company insists may have been unrelated to the plug door blowing out.
The Boeing jet had only been in service for a few months and had sounded two alarms in the days before the incident warning of problems with the plane’s pressurization system.
However, the airline said it requires three warnings in that time to trigger more direct action, and it was decided the plane could carry several hundred more passengers before it had to come in for inspection.
The door stopper was later found in the yard of a teacher in Oregon
The airline also reportedly insisted the warnings did not meet the level required to be taken out of service and has said there is no evidence the warning lights were related to the door blowing.
“From my perspective as a safety man, when I look at all the data, all the leading indicators, there was nothing that would make me make a different decision,” said Max Tidwell, vice president of safety and security for Alaska Airlines. New York Times.
Still, the warnings were enough to worry engineers, who called for the jet to undergo an emergency safety check on January 5 to determine the cause of the warnings using a ‘prediction tool’.
The airline agreed to send it in for service, but decided it would have three more flights between then, although it was given some restrictions on the aircraft.
This included banning the aircraft from any long-haul flights over water such as transatlantic flights or to remote destinations in the event of an emergency landing.
The plug door blew out on the second of the three additional scheduled flights.
Boeing has denied wrongdoing in the case.
A former Boeing technician at Boeing’s North Charleston plant told DailyMail.com yesterday how employees were ‘constantly’ under pressure to make quick fixes and not to document errors.
Joseph Clayton, a former technician at Boeing’s North Charleston plant told DailyMail.com that ‘end-level management pushed people to do things that were uncomfortable’
Clayton worked at Boeing’s North Charleston plant between 2013 and 2019
Joseph Clayton, who worked for Boeing between 2013 and 2019, told DailyMail.com that ‘end-level management pushed people to do things that were uncomfortable, such as doing undocumented maintenance.’
“As an AMP mechanic, everything has to be documented, but they would say ‘just put a nut and bolt in and fix it without filing the problem,'” Clayton recalled.
“Almost everyone there has had to do something that is not correct,” he said.
It comes after the death of whistleblower John Barnett, who had been at the center of a lawsuit related to the production of the 787 Dreamliner at the same factory, which opened in 2009.
The suit alleged that vacuum workers knowingly fitted ‘substandard’ parts to Boeing 787s and that management swept defects under the carpet to save money.
The 62-year-old died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Charleston County Coroner’s Office in South Carolina confirmed Tuesday.
“If you said ‘no’ and wanted to do it properly, they would say you were disobedient,” Clayton told DailyMail.com of management’s stance on production issues.
‘I would ask them to put everything in an email and of course they never sent that email.
Boeing has been under renewed scrutiny after a door stopper blew off an Alaska Airlines plane in January
Boeing’s share price fell on Tuesday morning after the death of the whistleblower
“As aircraft mechanics, we are more liable to failure than your average worker,” he said.
Adds: ‘I am responsible for inappropriate maintenance going back twenty years, so you must have it documented.’
Clayton described the compulsive and terrifying experience of leaving the multibillion-dollar company in 2019.
‘When I left I had an NDA so I can only speak in vague terms. It wasn’t technically a condition of my leaving, but they gave me two weeks’ pay if I signed it.
‘I knew once I planned to leave I needed an escape plan in case I got steamrolled by them.
“They took a lot of people who wanted to do the right thing, even if it takes longer, and they would send them to ‘the 19th section’ and put you in there and forget about you,” he said of his colleagues who spoke out.
“It’s a multi-billion dollar business, so there’s no telling what could happen,” Clayton said when asked about concerns about his and other whistleblowers’ safety.
“I feel sorry for my friend on the flight line,” Clayton said of Barnett.
‘Working with John, he was a good guy, it’s one of those things where you can’t tell what could happen from day to day in that place.
‘The pressure changes and comes from different directions, they’re good at getting away with what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing, they’ve been doing it a long time to get away with it.’
‘I still have friends who work there and they say it’s still the same as it was, apart from slightly better pay and benefits.’
Boeing did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment on Clayton’s allegations.