PORTLAND, Ore. — The 737 MAX 9 that had its door plug blow out shortly after leaving Portland International Airport (PDX) was due for safety inspections on the same day, but Alaska Airlines still allowed the plane to fly with passengers, according to a New York Times report on Tuesday.
The day before the blowout, Alaska Airlines engineers and technicians requested that the months-old aircraft come out of service on Jan. 5 to undergo in-depth maintenance, due to "the mounting evidence of a problem" for "days and possibly weeks." The engineers wanted to figure out why the plane's warning lights were triggering — and investigators reported that the door plug "had been gradually sliding upward," though the movement was not noticed in visual inspections.
Alaska Airlines still chose to keep the plane in service, albeit with "some restrictions" in case an emergency landing was needed, including flying long routes over water or to remote continental areas.
The plane was scheduled for three flights scheduled to end the evening of Jan. 5, the report continued. The plan was for the plane to fly out without passengers on its way to a maintenance facility located in Portland, but the airline approved the three flights with passengers.
The door plug then blew out mid-flight after its second flight.
The airline confirmed the events to the New York Times, but also said "the warnings it had on the plane did not meet its standards for immediately taking it out of service."
The scheduling of the maintenance check had not previously been reported.
Boeing claimed earlier that it couldn't find records that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) requested regarding work done on the panel at a Boeing factory in Washington; the panel's removal and reinstallation were never created, despite system protocol.
Boeing faces multiple governmental investigations, including with the Department of Justice and the Federal Aviation Administration. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Monday that the corporation needs to “go through a serious transformation here in terms of their responsiveness, their culture and their quality issues,” after previous comments about Boeing being under scrutiny within his department.
The FAA had given Boeing 90 days to develop a plan to address "systemic quality control issues" at the company.
On Tuesday, the NTSB announced it will hold hearings Aug. 6 and 7 as part of its investigation into the door plug incident. The NTSB said the investigative hearing would help obtain necessary information to figure out the facts, circumstances and probable cause of the incident, along with recommendations on improving transportation safety. More details, including the hearing's location, would be available in the following weeks, the NTSB said.
A former Boeing manager who raised safety questions about the aircraft maker was found dead from a "self-inflicted gunshot wound" outside a hotel in South Carolina on Saturday. John Barnett worked for Boeing for 32 years as a quality manager until he retired in 2017. Since his departure, he had taken legal action against Boeing, claiming he was retaliated against for raising safety issues. His case was up for trial in June.
Boeing and Alaska Airlines also face multiple lawsuits from passengers onboard the flight, including where passengers on a previous flight cited a "whistling sound" coming from the door plug and told the flight crew, but "no known further action was taken" after the cockpit's instruments "purportedly read normal."
