Surveillance footage identifying a worker on an Alaska Airlines Boeing plane that lost a door plug mid-flight has been overwritten, complicating the investigation into the near-catastrophe, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
The Boeing 737 MAX 9 was forced to make an emergency landing on January 5 while scheduled for maintenance, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the airborne door plug bolt was not present.
The plane also had a rivet repaired several months ago, but Boeing has not provided any information about who worked on the faulty door plug, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy wrote Wednesday. with a shocking letter Submitted to the Senate Commerce Committee.
Homendy said in the letter that Boeing also lost video footage that could have tracked the employee.
“To this day, we still do not know who performed the work that opened, reinstalled, and closed the door plugs on the accident plane. Boeing has informed us that it is unable to locate any records documenting this work. “I’m here,” Homendy wrote.
“In order to obtain this information, investigators made a verbal request for security camera footage. However, we were informed that the footage had been overwritten.
“The absence of these records will complicate future NTSB investigations.”
The NTSB had been requesting such critical documents since January 9, just four days after the 177-passenger plane’s doors were blown off and it landed at a rail yard in Oregon.
The four bolts may not have been returned to the plane during repairs in September, when the door plug had to be opened, removed and reinstalled.
A Senate committee last week told Homendy that Boeing would provide such information to the NTSB to help the agency figure out why four missing bolts were not reinstalled during repair work in September. I asked him if he had ever done it.
Boeing provided NTSB investigators with the names of individuals who may have insight into the work, but “did not identify the personnel who worked on the door plugs,” the letter said. It is being
The door crew manager also declined to speak to investigators through his lawyer, saying he was on medical leave from Boeing and unable to participate in the interview.
When asked by name, Boeing CEO David Calhoun reportedly told Homendy that there was no record of the work being done.
“We fear that focusing on the names of individual front-line employees could negatively impact our investigation and deter Boeing employees from providing information to the NTSB that is relevant to this investigation. “I am increasingly concerned,” Homendy wrote, adding that the NTSB is not seeking names for punitive purposes.
Boeing pushed back against Homendy’s letter, insisting it was cooperating with investigators throughout the process.
The surveillance footage was removed not because of any wrongdoing, but because the company’s standard practice is to only maintain video recordings on a rolling 30-day basis.
“We continue to support this investigation in the transparent and proactive manner that we have supported all regulatory investigations into this incident. “We have worked hard and will continue to work hard to comply with regulations regarding the release of investigative information in a highly public environment,” Boeing said in a statement.
The 737 MAX 9 at the center of the investigation was forced to make an emergency landing after the incident on January 5th.
The plane was scheduled for maintenance later in the evening after a light came on indicating a problem with its pressurization system twice in the past 10 days, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
The warning lights did not require immediate action and may not have had anything to do with the final explosion.
The Justice Department last week opened a criminal investigation to determine whether Boeing was in compliance. A $2.5 billion settlement is expected to be paid in 2021 following a federal investigation into the fatal Boeing Max 737 crashes that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.
If the Justice Department finds that Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 settlement, the aircraft manufacturing giant could face charges of fraud against the United States, the report said.
