Earlier, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) said the door stopper broke mid-flight because the plane left the Boeing factory without the four screws needed to hold the door assembly in place.
“Factory Cockroaches”
As CNN reports, many of the documents are transcripts of interviews NTSB investigators conducted in the seven months since the crash. One of the interviewees, identified only as “assembler fitter door B”, told the investigator that the workload at the Boeing plant was too great to avoid errors.
“In terms of workload, I feel like we were really trying to release too much product, right?” said an unnamed Boeing employee. “This is how mistakes are made. People try to work too fast. I mean, I can’t speak for others, but we’ve been busy. We worked a lot,” he assured.
One of the transcripts shows that a Boeing employee identified as a door foreman supervisor told investigators that there was a lot of rework during the assembly process of planes there because of problems that were found, such as a door stopper that was removed to fix some rivets . The employee said there was no special training on how to open, close or remove the door jam compared to a regular door.
That employee told the NTSB that his team “went into uncharted waters where … we were changing doors like we were changing underwear.”
One FAA inspector at a Boeing plant told NTSB investigators that FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) inspectors “heard of pressure, [bet] could not substantiate these claims.”
The plane’s fuselage was manufactured by Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems and arrived at the Boeing factory with four bolts, according to testimony at the hearing. However, there were issues with the rivets at the door jamb that needed fixing, so the door jamb was removed to allow for the work. Spirit employees were working at the Boeing plant, but communication between Boeing and Spirit workers at the Boeing plant was not good, according to another transcript of the investigation released Tuesday.
“Well, we’re basically the cockroaches of the factory,” one unnamed Spirit employee told NTSB investigators.
And a Boeing team captain at the 737 plant told investigators about problems with low employee morale and high employee turnover.
“Our turnover is high because, you know, it can be a stressful job,” a Boeing team captain was quoted as saying in one of the transcripts. – Sometimes what the company wants and what we have the skills and abilities to do at the time do not match, so some people are dissatisfied; they feel they are overworked; they feel like, you know, we can be taken advantage of.”
Missing screws and documents
January 5 on an Alaska Airlines flight, a door jamb blew out the side of a Boeing 737 Max as it approached 16,000 feet. After the incident, a gaping hole was left in the side of the plane, oxygen masks fell from the ceiling, clothes were ripped off, phones were ripped from passengers’ hands and thrown into the darkness.
Fortunately, the crew managed to land the damaged plane without serious injuries. Seven passengers and one flight attendant were treated for injuries after landing. It was only thanks to the skill and luck of the crew that no one died.
But the trauma from the flight likely affected many people on board, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in opening remarks at the hearing.
“Injuries that we don’t see and often don’t talk about can have a profound and lasting impact on lives and livelihoods,” she said. On behalf of the agency, she apologized to the people on the flight. The crash severely damaged public confidence in the plane maker, Boeing, and led to a series of federal investigations into its practices and the safety and quality of its aircraft.
The NTSB has already released preliminary findings into the incident, which revealed that the plane used in the flight left Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington, 10 weeks early and without four screws needed to secure the door jamb.
After that report, Boeing said the reasons for this oversight were as simple as a lack of documentation.
When the plane’s fuselage from supplier Spirit AeroSystems arrived at the Boeing factory, the door stopper was in place, as were the four screws that were supposed to secure it to the side of the plane. However, there were problems with five rivets near where the door stopper was installed, so Boeing personnel removed the door stopper to fix those rivets.
According to Boeing, the workers who repaired the rivets did not provide documentation indicating that they removed the door jamb and four bolts to do the work.
When another group of workers put the plug back in place, Boeing says the workers didn’t think the plane would actually fly in that condition. Instead, they merely plugged the hole to protect the interior of the fuselage from the weather as the plane was moved to another area of the factory. This group of workers often makes such temporary fixes.
These workers likely thought that there was documentation to prove that the plug and bolts had been removed, and that that documentation would prompt someone else down the line to install the bolts. But without documentation, no one on the assembly line knew that the door plug had ever been removed or that its screws were missing and needed to be replaced.
Boeing installation problems
But the investigation is just one of the problems facing Boeing over the incident.
The malfunctions that led to the incident could lead to criminal charges, as the FBI notified passengers and crew members that they could be considered victims of a crime.
Even before this flight, Boeing faced criminal charges over problems with the 737 Max that were concealed from the Federal Aviation Administration during the initial certification process. These problems led to design flaws in the plane that were blamed for two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
in 2021 In January, Boeing and the Department of Justice agreed to a settlement that delayed for three years the prosecution of Boeing for defrauding the FAA during the certification process. But that three-year probationary period was set to end just days after Jan. 5. flight But after the Alaska Airlines incident, the Justice Department reopened the investigation, and last month Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and be placed under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor.
The FAA has also tightened controls on Boeing’s manufacturing process and limits how many planes it can build, adding to the company’s financial losses since its second fatal crash in 2019. has already reached 33 billion dollars.
In the first six months of this year, Boeing’s sales fell by 70 percent.
Prepared according to information from CNN.
2024-08-25 22:26:49