NTSB report confirms: Four bolts were missing from the blown door of the Boing 737 MAX
Four key bolts were missing from the door that broke off in flight from an Alaska Airlines plane in January, according to a preliminary report by US regulator NTSB .
The door panel, known as the plug, had been removed to repair bolts damaged during manufacturing, according to the initial report.
Those bolts were removed at a Boeing factory in Washington state and appear not to have been replaced. So they were missing in the blown plug.
Text messages sent in September among the plane maker's employees show a discussion about restoring the interior after repairing the rivets. A photo attached to one of the text messages was part of the investigation.
There is no evidence the door was reopened after leaving the Boeing factory, the report added, putting the practices of one of the world's largest aircraft manufacturers under scrutiny.
The investigation was launched by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigative agency in early January after a mid-flight explosion in which the door blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane.
Normally the plug is held by 4 bolts and 12 retainers. The NTSB verified that the four bolts were not installed in the aircraft, so all the fasteners were later found to be disconnected and disengaged, probably due to vibrations of the aircraft.
“The investigation continues to determine which manufacturing documents were used to authorize the opening and closing of the cap during rework of the rivets,” the report reads.
Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said Tuesday: “Regardless of the ultimate conclusions, Boeing is responsible for what happened. An event like this should not happen on a plane leaving our factory."
The manufacturer added that it has “implemented a control plan to ensure that all 737-9 center exit door caps are installed to specification.”
Once the cause has been discovered, it is now a question of taking the necessary measures in the production line to prevent accidents of this kind from occurring again. A quality control problem which, perhaps, is the real challenge of this whole affair. Because how can a company that has not guaranteed the quality of the 737 MAX until now be able to guarantee it in the future?
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The article NTSB Report Confirms: Four Bolts Missing From Boing 737 MAX's Blown Door comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-rapporto-ntsb-conferma-mancavano-quattro-bulloni-al-portellone-saltato-del-boing-737-max/ on Wed, 07 Feb 2024 06:15:48 +0000.