Boeing executives will have an all-hands safety meeting with employees on Tuesday, only days after a dramatic in-flight blowout on a 737 Max 9 jet shortly after takeoff, which forced the grounding of certain Boeing aircraft.
CEO Dave Calhoun and other Boeing top management will present the company-wide “Safety Webcast” from the 737 Max production in Renton, Washington.
On Friday, an Alaska Airlines flight carrying 177 people made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, after a portion of the wall of a weeks-old 737 Max 9 aircraft dislodged, leaving a gaping hole in the plane’s side. On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered that most Boeing 737 Max 9 planes be temporarily grounded while authorities and Boeing investigated the cause of the incident. The order applies to about 171 planes around the world.
Surprisingly, no one was killed or seriously hurt in Friday’s mid-air disaster, which was partially captured on horrific video recordings by other passengers.
Boeing distributed an internal memo in which Calhoun stated that a discussion of the company’s response to the accident will be on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting.
Boeing Executives To Convene All-Hands Safety Meeting At Its 737 Max Factory After Yet Another Crisis
“When it comes to the safety of our products and services, every decision and action matters,” Calhoun wrote in his memo to staff. “And when serious accidents like this occur, it is critical for us to work transparently with our customers and regulators to understand and address the causes of the event, and to ensure they don’t happen again.”
Calhoun also alluded to the rising safety difficulties that Boeing has had to deal with recently, following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. “While we’ve made progress in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes in the last few years, situations like this are a reminder that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day,” the company’s CEO wrote in a statement.
Meanwhile, politicians are paying close attention to the catastrophe. Sen. J.D. Vance issued a statement on Tuesday urging the Senate Commerce Committee to hold a hearing to “evaluate incidents involving the 737 MAX, Boeing’s engineering and safety standards, and the quality of oversight provided by the FAA and other relevant government agencies.”
“I hope such a hearing takes place as soon as possible,” said Vance, a Republican from Ohio.
What caused a hole the size of a refrigerator to suddenly appear on the passenger plane on Friday is still being studied. According to Eric Weiss, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, a preliminary report is likely within three to four weeks.
The NTSB reported Monday night that it is still recovering things that blew out of the plane. On Sunday, a Portland schoolteacher contacted the FBI after discovering a piece of the aircraft’s fuselage on his property. Two cell phones, most likely thrown from the hole in the jet, were discovered in a yard and on the side of the road and turned over to investigators.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters that Alaska Airlines had previously barred the aircraft involved in Friday’s tragedy from flying over the ocean after the plane’s automatic pressurization warning light illuminated three times in the preceding month. During a press conference late Monday night, Homendy highlighted that the NTSB has “no indications whatsoever that this correlated in any way” with the occurrence that caused a section of the plane to blow off.
Boeing Executives To Convene All-Hands Safety Meeting At Its 737 Max Factory After Yet Another Crisis
According to Homendy, the inquiry is complicated by the loss of vital cockpit audio recordings caused by a gadget setting that overrides records after two hours. She lobbied for the FAA and Congress to mandate that all aircraft keep 24-hour cockpit audio recordings.
Nonetheless, as investigators continue to sift through data and eyewitness statements and study the jet itself, the early findings are grim. The damage went over several rows of the airliner. According to Homendy, the two seats next to the detached door plug were empty at the time of the blowout, but their headrests were torn off.
Video of the incident “looks very calm, but I’m sure it was completely chaotic,” Mr. Homedy remarked.
In a statement on Saturday, Boeing said that it agreed with the FAA’s decision to stop most 737 Max 9 planes for inspection, underlining that “safety is our top priority.” Boeing announced Monday that it has provided airlines and maintenance companies guidelines for inspecting the planes.
Boeing Executives To Convene All-Hands Safety Meeting At Its 737 Max Factory After Yet Another Crisis
Also on Monday, United Airlines, which has more Max 9s than any other US carrier, said it discovered loose door plug bolts on an undetermined number of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft while undergoing FAA-mandated inspections. Alaska Airlines also revealed on Monday that loose hardware was discovered on some of its 737 Max 9 aircraft during inspections.
Friday’s high-profile incident has rekindled interest in Boeing’s recent decline. Over the last five years, the company has experienced recurring quality and safety difficulties with its aircraft, resulting in the long-term grounding of some and a halt in deliveries of others.
Boeing’s most obvious quality issues were with the 737 Max’s design, which was shown to be responsible for two tragic crashes: one in Indonesia in October 2018 and another in Ethiopia in March 2019. The two disasters killed all 346 people on the two planes and resulted in a 20-month grounding of the company’s best-selling jets, costing more than $21 billion. However, the design defects that caused the crashes raised doubts about Boeing’s decision-making process. Internal messages disclosed during the 737 Max grounding showed one employee describing the jet as “designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys.”
The new safety saga also highlights that Boeing is unlikely to be forced out of business very soon, regardless of its serious failures. Boeing and Airbus are the only two main global aviation corporations; both can only meet some commercial aircraft demand alone, and both have a backlog of orders that date back years.
Boeing’s stock fell almost 8% on Monday as investors became anxious about more harm to its
SOURCE – (AP)
