A single bolt could have prevented a door panel blowing off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at about 16,000 feet last year. It's unclear who removed and failed to replace the four bolts that were meant to hold the door plug in place on the Boeing 737 MAX 9, but had just one lower bolt, known as a vertical movement arrestor bolt, been reinstalled, the panel would not have come loose, investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board said at a public hearing Tuesday in Washington, reports the New York Times. The NTSB concluded the door plug probably detached because Boeing failed to ensure workers "consistently and correctly" followed procedure.
"An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures," said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. She criticized Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration for overlooking safety deficiencies that "should have been evident," and credited the "heroic" flight crew for helping avoid fatalities. Investigators determined only one of two dozen Boeing team members responsible for repairing and maintaining the 737 doors was trained to operate this type of door plug, and he was on vacation when the door plug was repaired in September 2023—a few months before the incident in January 2024.
The NTSB has issued numerous safety recommendations following the incident. It proposed 10 to the FAA and nine to Boeing on Tuesday, per CNN. Boeing—now awaiting federal certification of new designs for door plugs with better fail safes—expressed regret over the incident in a statement, saying it would "review the final report and recommendations," which are due out in a few weeks. It did not say whether it would implement all of the suggestions. The FAA said it "takes NTSB recommendations seriously and will carefully evaluate those issued today." (More National Transportation Safety Board stories.)
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