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The National Transportation Safety Board hoped its hearing this week into the Boeing plane whose door plug blew off would bring answers, like how it could have been delivered from the factory to Alaska Airlines without four critical bolts needed to hold the plug in place. But after two days of hearings, that's still not clear. David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: No one was seriously hurt when the door plug blew out, but it created a gaping hole in the fuselage that sucked out debris and even one passenger's shirt. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy says the incident could have been catastrophic, and it was completely preventable had Boeing addressed long-standing problems with safety protocols and oversight.
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JENNIFER HOMENDY: There have been numerous, numerous Boeing audits, FAA audits, compliance reviews, compliance actions, plans, noting a history of unauthorized work, unauthorized removals. And here we are...
SCHAPER: Homendy says Boeing's safety management systems should have caught the mistake and prevented the plane from rolling off the factory floor with the bolts missing. Boeing officials testified that it's still not clear which worker or workers failed to replace the bolts after the door plug was removed and then reinstalled because no paperwork was ever created. The incident comes just a few years after two deadly 737 Max plane crashes, which investigators blame in part on Boeing's design flaws, noting safety problems once on the design side and now on the production side. NTSB member Todd Inman asked this.
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TODD INMAN: Is it just me, or are we seeing a game of whack-a-mole every five or 10 years on issues related to safety?
SCHAPER: Boeing workers on the 737 Max line described dysfunction and chaos, according to transcripts of their interviews with investigators. One calls Boeing's safety culture garbage. Others describe intense pressure to rush their work, which can lead to mistakes. And some claim they had to do work they hadn't been trained for, including removing and reinstalling door plugs, like the one that blew off the Alaska Airlines jet. Machinists union local president Lloyd Catlin says it's nothing new.
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LLOYD CATLIN: We've had extensive issues with safety and quality at the Boeing Company.
SCHAPER: Boeing's safety executives told the NTSB that allegations of pressure are concerning. Here's senior vice president for quality, Elizabeth Lund.
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ELIZABETH LUND: In aerospace, there sometimes is operational pressure. There's operational pressure to release your airplane on time. There's operational pressure for us to build and deliver an airplane. What can never happen is to sacrifice quality or safety for operational pressure.
SCHAPER: Lund and the other Boeing executives spent much of their time touting safety management improvements implemented after the January 5 door plug blowout. But Chair Homendy wasn't having it.
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HOMENDY: A word of caution here - this isn't a PR campaign for Boeing. What we want to know is what happened leading up to what happened in January.
SCHAPER: The NTSB also grilled executives from Spirit AeroSystems, the fuselage supplier, whose own manufacturing defects all too often have to be fixed on the Boeing factory floor. And they questioned officials from the FAA on whether they've done their job as regulator.
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BRIAN KNAUP: We believe we conducted effective oversight of the Boeing Company.
SCHAPER: That's the FAA's Brian Knaup, who adds that the agency has increased inspections and has doubled the number of pending enforcement cases against Boeing since the January 5 door plug blowout. The NTSB's investigation continues.
For NPR News, I'm David Schaper.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHLOCALYST AND VIKTOR MINSKY'S "MY AMBIENCE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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