Boeing said on Friday that it believes that the documents required to explain why a key part was removed during the manufacture of the 737 MAX 9 do not exist at all, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The plane encountered an emergency during its flight last January.
The National Transportation Safety Board said last month that the door plug that separated from the Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight on January 5 was missing four main screws.
“We searched extensively and did not find any such documents,” Boeing Executive Vice President Ziad Ocakli and Senator Maria Cantwell stated in the letter.
On Wednesday, Jennifer Homendy, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, criticized what she described as “Boeing’s lack of cooperation and failure to disclose some documents,” including documents related to opening and closing the door plug, in addition to the names of 25 people working in the manufacture of this part of the door. The aircraft (door plug) is at a Boeing facility in Renton, Washington.
“It is ridiculous that we are not getting what we asked for two months later,” she said at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
Following the accident, which caused no injuries, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Max 9 planes for several weeks in January, barred Boeing from increasing its Max production rate and ordered it to develop a comprehensive plan to address “systemic quality control issues” within 90 days.
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