2024-01-10 05:35:00
(CNN) — Boeing CEO David Calhoun acknowledged the company’s “mistake” in the Alaska Airlines incident during a “safety meeting” with all staff on Tuesday.
“We’re going to address this point number one by acknowledging our mistake,” Calhoun told staff, according to a partial readout of the meeting shared with CNN. “We’re going to approach it with 100% transparency every step of the way. We’re going to work with the NTSB, which is investigating the accident to find out what caused it.”
A company source said the company believes “the error in question” occurred in the plane’s manufacturing supply chain. However, it is not yet known if Calhoun identified any specific errors during the presentation.
The source said the meeting also included a reminder about the seriousness of the situation. Employees were told that the company’s chief safety officer is now in charge of the 737 Max fleet. Mike Delaney is Boeing’s director of aerospace safety.
The meeting, which took place at noon Pacific time from the 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington, also included an expression of confidence in “Boeing, the plane and (Boeing) employees,” the source said.
The meeting highlighted the actions taken by the flight crew and Alaska Airlines in handling the situation, the source said.
Passengers’ oxygen masks hang from the ceiling next to a missing window and a portion of a side wall of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which was headed to Ontario, California, and suffered depressurization shortly after takeoff, in Portland, Oregon, On January 5. (Credit: @strawberrvy/Instagram via Archyde.com)
The company committed to working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure proper inspections are conducted. Earlier Tuesday, the FAA said it is in talks with Boeing to determine the best way to conduct those inspections and that the planes will continue to be grounded until the inspections are completed.
During the meeting, Boeing also pledged to work with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as it tries to determine what happened, the source said. CNN has contacted Boeing for comment.
On Friday, an Alaska Airlines flight carrying 177 people made an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Portland, Ore., after part of the wall of a week-old 737 Max 9 plane came off, leaving a huge hole in the side of the plane. On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered most Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to be temporarily grounded while regulators and Boeing investigate the cause of the incident. The order applies to about 171 aircraft worldwide.
On Tuesday, the FAA said Boeing’s plan to inspect the door plugs on the 737 Max 9 plane required revisions and that the plane will remain grounded in the meantime.
“Boeing yesterday provided an initial version of the instructions that they are now revising due to comments received in response,” the FAA said in a statement Tuesday. “Upon receiving the revised version of Boeing’s instructions, the FAA will conduct a thorough review.”
Surprisingly, no one was killed or seriously injured in Friday’s mid-air crash, which was partially captured in horrifying videos shared by passengers on the same flight.
Calhoun said the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting included discussing the company’s response to the accident, according to an internal memo that invited all employees to participate and that was shared publicly by Boeing.
“When it comes to the safety of our products and services, every decision and every action matters,” Calhoun wrote in the memo to employees. “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 ensure they do not happen again.”
Calhoun also alluded to the growing safety-related issues Boeing has faced in recent years, following two fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019. “While we have made progress in strengthening our safety management and safety control systems and processes, quality in recent years, situations like this remind us that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day,” the CEO wrote.
Meanwhile, the accident also caught the attention of lawmakers. In a statement Tuesday, Sen. JD Vance asked the Senate Commerce Committee to convene a hearing to “evaluate incidents involving the 737 MAX, Boeing’s engineering and safety standards, and the quality of oversight provided by Boeing.” the FAA and other relevant government agencies.”
“I hope that hearing happens as soon as possible,” added Vance, an Ohio Republican.
US President Joe Biden is personally following the grounding of many Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes for inspection following the dramatic emergency landing of the Alaska Airlines flight, the White House said Tuesday, as investigations continue.
The White House is “relieved” that all passengers and crew of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 are safe, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, noting that the plane will remain grounded until the Federal Aviation Administration operators “complete enhanced inspections.”
National Transportation Safety Board officials recover the missing door plug from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 suffered a rapid decompression on Friday over Portland, Oregon. (Credit: NTSB)
The latest on the investigation
Exactly what caused a refrigerator-sized hole to suddenly open in the passenger plane on Friday is still under investigation. A preliminary report is expected in three to four weeks, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss.
The board said Monday night that it continues to recover items that were ejected from the plane. On Sunday, a Portland school teacher found a piece of the fuselage of the plane that had landed in his backyard and contacted the agency. Two cell phones that likely flew from the hole in the plane were also found in a yard and on the side of the road and were turned over to investigators.
NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy also told reporters over the weekend that Alaska Airlines had previously restricted the incident plane from flying over the ocean after the plane’s automatic pressurization warning light came on three times. throughout the last month. Homendy, however, emphasized during a news conference that the NTSB “does not have any indication that this correlates in any way” to the incident that caused part of the plane to fly away.
Complicating the investigation in part is the loss of critical audio recordings from the cockpit, Homendy has said, due to a device setting that overrides the recordings after collecting two hours of audio. He advocated for the FAA and Congress to require that cockpit audio recordings be retained on all airplanes 24 hours a day.
Still, as investigators continue to sift through data, eyewitness accounts and examine the plane itself, the first details of the investigation are harrowing. The damage extended to several rows of the plane. The two seats next to the detached door stopper were empty when the explosion occurred, but the headrests were torn off, according to Homendy.
Video of the incident “looks very calm, but I’m sure it was completely chaotic,” Homedy said.
In a company statement Saturday, Boeing said it agreed with the FAA’s decision to ground most 737 Max 9 planes while they were inspected, emphasizing that “safety is our top priority.” On Monday, Boeing said it sent instructions to airlines and maintenance companies on how to inspect planes.
Also on Monday, United Airlines, which has more Max 9s than any other U.S. airline, said it found loose door plug bolts on an undisclosed number of its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes while conducting inspections of the planes ordered by the FAA. . Alaska Airlines also said Monday that it found loose hardware on some of its 737 Max 9 planes during inspections.
Boeing’s fall from grace
Friday’s high-profile incident is once again highlighting Boeing’s fall from grace in recent years. The company has faced repeated quality and safety problems with its aircraft over the past five years, leading to prolonged grounding of some of its models and halted deliveries of others.
The most obvious quality issues for Boeing arose with the design of the 737 Max, which was found responsible for two fatal accidents: one in Indonesia in October 2018 and the other in Ethiopia in March 2019. Together, the two accidents involved the death of 346 people and caused the company’s best-selling planes to be grounded for 20 months, which cost it more than US$21 billion. But the design flaws that led to the accidents raised questions about the decision-making process at Boeing. Internal communications released during the grounding of the 737 Max showed an employee describing the plane as “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”
The latest safety saga also highlights the fact that Boeing most likely won’t have to worry about going out of business anytime soon, no matter how extensive its mistakes are. Boeing and Airbus are the only two major global aviation companies, neither of them could meet all the demand for commercial aircraft on its own and both have a backlog of orders that goes back years.
Boeing shares have lost about 8% on Monday as investors become increasingly concerned about further damage to its business.
— CNN’s Chris Isidore, Gregory Wallace, Pete Muntean, Betsky Klein and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.
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