- The NTSB is investigating how the door plug on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 came loose.
- The committee chairman said the company may conduct a safety culture survey of all Boeing employees.
- The NTSB previously investigated all 20,000 Norfolk Southern employees following last year’s train derailment.
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The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said he is considering surveying all Boeing employees about safety culture.
Jennifer Homemendy made the comments on Wednesday’s show. hearing Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
The NTSB is investigating how the door plug of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 came off mid-air in January. The jet, which was delivered 66 days ago, had a key bolt missing at a Boeing factory, according to a preliminary report.
“I don’t think there’s anyone under Dave Calhoun who doesn’t want to know what happened to Boeing,” Homendy said. “They want to know it, they want to fix it, and we can help.”
She added: “Whether we will do that remains to be seen. It’s a little early to say, but one of the tools we can use is a safety culture study.”
Homendy said such research was used last year when investigating southern Norfolk after one of its trains derailed in Ohio, releasing toxic chemicals.
All of the company’s 20,000 staff members were surveyed about safety culture, Homendy said. Boeing has more than 170,000 employees worldwide, approximately 136,000 of whom are in the United States.
Asked by Senate Committee Chair Maria Cantwell why there was no investigation, Homendy said: “I don’t want to get ahead of the investigators. They’re still gathering information, which they will pursue.” It’s necessary,” he said.
An investigation could give Boeing a better understanding of how it needs to improve its manufacturing processes to address increased oversight and deteriorating relationships with airlines.
On Tuesday, another Boeing whistleblower’s allegations of safety defects in 777 and 787 planes were made public.
Boeing told the NTSB last month that it could find no record of the work done when the door plug came off. It had been opened to repair the rivets.
“In terms of documentation, if door plug removal was not documented, there would be no documentation to share,” the aircraft manufacturer said in a statement.
Homendy said Wednesday that the NTSB is also investigating whether Boeing correctly recorded similar work.
“There are other instances where such work is done. We still need to review all those instances to see if it is documented,” she said .