NTSB grills Boeing during hearing on January door plug blowout

NTSB grills Boeing during investigative hearing

Boeing executives were back before the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday. It was the second day of an investigation hearing to answer questions in the wake of a near-disastrous door plug blowout in January.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Boeing executives were back before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Wednesday. It was the second day of an investigation hearing to answer questions in the wake of a near-disastrous door plug blowout in January.

Much of the questioning surrounded Boeing’s quality management systems, and whether factory operations and workers could interpret them efficiently.

"An error was committed. Essentially, the error, we all know here, is that bolts were not reinstalled. But one error in a robust system should not be able to progress all the way to an accident. So, that’s why I’m probing your system and trying to find out at what point should the error have been caught," said Dr. Sabrina Woods, an aviation accident investigator with NTSB. "It’s not about whether the error should have happened in the first place, it’s in your system where should the error have been stopped in its tracks."

At the center of the NTSB investigation are the errors made at Boeing which resulted in the door plug blowout 16,000 feet in the air during Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in January. NTSB determined four bolts were missing from the door panel that were meant to secure it.

Day two of the hearing highlighted questions surrounding Boeing’s quality management systems, and removal documentation for deficiencies.

"We’re here because an accident happened, right? It took place. At what point should this escape have been caught and contained?" asked Woods.

"That escape should have been caught either within that time range for the removal to be written and have that documentation, or at the absolute least, prior to the roll out of the airplane," said Hector Silva, Boeing’s director of quality.

Woods also asked Boeing executives, "How confident are you, if I were to walk into your factory floor right now and ask a mechanic, do they know what they’re quality management system is and how to find information that they will be able to respond in a way that you deem efficient?"

"It’s a tough question to answer because we actually saw some feedback during our recent FAA audit," answered Silva. "We recognize we have some work to do in terms of making sure that folks not only understand where to go to collect, get that information in the system, but as discussed yesterday, how to simplify it significantly, because it is very complex."

Leaders of the International Association of Machinists also spoke during the investigation hearing. Lloyd Catlin, a Boeing employee and representative for IAM751, answered questions about the workers’ comprehension of Boeing’s quality systems management instructions. Catlin criticized the rules, calling them complicated and confusing.

"We will see a document that gets revised over and over and over again. And there will be minor changes […] like inspection, verification conformance decision, but that’s not clarified. Nobody knows what it means, nobody can define what it means. Is there a difference between an inspection versus a verification?" said Catlin. "And so now it’s left up to the person who is now reading this new document to make that dissemination, and that then you get into ambiguous and open to misinterpretation. And that is one of the biggest problems that we have faced over the last five, six years."

"I think what we’ve learned is there are certainly places within our command media, within our policies and procedures, where we have to continually get feedback to see how to clarify as much as possible," said Silva.

Executives with Spirit Aerosystems, Boeing’s key supplier, were also grilled with questions during the investigation hearing.

The hearing adjourned Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C.

NTSB did not disclose a date when it would release its official findings on the door plug blowout.