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      Criminal Inquiry Into Boeing Panel Blowout Expands

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      The Justice Department, which is investigating the blowout of a panel on an Alaska Airlines flight, is using a recently convened grand jury in Seattle.The Justice Department is sending subpoenas and using a recently convened grand jury in Seattle as it widens a criminal investigation into the door plug that blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner in January, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.The detachment of the panel from the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines flight shortly after takeoff terrified passengers at 16,000 feet and required an emergency landing back at Portland International Airport in Oregon. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board said four bolts meant to secure the door plug in place were missing before the panel blew off.This month, it was reported that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation of Boeing, which had reinstalled the door plug during maintenance in Renton, Wash., before delivering the plane to Alaska Airlines in October.The subpoenas and use of the grand jury were reported earlier Friday by Bloomberg.The midair incident on Jan. 5 led the Federal Aviation Administration to ground more than 170 Max 9 planes, which were then inspected for construction flaws. Boeing said it agreed with the F.A.A.’s decision and pledged to cooperate. The company has said safety is its top priority.The Max 9s have since restarted flights, but questions remain about the malfunction. A grand jury could be asked to decide whether a criminal prosecution is warranted. A likely focus would be repairs to the Alaska Airlines plane’s rivets, which are often used to join and secure parts on planes, by workers at the Boeing plant in Renton.The episode has brought a fresh round of scrutiny to Boeing. The company made grim headlines in 2018 and 2019 when two crashes of another 737 model, the Max 8, killed 346 people. Max 8 jets were grounded for almost two years. The company subsequently spent more than $2.5 billion to settle a criminal charge that Boeing had defrauded the F.A.A., and the company’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, was fired.Under his replacement, Dave Calhoun, Boeing’s stock has risen, though the company has struggled to meet airlines’ demands. Production of the 737 Max fell to about half of Boeing’s stated goals last year, as the company was bedeviled by supply chain issues with key suppliers and problems with fuselages.Now, the company is facing far steeper challenges. Two days after the door plug incident, Mr. Calhoun sent a memo to employees stating that “while we’ve made progress in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes in the last few years, situations like this are a reminder that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day.” More

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      FAA Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues

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      The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.The F.A.A. also conducted 13 product audits for the part of the inquiry that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades, and seven resulted in failing ones, the presentation said.At one point during the examination, the air-safety agency observed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document that describes some of the findings. That action was “not identified/documented/called-out in the production order,” the document said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Boeing Subject of Criminal Inquiry by DOJ

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      The investigation is tied to an incident on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Boeing also told a Senate panel that it cannot find a record of the work done on the Alaska plane.The Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation into Boeing after a panel on one of the company’s planes blew out on an Alaska Airlines flight in early January, a person familiar with the matter said.The airline said it was cooperating with the inquiry. “In an event like this, it’s normal for the D.O.J. to be conducting an investigation,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.” Boeing had no comment.On Jan. 5, a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet operated by Alaska Airlines blew out in midair, exposing passengers to the outside air thousands of feet above ground. There were no serious injuries resulting from that incident, but it could have been catastrophic had the panel blown out minutes later, at a higher altitude.The panel is known as a “door plug” and is used to cover a gap left by an unneeded exit door. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the plane may have left Boeing’s factory without the plug bolted down.The criminal investigation was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.The Justice Department has previously said it was reviewing a 2021 settlement of a federal criminal charge against the company, which stemmed from two fatal crashes aboard its 737 Max 8 plane. Under that agreement, Boeing committed to paying more than $2.5 billion, most of it in the form of compensation to its customers. The Justice Department agreed to drop the charge accusing Boeing of defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration by withholding information relevant to its approval of the Max. It was not immediately clear if the criminal investigation was related to the review of the 2021 settlement or a separate inquiry.The deal was criticized for being too lenient on Boeing and for having been reached without consulting the families of the 346 people killed in those crashes. The first occurred in Indonesia in late 2018. After the second in Ethiopia in early 2019, the Max was banned from flying globally for 20 months. The plane resumed service in late 2020 and has since been used in several million flights, mostly without incident — until the Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JetBlue and Spirit Call Off Their Merger

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      JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to terminate the $3.8 billion deal, which had been blocked by federal antitrust regulators.JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would walk away from their planned $3.8 billion merger after federal antitrust regulators successfully challenged the deal in court. JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to exit the deal.A federal judge in Boston blocked the proposed merger on Jan. 16, siding with the Justice Department in determining that the merger would reduce competition in the industry and give airlines more leeway to raise ticket prices. The judge, William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, noted that Spirit played a vital role in the market as a low-cost carrier and that travelers would have fewer options if JetBlue absorbed it.“We are proud of the work we did with Spirit to lay out a vision to challenge the status quo, but given the hurdles to closing that remain, we decided together that both airlines’ interests are better served by moving forward independently,” JetBlue’s chief executive, Joanna Geraghty, said in a statement on Monday. “We wish the very best going forward to the entire Spirit team.”JetBlue and Spirit appealed Judge Young’s decision. JetBlue filed an appellate brief last week arguing that the deal should be allowed to go through.But in a regulatory filing on Jan. 26, JetBlue said it might terminate the deal. Spirit said in its own filing the same day that it believed “there is no basis for terminating” the agreement.The merger agreement, which expired on Jan. 28, could have been extended to July 24 if certain conditions were met. But JetBlue suggested in its filing in January that Spirit had not met some of its obligations under the agreement, giving JetBlue the ability to walk away.As part of the merger agreement, JetBlue agreed to pay Spirit and its shareholders $470 million in fees if the deal was blocked. Some legal experts said JetBlue was potentially positioning itself to dispute the remainder of those fees by terminating the agreement.Spirit is heavily indebted and last turned a profit before the Covid-19 pandemic. Investors see a merger as a lifeline for the company. Its stock price has lost more than half its value since the ruling blocking the merger.JetBlue’s stock nudged up on the same news, as investors see the end of the deal as a cost-saving measure.A merger of the airlines would have given the combined company a bigger share of the market, which is dominated by four carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.Alaska Airlines has also announced plans to increase its size. In December, it said it wanted to acquire Hawaiian Airlines for $1.9 billion. That deal, too, is likely to attract the scrutiny of federal antitrust regulators. More

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      Boeing Faces Justice Dept. Review Over Max 9 Incident

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      The department is looking into whether the blowout of a door panel in January violated a 2021 settlement after two fatal plane crashes.The Justice Department is reviewing whether an early January incident in which a part of a Boeing plane blew out in midflight violated a 2021 agreement to settle a criminal charge against the company, according to a person familiar with the review.Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle the charge, which stemmed from two fatal crashes of its 737 Max 8 planes. The deal, reached in the final weeks of the Trump administration, was criticized at the time as being too lenient on the company.Under the terms, Boeing agreed to compensate the families of the crash victims as well as the airlines affected by the grounding of the planes. The Justice Department agreed to drop a criminal charge that was based on the actions of two employees who had withheld information from the F.A.A.Last month, a panel in the fuselage of a larger Max 9 blew out at an altitude of 16,000 feet shortly after takeoff from Portland, Ore., exposing passengers to deafening wind. There were no serious injuries, but the incident could have been catastrophic had it occurred minutes later, at a higher altitude. The panel is known as a “door plug,” which is used to cover a gap left by an unneeded exit door.The Justice Department review was reported earlier by Bloomberg.The episode in January reignited the intense scrutiny and criticism that Boeing faced after crashes in Indonesia in late 2018 and Ethiopia in early 2019 killed a combined 346 people. The Max 8 and Max 9 were banned from flying globally days after the second crash. Since the jetliners started flying again in late 2020, they have carried out several million flights worldwide.The weight of the crisis appeared to be lifting before the January incident. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the plane in that episode may have left Boeing’s factory without bolts needed to secure the panel. The Federal Aviation Administration immediately grounded nearly 200 Max 9 jets in the United States, pending inspections. Flights using the plane have since resumed.The F.A.A. also increased inspections of the Washington State factory where Boeing makes the Max. On Wednesday, the agency gave the company 90 days to put together a plan to improve quality control.“Boeing must commit to real and profound improvements,” the F.A.A.’s administrator, Mike Whitaker, said in a statement announcing the deadline. “Making foundational change will require a sustained effort from Boeing’s leadership, and we are going to hold them accountable every step of the way, with mutually understood milestones and expectations.”Earlier in the week, a group of F.A.A. experts released a long-awaited report stemming from the Max crashes, and it found that Boeing’s safety culture was still lacking, despite improvements in recent years. More

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      Boeing Suspends Financial Outlook as It Focuses on Safety

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      The manufacturer is under pressure to improve quality control after a panel blew off a 737 Max 9 plane during an Alaska Airlines flight this month.Boeing on Wednesday said that it would not provide a full-year financial forecast, the clearest indication yet that the company is trying to assure customers that it is prioritizing safety amid growing concerns about its popular 737 Max jets.Even as it announced its quarterly earnings, the company chose to focus instead on discussing quality control. Boeing is trying to stem the fallout from an incident less than four weeks ago in which a hole blew open on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 plane shortly after takeoff.“While we often use this time of year to share or update our financial and operational objectives, now is not the time for that,” Boeing’s chief executive, Dave Calhoun, wrote in a message to employees. “We will simply focus on every next airplane while doing everything possible to support our customers, follow the lead of our regulator and ensure the highest standard of safety and quality in all that we do.”With the Jan. 5 incident still under investigation by federal officials, Boeing executives had been grappling with how much to emphasize its efforts to improve safety while also reassuring shareholders about its financial performance. Quality concerns have taken on new urgency after news accounts, including a report in The New York Times, that Boeing workers opened and reinstalled the panel that blew off the plane, known as a door plug.The incident terrified passengers and forced the pilots to make an emergency landing in Portland, Ore. It renewed concerns among some aviation experts that Boeing has long focused too much on increasing profits and enriching shareholders through buybacks and dividends and not enough on engineering and safety. Experts raised similar concerns after two accidents on the 737 Max 8 killed nearly 350 people in 2018 and 2019.The effects of the incident on Boeing’s financial performance are not yet known: The results it announced on Wednesday were for the three months that ended Dec. 31.In its earnings release on Wednesday, the company said it was producing 737 Max jets at a rate of 38 per month at the end of the year. It had hoped to increase that rate to 42 per month this year.But the Federal Aviation Administration said last week that it was limiting Boeing’s ability to increase production of all 737 Max planes, including approving any additional assembly lines, until the company proved that it had resolved its quality control issues.The company said Wednesday that it lost $30 million in the fourth quarter, an improvement from a loss of $663 million in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to $22 billion, from about $20 billion a year earlier.The National Transportation Safety Board is expected in the coming days to release a preliminary report on the Alaska Airlines incident. More

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      Airlines Hoping for More Boeing Jets Could Be Waiting Awhile

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      The Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to limit Boeing’s production of 737 Max planes could hurt airlines that are struggling to buy enough new aircraft.Boeing hoped 2024 would be the year it would significantly increase production of its popular Max jets. But less than a month into the year, the company is struggling to reassure airline customers that it will still be able to deliver on its promises.That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that it would limit the plane maker’s output until it was confident in Boeing’s quality control practices. On Jan. 5, a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 body shortly after takeoff, terrifying passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight and forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon. Almost immediately, the F.A.A. grounded some Max 9s.Since then, details have emerged about the jet’s production at Boeing’s facility in Renton, Wash., that have intensified scrutiny of the company’s quality control. Boeing workers opened and then reinstalled the panel about a month before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines.The directive is another setback for Boeing, which had been planning to increase production of its Max plane series to more than 500 this year, from about 400 last year. It also planned to add another assembly line at a factory in Everett, Wash., a major Boeing production hub north of Seattle.As part of the F.A.A.’s announcement on Wednesday, it also approved inspection and maintenance procedures for the Max 9. Airlines can return the jets to service once they have followed those instructions. United Airlines said on Thursday that it could resume flying some of those planes as soon as Friday.The move is another potential blow to airlines. Even though demand for flights came roaring back after pandemic lockdowns and travel restrictions eased, the airlines have not been able to take full advantage of that demand. The companies have not been able to buy enough planes or hire enough pilots, flight attendants and other workers they need to operate flights. A surge in the cost of jet fuel after Russia invaded Ukraine also hurt profits.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Boeing Reinstalled Panel That Later Blew Out of 737 Max Jet

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      Employees at its Washington State factory are said to have removed the door plug for further work before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines.Nearly three weeks after a hole blew open on a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight, terrifying passengers, new details about the jet’s production are intensifying scrutiny of Boeing’s quality-control practices.About a month before the Max 9 was delivered to Alaska Airlines in October, workers at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., opened and later reinstalled the panel that would blow off the plane’s body, according to a person familiar with the matter.The employees opened the panel, known as a door plug, because work needed to be done to its rivets — which are often used to join and secure parts on planes — said the person, who asked for anonymity because the person isn’t authorized to speak publicly while the National Transportation Safety Board conducts an investigation.The request to open the plug came from employees of Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier that makes the body for the 737 Max in Wichita, Kan. After Boeing employees complied, Spirit employees who are based at Boeing’s Renton factory repaired the rivets. Boeing employees then reinstalled the door.An internal system that tracks maintenance work at the facility, which assembles 737s, shows the request for maintenance but does not contain information about whether the door plug was inspected after it was replaced, the person said.The details could begin to answer a crucial question about why the door plug detached from Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon minutes after taking off on Jan. 5. The door plug is placed where an emergency exit door would be if a jet had more seats. To stay in place, the plug relies primarily on a pair of bolts at the top and another pair at the bottom, as well as metal pins and pads on the sides.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More