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      United Airlines Faces Closer F.A.A. Scrutiny After Safety Incidents

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      The carrier, which has experienced several recent mishaps, told employees to expect a review by federal regulators in coming weeks.The Federal Aviation Administration will scrutinize United Airlines’ operations more closely in coming weeks after a spate of recent safety incidents, the airline told employees in a memo on Friday.“We will begin to see more of an F.A.A. presence in our operation as they begin to review some of our work processes, manuals and facilities,” Sasha Johnson, a vice president of corporate safety at the airline, said in the memo. “We welcome their engagement and are very open to hear from them about what they find and their perspective on things we may need to change to make us even safer.”In some of the incidents, which United has said were unrelated, a plane veered off a runway, another arrived at its destination with a panel missing from its body, another lost a tire after takeoff and an engine caught fire after ingesting plastic wrapping.The F.A.A. said in a statement that it “routinely” monitored airline operations. The agency said it “focuses on an airline’s compliance with applicable regulations; ability to identify hazards, assess and mitigate risk; and effectively manage safety.”In the United memo, Ms. Johnson said the agency would “also pause a variety of certification activities for a period of time.”United’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, sought to reassure customers this week that the airline was taking safety seriously after the incidents.“I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” he said in an email to customers. “Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups.”Experts caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from the episodes, which are concerning but are common in aviation and often unreported by the media. More

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      United Airlines Flight Missing an External Panel Lands Safely

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      No one realized that the panel from the plane, a Boeing 737-800, was missing until it had landed safely, the airline said.A United Airlines flight that took off on Friday morning from San Francisco International Airport landed in Oregon missing an external panel, the Federal Aviation Administration said.The panel was found to be missing after the plane, a Boeing 737-800, landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport in Oregon and parked at a gate, United Airlines said in a statement. It was unclear when or how the panel went missing.According to the airline, there was no indication of any damage to the plane during the flight, and the aircraft did not declare an emergency on its way to the Medford airport.“We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service,” the airline said. “We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.”The plane was carrying 139 passengers and a crew of six, according to United Airlines. No injuries were reported.The plane has been in service for more than 25 years, and it was from a previous generation of 737 aircraft, according to Airfleets.net, a website that tracks aircraft information. The airport briefly paused operations to inspect the runway, and resumed flights after no debris was found on the airfield, Amber Judd, the director of the Medford airport, said in an email.Boeing referred questions about the flight to United Airlines. The F.A.A. said it planned to investigate the episode.The discovery of the missing panel on Friday came as Boeing has faced heavy scrutiny in recent weeks after a door-sized section blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines flight in January just minutes after it had taken off from Portland, Ore. There were no major injuries during the flight, but the frightening episode, which was recorded on video, prompted government officials to look into quality control at Boeing.After the January flight, the F.A.A. began a six-week audit of Boeing, which found “multiple instances” in which the plane maker had failed to follow through with quality-control requirements.Since then, there have been a number of issues with flights on Boeing aircraft.On March 8, a United Airlines flight that had landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston rolled into the grass as the plane, a Boeing 737, exited onto the taxiway, according to the F.A.A.In February, a Madrid-bound American Airlines flight, a Boeing 777, diverted to Boston Logan International Airport with a cracked windshield shortly after it had departed from Kennedy International Airport in New York. More

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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