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The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the in-flight door panel blast that terrorized passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight two months ago.
The airline stated that “In an event like this, it is normal for the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation. We are cooperating fully and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.”
Boeing has been engaged in a civil investigation into the crash by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration since January. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found that four bolts intended to secure the door panel were missing.
A six-week audit conducted by the FAA of the manufacturing and quality control processes of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems found “numerous instances in which the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.”
Neither Boeing nor the Justice Department immediately responded to a request for comment.
The aerospace manufacturer has been operating under a Department of Justice deferred prosecution agreement starting in 2021. Boeing admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay $2.5 billion to resolve a criminal fraud charge related to the Regulators’ deception about a 737 Max design flaw. The flaw, which could force a plane’s nose down based on faulty sensor readings, caused two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed a combined 346 people.
The three-year agreement between prosecutors and Boeing states that if the manufacturer continued to carry out an established compliance program following the crashes, the department would ask the court to dismiss the fraud charge.
The Alaska Airlines outbreak occurred two days before the three-year trial period was due to expire. Boeing said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January that the Justice Department is “currently evaluating whether we have complied with our obligations under the DPA and whether to proceed to dismiss” the indictment.
Boeing faced criticism from regulators this week after Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the NTSB, testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that Boeing had failed to turn over documentation while the board was trying to investigate the door panel blowout.
Boeing admitted Friday in a letter to Senator Maria Cantwell, the committee chair, that it did not have some of the requested documentation. The NTSB’s preliminary report says the door panel arrived damaged at the Boeing factory, forcing workers to open it to make repairs. Aircraft manufacturing generally requires documentation of work performed as a routine safety measure. But Boeing said it believes that was not done in this case.
“Our team has shared multiple times with the NTSB that we have thoroughly investigated and found no such documentation,” the letter reads.
“We also shared with the NTSB what has become our working hypothesis: that the documents required by our processes were not created when the door was opened. If this hypothesis were correct, there would be no documentation to produce.”