Boeing plans high-level briefing with European regulators after 737 MAX panel incident

Boeing is planning a briefing for high-level European regulators on changes to how planes are built, a senior company executive said, after a mid-air explosion in January sparked a safety crisis.

Boeing has been under pressure over factory inspections since Jan. 5, when a door stopper broke off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 jet in an incident attributed to missing bolts.

Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s senior vice president of quality, said on Tuesday that the plane maker has a briefing with the highest level of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), with the participation of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The company will do the same with other regulatory authorities.

“We’re going to make sure they’re fully aware of all the steps we’re taking as we go through it,” Lund told reporters during a visit to the company’s 737 factory in Renton, Washington, a suburb of Seattle.

EASA’s deputy head said in March that the agency would suspend its indirect approval of Boeing’s jet production if warranted, but added that he felt reassured that the planemaker was dealing with its latest safety crisis.

Under a transatlantic pact, the FAA and EASA regulate the factories of their respective plane makers – Boeing and Airbus – and recognize each other’s safety approvals. This relationship was tested in the wake of two fatal MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

In February, the FAA told Boeing to develop a plan to address “systemic quality control issues.”

Boeing said it increased investment in training, simplified work instructions and increased oversight of suppliers after Alaska Airlines’ MAX 9 jet reached the end of the factory line with rivets that needed fixing.

Boeing has also introduced certain production milestones that its planes will need to achieve in order to move on to the next manufacturing slot. The plane maker will consider the engineers’ concerns if they believe the jet should be grounded, said Jennifer Boland Masterson, senior director of production in the 737 program.

Lund said the Alaska Airlines door plug was opened without paperwork to fix the missing rivets and bolts were not replaced. The team that came in and closed the plug was not responsible for reinstalling the bolts, he said.

The accident, which resulted in an emergency landing, is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB said early Thursday that it had sanctioned Boeing for disclosing non-public details of the ongoing investigation in the media briefing where Lund’s comments were made and referred the plane maker’s conduct to the Justice Department.

During the briefing, Lund said Boeing was “confident that no other airplane has been delivered like this one based on the full fleet review that we’ve done,” regarding the Alaska Airlines plane.

Boeing is “willing and ready” to obtain AS9100 certification, an internationally recognized aerospace quality standard that the airline requires of its suppliers, he said. Boeing is already compliant with the standard and has been tested to a level that would be certified, Lund added.