The National Transportation Safety Board said it would consider litigation
After it door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines 1282 in early January, Boeing $BA has been under close scrutiny by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). And according to the NTSB’s chair, it still has not provided the names of the 25 staffers the regulatory group suspects had a hand in the malfunction.
Boeing has not provided the “documents and information” the group has requested multiple times since the Jan. 5 incident, chair Jennifer Homendy said during a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Moreover, Boeing is falling short on its mid-September promise that it would give investigators documents that would detail the factory work tied to the removal and re-installment of the door plug. Some of those documents may be nonexistent, Homendy added.
“It’s absurd that two months later we don’t have that,” she said.
Boeing said on Jan. 11 would cooperate fully and transparently with the safety board. The NTSB has already released a preliminary report, which found the Alaska plane involved had been delivered without four bolts meant to hold the door plug in position. The board says it is also awaiting information from Spirit AeroSystems, a key maker of Boeing’s 737 fuselages.
The comments come as the company is in the midst of a separate ongoing investigation, conducted by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Earlier this week, the FAA said it had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing had failed to meet safety quality standards.
In the meantime, NTSB’s Homendy said the agency is sifting through email logs, texts, and photos as part of its investigation. Boeing’s factory, based in Renton, Washington, has security cameras, she said, but footage is deleted automatically after 30 days.
Should the agency be unable to retrieve Boeing’s promised documents, Homendy said the agency would consider litigation. “We certainly have subpoena authority and we’re not afraid to use it,” she said.
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