Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) caused “multiple system failures” that led to an Alaska Airlines door blowing off mid-flight in January 2024, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said during a meeting on Tuesday.

The incident with the Boeing 737 Max 9 occurred on Flight 1282 shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, and was caused by door plug bolts that were removed during repairs and never reinstalled. The missing bolts allowed the door to shift and eventually open mid-flight, wreaking havoc among 171 passengers.

“An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. Ineffective FAA oversight and Boeing’s failure in documenting the work done on the door plug – which led crews to overlook the missing bolts – caused the incident, according to the board.

“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA,” Homendy said.

DOJ OPENS PROBE INTO ALASKA AIRLINES PLANE BLOWOUT: REPORT

Last year’s incident highlights what the board said was Boeing’s broader pattern of safety issues, including unapproved part removals, inadequate employee training and a flawed process of handling change.

Boeing said the company has taken immediate action since the incident and is continuing efforts to improve its operations.

“We at Boeing regret this accident and continue to work on strengthening safety and quality across our operations,” Boeing told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “We will review the final report and recommendations as we continue to implement improvements.”

ALASKA AIRLINES INFLIGHT BLOWOUT COULD HAVE BEEN ‘MUCH DIFFERENT’ SCENARIO, NTSB WARNS

Plastic covers the exterior of the fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 MAX on Jan. 7, 2024 in Portland, Oregon. (NTSB/Getty Images)

The NTSB criticized the FAA for failing to catch what it said were Boeing’s ongoing compliance and operations issues.

“I have lots of questions about where FAA was during all of this,” Homendy said. “The FAA is the absolute last barrier of defense when it comes to ensuring aviation safety, protecting the more than 1 billion passengers and crew members who fly on U.S. and foreign airlines annually.”

ALASKA AIR FLIGHT ATTENDANTS REVEAL DISTURBING DETAILS FROM MID-AIR BLOWOUT SCARE

A plastic sheet covers an area of the fuselage of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft outside a hangar at Portland International Airport on Jan. 8, 2024 in Portland, Oregon. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The FAA said in a statement Tuesday that the administration is taking NTSB recommendations “seriously,” adding that it will not lift its monthly Boeing 737 production cap until the FAA is “confident the company can maintain safety and quality while making more aircraft.” 

“The FAA takes NTSB recommendations seriously and will carefully evaluate those issued today,” the FAA said. “The FAA has fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident, and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues.”

“We are actively monitoring Boeing’s performance and meet weekly with the company to review its progress and any challenges it’s facing in implementing necessary changes,” the FAA added. “We have a full complement of safety inspectors in Boeing’s facilities, and they are conducting more targeted audits and inspections.”

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Pilots were able to land the aircraft safely following the blowout. Several passengers suffered minor injuries, but all travelers survived the incident.

The National Transportation Safety Board has issued new safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing following the 2024 incident in which a door plug flew off in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight.

“An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a meeting on Tuesday, partly blaming Boeing’s safety processes for the incident.

Homendy led the investigation into what happened before the door panel blew out six minutes into Alaska Flight 1282 that took off from Portland on Jan. 5, 2024. The aircraft was at about 16,000 feet over Oregon during a trip to California when it had to make an emergency landing. Four bolts meant to hold the Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug in place were missing, the NTSB discovered after the fact.

“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident … to Boeing and to the FAA … and were therefore preventable,” Homendy said at the meeting Tuesday.

The accident left a gaping hole in the plane that had 177 people on board; eight of them suffered minor injuries.

In the NTSB’s report, investigators said the incident’s probable cause was in the in-flight separation of the left mid exit door plug, blaming “Boeing‘s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight necessary to ensure that manufacturing personnel could consistently and correctly comply with its parts removal process, which was intended to document and ensure that 4 the securing bolts and hardware that were removed to facilitate rework during the manufacturing process were properly reinstalled.”

Investigators also faulted the FAA for the agency’s oversight.

“Contributing to the accident was the FAA’s ineffective compliance enforcement surveillance and audit planning activities, which failed to adequately identify and ensure that Boeing addressed the repetitive and systemic nonconformance issues associated with its parts removal process,” the report said.

In a statement, the FAA said it is taking the NTSB’s safety recommendations seriously and will carefully evaluate the ones issued Tuesday.

“The FAA has fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues,” the FAA’s statement said. “We are actively monitoring Boeing’s performance and meet weekly with the company to review its progress and any challenges it’s facing in implementing necessary changes.”

The FAA also said its safety inspectors are in Boeing’s facilities conducting more targeted audits and inspections. However, the agency said it has not lifted the 737 monthly production cap it has placed on Boeing until the FAA can confidently say Boeing can maintain the safety and quality of its aircraft.

“We at Boeing regret this accident and continue to work on strengthening safety and quality across our operations. We will review the final report and recommendations as we continue to implement improvements,” a spokesperson for Boeing said Tuesday following the NTSB meeting.

When the 737 Max involved in the accident was being manufactured, Boeing removed the door panel to make repairs to rivets nearby, according to the NTSB’s report. Paperwork that would have triggered additional inspections was never created and the panel was reinstalled without its bolts — and the team that did the work had never opened that type of door panel.

When asked whether all of it can be blamed on human error on the manufacturing floor at Boeing, Homendy told CBS News there needed to be a design change or a better process.

“It is due to a process issue, a process failure. A lot of people have focused on one or two Boeing personnel or door plug personnel. I think we have to really step back and look at the entire process was reliant on humans to set to put in a record that the door needed to be removed and put back in place,” she said.

Shandy Brewer was sitting in Row 10 on the flight when the door blew off. It was an experience that stuck with her 18 months later.

“All of a sudden, just this huge bang happened. It sounded like a firework going off, like right in your ears, just like so loud,” she recalled. “As soon as I step onto an airplane, tears start pouring down my face every single time. I haven’t been on a flight where that doesn’t happen.”

Brewer is among a group of 35 passengers who have filed a lawsuit against Boeing and Alaska Airlines in King County, Washington, where Boeing is headquartered. The companies have previously declined to comment on other lawsuits over the incident.

“The NTSB confirmed what we already suspected – Boeing’s quality control was woefully sloppy, and the FAA failed as a watchdog,” Brewer’s lawyer, Mark Lindquist, told CBS News in a statement. “Now it’s time for Boeing to accept responsibility, fix their issues, and move forward. We all want to feel safe when we board a Boeing plane.”

Despite the failure, Homendy said she feels like Boeing airplanes are safe, adding that she has “no concerns” about that. However, she said there are ways to improve safety.

“We found that in our investigation and we hope to help them close any gaps that remain,” Homendy said.

The NTSB’s new safety recommendations to the FAA include:

• Revising its compliance enforcement surveillance system, audit planning activities, and records systems
• Developing guidance and provide recurrent training to managers and inspectors
• Retaining historical compliance enforcement and audit records older than 5 years
• Convening an independent third-party panel to conduct a comprehensive review of Boeing’s safety culture

In a statement, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed the prior administration and Boeing for taking “their eye off the ball.”

“They were distracted and safety was put at risk. That can never happen again,” Duffy said. “Under this new administration, safety is paramount and it drives everything we do. Whether it’s building an all-new air traffic control system or ensuring Boeing and other manufacturers are delivering safe products, we will not hesitate to implement changes.”

In response to the NTSB meeting Tuesday, Alaska Airlines said: “We look forward to reviewing the final report in the weeks ahead. We remain deeply grateful for the heroic actions of the crew of Flight 1282 and will continue ensuring safety is always Alaska Airlines’ highest priority.”

Sarah Ploss

contributed to this report.

The arrival of precipitation, coupled with continued cooler temperatures, helped firefighters working in Western Alaska on Monday.

The handful of fires that makeup the Roundabout Complex outside of Huslia remain the top priority for BLM AFS Galena Zone fire managers. None of the fires are immediately threatening communities at this time.

Firefighters contained the Billy Hawk Fire (#182) and the Billy Hawk 2 Fire (#191) on Monday. Both fires are in monitor status.

The remaining fires in the complex include:

The Moldy Fire (#279), which is still showing heat around the edges of the fire. The fire is unstaffed; however, fire managers are working on a plan to implement point protection for nearby allotments and cabins once resources become available. Satellite imagery puts the eastern edge of the fire about 8 miles from Huslia. Marshland, the Koyukuk River, and a previously burned area are between the fire and the community.

On the Richards Fire (#251), eight smokejumpers worked Monday around the eastern edge of the fire, connecting their fire lines to lakes to prevent the fire’s spread. Firefighters conducting mop up are working 100 feet in from the perimeter of the fire’s edge to ensure hotspots are eliminated and the line is secure. Smokejumpers also improved a temporary helicopter landing pad ahead of the planned arrival of a Type 1 hotshot crew. The fire is 20% contained.

The four smokejumpers assigned to the Caribou Fire (#128) received a para-cargo delivery of structure protection equipment Sunday night. They spent Monday setting up the sprinklers, hoses, and pumps to protect a mine site, historical mining equipment and other structures. A helicopter dropped water on hotspots along the fire’s edge to help slow its spread.

Other fires of interest:

The Nakochelik Fire (#306) is 100% contained. Smokejumpers are working their way 50 feet in from the perimeter to find any remaining hotspots, put them out and secure the line.

The Sardine Fire (#285) was reported shortly after 9:30 p.m. on June 20, and the Snowball Fire (#286) was reported about 9 a.m. the following day. Both fires were about 10 miles north of Council and both were caused by lightning. Fire managers wanted to respond to the Sardine Fire when it was reported, but were unable to do so due to the late hour and lack of available resources. Careful monitoring of both fires has shown no heat and no smoke over the past several days.

A wetter, cooler weather pattern is forecast for western Interior Alaska over the next few days with some areas expected to receive 1/2 inch of rain or more. There’s a chance of thunderstorms across the region, however, which could bring lightning.

-BLM-

Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service, P.O. Box 35005 1541 Gaffney Road, Fort Wainwright, Ak 99703

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The Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service (AFS) located at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, provides wildland fire suppression services for over 240 million acres of Department of the Interior and Native Corporation Lands in Alaska. In addition, AFS has other statewide responsibilities that include: interpretation of fire management policy; oversight of the BLM Alaska Aviation program; fuels management projects; and operating and maintaining advanced communication and computer systems such as the Alaska Lightning Detection System. AFS also maintains a National Incident Support Cache. The Alaska Fire Service provides wildland fire suppression services for America’s “Last Frontier” on an interagency basis with the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources, USDA Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Military in Alaska.

Categories: Active Wildland Fire

Tags: 2025 Alaska Fire Season, Billy Hawk 2 Fire, Billy Hawk Fire, Caribou Fire, Galena Zone, Moldy Fire, Nakochelik Fire, Richards Fire, Roundabout Complex, Sardine Fire, Snowball Fire