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The US Department of Justice is investigating a door panel that exploded in the air, panicking passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight two months ago.
“In an event like this, it is normal for the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation,” the airline said. “We are cooperating fully and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.”
Since last January, Boeing has been facing a civil investigation into the accident conducted by the US Federal Aviation Administration. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found that four screws intended to secure the door panel were missing.
A six-week review by the FAA of Boeing's production and quality control operations and supplier Spirit AeroSystems found “multiple 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 aviation manufacturer has been operating under the Justice Department's deferred prosecution agreement since 2021. Boeing admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a criminal fraud charge tied to deceiving regulators about a design flaw in the 737 MAX. The defect, which can force the nose of the plane to land based on faulty sensor readings, caused two accidents in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
The three-year agreement between prosecutors and Boeing stipulates that if the manufacturer continues to operate the compliance program put in place in the wake of the two incidents, the department will ask the court to dismiss the fraud charge.
The Alaska Airlines explosion occurred two days before the end of the three-year probationary period. The Justice Department is “currently considering whether we have fulfilled our obligations under the Darfur Peace Agreement and whether we will move to dismiss” the charge, Boeing said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in January.
Boeing faced criticism from regulators this week after Jennifer Homendy, head of the National Transportation Safety Board, testified before the US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that Boeing had not turned over documents while the board tried to investigate the door panel explosion.
Boeing admitted on Friday in a letter to Senator Maria Cantwell, the committee's chair, that it did not have some of the requested documents. The National Transportation Safety Board's initial report said the door panel arrived damaged at the Boeing plant, forcing workers to open it to make repairs. Aircraft manufacturing generally requires documentation of the work performed as a routine safety procedure. But Boeing said it believed that was not done in this case.
“Our team has been involved numerous times with the NTSB, where we have searched extensively and found no such documents,” the letter said.
“We also shared with the NTSB what became our working hypothesis: that the documentation required for our operations was not generated when the door plug was opened. If this hypothesis were correct, there would be no documentation to produce it.
