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Boeing to make design changes to prevent future 737 MAX 9 door panel blowout

Date: Aug 7, 2024

Boeing on Tuesday said it plans to make design changes to prevent a future mid-air cabin panel blowout, like the one in an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 flight in January that spun the planemaker into its second major crisis in recent years.

The National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing said they still have not determined who removed and reinstalled that plane's door plug during production.

National Transportation Safety Board completed the first of two days of hearings Tuesday that lasted nearly 10 hours into the mid-air emergency that badly damaged Boeing's reputation, led to the MAX 9 grounding for two weeks, a ban by the Federal Aviation Administration on expanding production, a criminal investigation and the departure of several key executives.

Boeing's Senior Vice President for quality, Elizabeth Lund, told the hearing the planemaker is working on design changes that it hopes to implement within the year and then to retrofit across the fleet to prevent a future incident.

--Reuters--