© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-9 MAX Flight 1282, which was forced to make an emergency landing with a hole in the fuselage, is seen during its investigation by the National Board Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Portland.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Boeing will add more quality inspections for the 737 MAX after the mid-air explosion of a cockpit panel on an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 earlier this month, the head of its aircraft division said on Monday. commercial.
The planemaker will also send a team to supplier Spirit AeroSystems (NYSE:), which manufactures and installs the plug door involved in the incident, to verify and approve Spirit's work on the plugs before the fuselages are shipped to the production of Boeing (NYSE:). facility in Washington state, Stan Deal, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a letter to Boeing employees.
Boeing's new actions come after the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday extended the indefinite grounding of 171 MAX 9 aircraft for new safety checks. Only after 40 planes are inspected will the agency review the results and determine whether safety is adequate to allow the MAX 9 to resume flying, the FAA said.
In addition to door plug inspections, Boeing teams will conduct checks at 50 other points in the Spirit production process, Deal said. Meanwhile, both Boeing and Spirit will open their 737 production facilities to airline customers for the airlines to conduct their own inspections.
Boeing will also hold employee sessions on quality management and hire a third party to conduct an independent evaluation of its production process, Deal said.
Deal said the actions laid out in the letter are independent of the FAA's ongoing investigation and plans to increase oversight of MAX production.
However, before the new MAX 9s are delivered, Boeing “will conduct the same extensive inspections of the intermediate exit door plugs as mandated by the FAA,” Deal wrote.
The regulator announced last week that it will also audit the Boeing 737 MAX 9 production line and suppliers and consider having an independent entity assume certain aircraft certification responsibilities that the FAA previously assigned to the planemaker.
Boeing has increased its number of quality inspectors by 20% since 2019 and plans to make additional investments in its quality units, Deal wrote.
“Everything we do must conform to the requirements of our QMS (quality management system),” Deal wrote. “Anything less is unacceptable. It is through this standard that we must operate to give our customers and their passengers complete confidence in Boeing airplanes.”
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday.
