Boeing working on design changes to prevent door panel blowout

Boeing (NYSE:BA) is working on design changes to prevent any midair door panel blowout like the one that happened in an Alaska Airlines (ALK) 737 Max 9 flight in January, an executive said on the first day of the investigative hearing into the incident.

Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president for quality at Boeing (BA) Commercial Airplanes, said the company was “working on some design changes that will allow the door plug to not be closed if there’s any issue until it’s firmly secured,” with the aim of implementing the changes within the year.

Lund said every 737 fuselage that Spirit AeroSystems (NYSE:SPR) supplied before the Alaska (ALK) flight incident had defects. “What we don’t want is really big defects that are impactful to the production system. We were starting to see more and more of those kinds of issues right around the time of the accident.”

The National Transportation Safety Board completed the first day of the hearing on Tuesday and released 3,800 pages of information from the probe. Investigators found that the door plug in the Alaska (ALK) Max 9 plane was missing four key bolts.

Wednesday’s hearing will focus on the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight of Boeing (BA). “We have a lot of questions,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said, adding that defects, missing documents and incorrect policies “have been issues for years.”