KUALA LUMPUR – Could the door plug that flew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 last Friday be “Made in Malaysia”?
In the United States, Portland teacher Bob Sauer discovered the door plug in his backyard and was intrigued to find that the equipment’s serial number and manufacturing details looked like they were written in permanent marker by hand.
Among others, it said it was manufactured in Malaysia and had a line unit number of 8799.
“That’s an interesting way of doing inventory control,” he told local media.
When asked about the handwritten details, planemaker Boeing said it could not comment due to the active aviation investigation.
Sauer said he did not see anything apparently wrong with the door plug, even though he is not an aerospace engineer.
“It looked like it was the normal shape of a fuselage. No kinks in it, or anything like that,” he was quoted as saying.
He also did not touch it for fear of contaminating the equipment.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) agents were at Sauer’s house at 7am Monday to collect the evidence.
Six minutes after takeoff, a panel of the plane snapped off, depressurising the cabin and leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage, exposing the passengers of Alaska Flight 1282 to open air.
By Friday night, all 171 passengers and six crew members had returned to Portland International Airport safely, with no serious injuries reported.
It was reported that the four bolts of the 29kg door plug could have either been missing, misinstalled or broken.
NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said a microscopic examination of the door plug picked up in Sauer’s backyard will determine from “scratch marks” whether the bolts were installed.
The four bolts that should have kept the door plug in place are still missing.
This could leave supplier Spirit AeroSystems liable for manufacturing and installing the door plug and Boeing for final inspection before sealing it behind insulation and the sidewall.
Scoop has reached out to Spirit AeroSystems in Subang, Malaysia and Boeing’s office in Singapore. The senior director of Spirit AeroSystems Malaysia is Datuk Zulkarnain Mohamed, who is also deputy president of the Malaysia Aerospace Industry Association.
The door plug is a panel used to seal a fuselage cutout for an optional emergency exit door. Alaska Airlines planes do not have a door there, and passengers inside would just see another window.
“As a company, we remain focused on the quality of each aircraft structure that leaves our facilities,” Spirit AeroSystems said in the statement.
Meanwhile, court documents reveal that Spirit AeroSystems was the subject of a federal class action suit filed in New York in May last year by its investors, alleging quality failures.
Boeing placed it on probation for multiple years, from 2018 through 2021, the filing said. – January 11, 2024