By David Shepardson
June 24, 2025 – 8:10 AM PDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigation found ineffective actions by Boeing (BA.N) and ineffective oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration that led to a mid-air cabin panel blowout of a new 737 MAX 9 flight in January 2024 that spun the planemaker into a major crisis, officials said on Tuesday.
The board criticized Boeing’s safety culture and its failure to install four key bolts in a new Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) MAX 9.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a meeting Tuesday to determine the probable cause that the incident was entirely avoidable because the planemaker should have addressed unauthorized production work long ago that was identified in numerous Boeing internal audits, reports, quality alerts and regulatory compliance issues.
“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA,” Homendy said. “It’s nothing short of a miracle that no one died or sustained serious physical injuries.”
The accident prompted the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation and declare that Boeing was not in compliance with a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. CEO Dave Calhoun announced he would step down within a few months of the mid-air panel blowout.
Homendy praised new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg but said “he has his work cut out for him, a lot of challenges to address, and that’s going to take time.”
The incident badly damaged Boeing’s reputation and led to a grounding of the MAX 9 for two weeks and a production cap of 38 planes per month by the FAA that still remains in place.
Boeing created no paperwork for the removal of the 737 MAX 9 door plug – a piece of metal shaped like a door covering an unused emergency exit – or its re-installation during production, and did not know which employees were involved, the NTSB said last year.
Boeing did not comment ahead of the meeting.
Then FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker said in June 2024 the agency was “too hands off” in Boeing oversight and it has boosted the number of inspectors at Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems (SPR.N) factories.
Boeing had agreed last July to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. But it last month struck a deal with the Justice Department to avoid a guilty plea.
The Justice Department has asked a judge to approve the deal, which will allow Boeing to avoid pleading guilty or facing oversight by an outside monitor but will require it to pay an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims fund to be divided equally per crash victim.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Jamie Freed and Marguerita Choy