Boeing is making design changes intended to prevent a repeat of the 5 January in-flight blow-out of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9’s mid-cabin door-plug.
The company’s senior vice-president of quality Elizabeth Lund said on 6 August that Boeing hopes to introduce the changes before the end of this year.
“They are making changes to the plug,” she says of Boeing’s engineering team. “They are working on some design changes to allow the plug to not be closed if there is any issue.”
Lund made her comments during a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing in Washington DC.
She does not provide details about design tweaks but says other changes could include attaching lanyards to the four retaining bolts intended to secure the plugs, presumably to keep the bolts from being separated.
Lund says she is unsure exactly when Boeing hopes to finalise the safety alterations but says she expects it will do so this year. Boeing will introduce the changes on newly manufactured jets and offer to retrofit in-service 737 Max aircraft with the updates, she adds.
The NTSB held the two-day hearing as part of its investigation into the circumstances leading to the Alaska Airlines accident.
The agency has not yet issued its conclusions about the event, but Boeing has already taken blame. The company has said workers at its Renton plant removed the plug during the jet’s assembly. They replaced the plug but failed to install the four bolts before delivering the jet to Alaska in October last year.
