DOJ Opens New Criminal Investigation Of Boeing 737 Max Incident

The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into the Alaska Airlines Boeing BA 737-9 MAX mid-exit door plug blowout this January. The Wall Street Journal reports investigators have contacted Alaska Airlines passengers and crew on the January 5th flight.

The DOJ will investigate whether Boeing has complied with the terms of a 2021 settlement following two deadly crashes attributed to faults in Boeing’s 737 MAX Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. In that case, the DOJ had charged Boeing with engaging in “a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group.”

Investigating Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Mid-Exit Door Blowout

The mid-exit door plug on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 separated from the fuselage, leading to an emergency landing. The incident has prompted closer scrutiny of Boeing’s production and quality control.

Alaska Airlines acknowledged the DOJ investigation is underway. “In an event like this, it’s normal for the DOJ to be conducting an investigation,” the airline said in a statement. “We are fully cooperating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.”

The National Transportation Safety Board has published a preliminary report on its investigation, attributing the blowout to four missing bolts, which would have prevented the door plug from shifting upwards and out in flight.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told a Senate Committee this week that Boeing had failed to provide documentation on repairs to the edge frame forward of the door plug, during which the critical bolts were reportedly removed. “It is absurd that two months later we don't have it,” she said.

737-9 MAX Edge Frame Repair Records Are Missing

Responding to Homendy’s testimony before the Committee, Boeing first tacitly admitted the relevant work records on the repair may not exist.

In its reply to a 48-hour warning letter from Senator Maria Cantwell Friday, Boeing’s Ziad Ojakli, Boeing’s executive vice president of government operations, formally admitted the company could not find the records.

“With respect to documentation of the opening and closing of the door plug, our team has shared multiple times with the NTSB that we have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation,” he wrote. “We likewise have shared with the NTSB what became our working hypothesis: that the documents required by our processes were not created when the door plug was opened. If that hypothesis is correct, there would be no documentation to produce.”

Ojakli addressed Homedy’s frustration with the company’s delays in providing critical information, claiming, “Boeing was not aware of any complaints or concerns about a lack of collaboration.”

Additionally, The Seattle Times reported that Jack Kingston, a contracted Boeing lobbyist and former U.S. Representative, attempted to discredit Homedy’s testimony to the Senate Committee, in an email sent to Republican members of Congress after the hearing. Kingston and Boeing quickly disavowed the problematic email, claiming Kingston’s office had sent it accidentally.

Peeling The Boeing Onion

In an interview with The Air Current, Homendy described the Alaska Airlines incident investigation as “peeling an onion.”

“It’s very meticulous work,” she said. “We have requested documents, we continue to request documents, and we will in the future, but it is a lot of fact-finding.”

Homendy also acknowledged a DOJ inquiry into the incident, telling TAC: “In this case, I think [the U.S. Department of Justice] is already doing whatever they are doing separate from us.”

“If it became ‘this was something criminal’, then we certainly could and would refer it [to the FBI],” she added. “But right now, we don’t have any evidence of that at this time.”

DOJ Vowed To Ensure Accountability In Boeing 737 MAX Settlement

Boeing entered into an agreement with the DOJ in 2021 to resolve a criminal charge related to a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group as it reviewed technical details for the approval of Boeing’s 737 MAX airplane.

Boeing agreed to pay over $2.5 billion, including a criminal monetary penalty of $243.6 million, compensation payments to Boeing’s 737 MAX airline customers of $1.77 billion, and a $500 million crash-victim beneficiaries fund to compensate the heirs and relatives of the 346 passengers who died in the Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General David P. Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a DOJ statement on the settlement. “Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 MAX airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception. This resolution holds Boeing accountable for its employees’ criminal misconduct, addresses the financial impact to Boeing’s airline customers, and hopefully provides some measure of compensation to the crash-victims’ families and beneficiaries.”

“The misleading statements, half-truths, and omissions communicated by Boeing employees to the FAA impeded the government’s ability to ensure the safety of the flying public,” U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox for the Northern District of Texas said in the DOJ statement. “This case sends a clear message: The Department of Justice will hold manufacturers like Boeing accountable for defrauding regulators – especially in industries where the stakes are this high.”

When Boeing entered a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the Fraud Section, the company committed to ongoing cooperation with investigations, mandatory reporting of any fraud violations, enhancing its compliance programs, and regular reporting on the effectiveness of its compliance measures.

Boeing Committed To Remedial Actions After Deadly Crashes

Boeing implemented remedial actions at the time of the settlement, including establishing safety oversight committees, reorganizing its engineering and safety functions, and revising policies and training, particularly around FAA communications. No independent compliance monitor was appointed, based on the limited scope of the misconduct, Boeing's proactive disclosures to FAA, and improvements to its compliance and internal control systems.

However, an expert panel review of Boeing’s safety management systems, following the Alaska Airlines incident, found Boeing failed to implement an effective safety management culture. The panel documented 27 findings of concern in Boeing’s safety management practices and made 53 recommendations.

The FAA’s audit of Boeing’s manufacturing found multiple instances of non-compliance. The FAA gave Boeing 90 days to develop a turnaround plan.