Boeing blames missing paperwork for Alaska Air door plug incident

The missing paperwork on the 737 Max that lost a door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight in January isn’t just making it difficult to find out who made the near tragic mistake. The paperwork may have caused the problem in the first place, Boeing disclosed this week.

The missing paperwork on the 737 Max that lost a door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight in January isn’t just making it difficult to find out who made the near tragic mistake. The paperwork may have caused the problem in the first place, Boeing disclosed this week. It was already well known that no documentation was found to show who worked on the door plug. What was disclosed this week at a briefing for journalists at Boeing’s 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington, is that lack of paperwork is why the four bolts needed to hold the door plug in place were never installed before the plane left the factory in October. The workers who needed to reinstall the bolts never had the work order telling them the work needed to be done. Without the bolts, the door plug incident was pretty much inevitable. Luckily, it wasn’t fatal. It’s a sign of the problems with the quality of work along the Boeing assembly lines. Those problems have become the focus of multiple federal investigations and whistleblower revelations, and the cause of delays in jet deliveries that are causing headaches for airlines and passengers around the globe. Boeing said this particular problem with the Alaska Air door plug occurred because two different groups of employees at the plant were charged with doing the work, with one removing and the other reinstalling the door plug as the plane was passing along the assembly line. The first group of employees removed the door plug to address problems with some rivets that were made by a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. But they didn’t generate the paperwork indicating they had removed the door plug, along with the four bolts necessary to hold it in place, in order to do that work.