Whitaker To Explain FAA Role In Door Plug Mishap

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker is being called on the carpet to explain the FAA's role in the Boeing 737 MAX door plug blowout last January. Whitaker will appear before an investigative subcommittee of the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Sept. 25. to discuss the FAA's oversight of Boeing as a new MAX 9 went through Boeing's Renton assembly plant and was delivered without four bolts that secured the door plug. On Jan. 5, the door plug detached while the plane was climbing out of Portland on an Alaska Airlines flight to California.

Boeing has already worn a groove in that same carpet before lawmakers trying to explain how that error got through its safeguards, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the committee, suggested Whitaker is in for a rough ride. "Instead of encouraging workers to report quality and safety concerns, Boeing’s culture pushed workers to conceal problems that required federal inspectors’ attention," Blumenthal said. "The FAA has to explain what they knew and when they knew it. Boeing’s broken safety culture is in desperate need of repair, and the FAA has an essential role to play."