The Federal Aviation Administration required the company to produce a turnaround plan after one of its jetliners suffered a blowout of a fuselage panel during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Nobody was hurt during the midair incident. Accident investigators determined that bolts that helped secure the panel to the frame of the Boeing 737 Max 9 were missing before the piece blew off. The mishap has further battered Boeing’s reputation and led to multiple civil and criminal investigations.

Whistleblowers have accused the company of taking shortcuts that endanger passengers, a claim that Boeing disputes. A panel convened by the FAA found shortcomings in the aircraft maker’s safety culture.

In late February, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan to improve quality and ease the agency’s safety concerns. Whitaker described the plan as the beginning, not the end, of a process to improve Boeing.

“It’s going to be a long road to get Boeing back to where they need to be, making safe airplanes,” he told ABC News last week.

The FAA limited Boeing production of the 737 Max, its best-selling plane, although analysts believe the number the company is making has fallen even lower than the FAA cap.

Boeing’s recent problems could expose it to criminal prosecution related to the deadly crashes of two Max jetliners in 2018 and 2019. The Justice Department said two weeks ago that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement that allowed it to avoid prosecution for fraud. The charge was based on the company allegedly deceiving regulators about a flight-control system that was implicated in the crashes.

Most of the recent problems have been related to the Max, however Boeing and key supplier Spirit AeroSystems have also struggled with manufacturing flaws on a larger plane, the 787 Dreamliner. Boeing has suffered setbacks on other programs including its Starliner space capsule, a military refueling tanker, and new Air Force One presidential jets.

Boeing officials have vowed to regain the trust of regulators and the flying public. Boeing has fallen behind rival Airbus, and production setbacks have hurt the company’s ability to generate cash.

The company says it is reducing “traveled work” — assembly tasks that are done out of their proper chronological order — and keeping closer tabs on Spirit AeroSystems.

More than 4,000 U.S. flights were delayed by midafternoon on the East Coast, continuing a trend that has tested the patience of travelers all week. Thankfully, relatively few flights were canceled — fewer than 100, according to tracking data from FlightAware.

There were delays on the highways, too.

Along Florida’s Turnpike, Wallis Tinnie said a traffic accident and road work slowed her drive to an African American history commemoration in the Florida Panhandle, the site in 1816 of the first battle of the Seminole Wars.

“But we’re comfortable with it,” the Miami woman said during a stop at Port Saint Lucie. “We left early, and our event is tomorrow. So hopefully — God willing, creek don’t rise — we’ll be there in plenty of time.”

The Transportation Security Administration predicted that Friday would be the busiest day of the holiday weekend for air travel, with nearly 3 million people expected to pass through airport checkpoints. TSA screened just under 2.9 million people Thursday, coming within about 11,000 of breaking the record set on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year.

“Airports are going to be more packed than we have seen in 20 years,” AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz said.

Highways also are likely to be jammed as motorists head out of town and then return home. AAA predicted this will be the busiest start-of-summer weekend in nearly 20 years, with 43.8 million people expected to roam at least 50 miles from home between Thursday and Monday — 38 million of them taking vehicles.

The annual expression of wanderlust that accompanies the start of the summer travel season is happening at a time when Americans tell pollsters they are worried about the economy and the direction of the country.

“Memorial Day is a holiday weekend. I get to hang with family and friends, so I’d say that’s priceless, right?” Nene Efebo said during a two-hour wait for a delayed flight at Denver International Airport. “Anything to hang out with family and friends.”

Victoria Ramos Valdes of Miami was taking a driving vacation with her husband, Blake, and their children, ages 3 and 4 months old.

“We said, hey, we’re going to go for a $300 budget, and the hotel is around $150,” she said, but it has a water slide, providing plenty of entertainment. “We’re taking a nice family trip and doing our best to have the best Memorial Day weekend possible.”

Some travelers reported experiencing sticker shock when they booked their trips. Upon arriving at Philadelphia International Airport, Ciarra Marsh said the city “was not our original destination, but we chose here because it was cheaper.”

At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Larisa Latimer of New Lenox, Illinois, said her airfare was reasonable but other expenses for a getaway to New Orleans were not.

“I just have to make the accommodation,” she said. “The rental car is up … this year, the hotel accommodations were very unusually expensive.”

Kathy Larko of Fort Myers, Florida, used frequent-flyer miles — and some flexible scheduling — to pay for her trip to Chicago.

“I’m really conscious of looking at the cost of the entire trip. We’re staying a little farther out than we normally would” to get a lower hotel rate, she said. “We’re also flying back a day later, because we could get cheaper miles.”

The weekend’s highway traffic and crowded airports could be a sample of what is to come for several more weeks. U.S. airlines expect to carry a record number of passengers this summer. Their trade group estimates that 271 million travelers will fly between June 1 and August 31, breaking the record of 255 million set – you guessed it – last summer.

Cody Jackson in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, Melissa Perez Winder in Chicago and Shelley Adler in Washington contributed to this report.

It is now up to the Justice Department to decide whether to file charges against Boeing. Prosecutors will tell the court no later than July 7 how they plan to proceed, department said.

New 737 Max jets crashed in 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia, killing 346 people. Boeing reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department in January 2021 to avoid prosecution on a single charge of fraud — misleading federal regulators who approved the plane. Boeing blamed the deception on two relatively low-level employees.

In a letter filed Tuesday in federal court in Texas, Glenn Leon, head of the Justice Department criminal division’s fraud section, said Boeing violated terms of the settlement by failing to make promised changes to detect and prevent violations of federal anti-fraud laws.

The determination means that Boeing could be prosecuted “for any federal criminal violation of which the United States has knowledge,” including the charge of fraud that the company hoped to avoid with the settlement, the Justice Department said.

However, it is not clear whether the government will prosecute Boeing.

“The Government is determining how it will proceed in this matter,” the Justice Department said in the court filing. Boeing will have until June 13 to respond the government’s allegation, and department said it will consider the company’s explanation “in determining whether to pursue prosecution.”

Boeing Co., which is based in Arlington, Virginia, disputed the Justice Department’s finding.

“We believe that we have honored the terms of that agreement, and look forward to the opportunity to respond to the Department on this issue,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a statement. “As we do so, we will engage with the Department with the utmost transparency, as we have throughout the entire term of the agreement, including in response to their questions following the Alaska Airlines 1282 accident.”

Boeing has come under renewed scrutiny since that Alaska Airlines flight in January, when a door plug blew out of a 737 Max, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the jetliner. The company is under multiple investigations into the blowout and its manufacturing quality. The FBI has told passengers from the flight that they might be victims of a crime.

Prosecutors said they will meet on May 31 with families of passengers who died in the two Max crashes. Family members were angry and disappointed after a similar meeting last month.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer who represents families of passengers in the second crash, said the Justice Department’s determination that Boeing breached the settlement terms is “a positive first step, and for the families, a long time coming.”

“But we need to see further action from DOJ to hold Boeing accountable, and plan to use our meeting on May 31 to explain in more details what we believe would be a satisfactory remedy to Boeing’s ongoing criminal conduct,” Cassell said.

Investigations into the crashes pointed to a flight-control system that Boeing added to the Max without telling pilots or airlines. Boeing downplayed the significance of the system, then didn’t overhaul it until after the second crash.

After secret negotiations, the government agreed not to prosecute Boeing on a charge of defrauding the United States by deceiving regulators about the flight system. The settlement included a $243.6 million fine, a $500 million fund for victim compensation, and nearly $1.8 billion to airlines whose Max jets were grounded for nearly two years.

Boeing has faced civil lawsuits, congressional investigations and massive damage to its business since the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Koenig reported from Dallas.

Both Southwest and American Airlines reported first-quarter losses Thursday. Demand for travel remains strong, including among business flyers, but airlines are dealing with higher labor costs, and delays in getting new aircraft from Boeing are limiting their ability to add more flights.

Southwest said it lost $231 million. CEO Robert Jordan said the airline was reacting quickly “to address our financial underperformance,” including by slowing down hiring and asking employees to take time off.

The Dallas-based carrier said it expects to end this year with 2,000 fewer employees than it had at the start of the year.

In August, Southwest will stop flying to four airports: Cozumel, Mexico; Syracuse, New York; Bellingham, Washington; and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where the airline’s major operation is at smaller Hobby Airport. Southwest hasn’t left an airport since 2019, when it pulled out of Newark, New Jersey, and consolidated its New York City-area flying at LaGuardia Airport.

Southwest will also trim flights in Atlanta and at O’Hare Airport, which augments the airline’s main Chicago service at Midway Airport.

The moves will help the airline focus on more profitable locations and deploy a fleet of planes that will be smaller than it had planned. Southwest said it expects to get only 20 new 737 Max 8 jets from Boeing this year, down from the 46 it expected just a few weeks ago. It will offset some of the shortage by retiring fewer planes.

Boeing is struggling with slower production since a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Max 9 in January, and that is frustrating its airline customers.

Dallas-based Southwest said that its loss, after excluding special items, was 36 cents per share. That was slightly worse than the loss of 34 cents per share that Wall Street expected.

Revenue rose to $6.33 billion, below analysts’ forecast of $6.42 billion.

American said it lost $312 million as labor costs rose 18%, or nearly $600 million. The airline said it expects to return to profitability in the second quarter — a busier time for travel — and post earnings between $1.15 and $1.45 per share. Analysts expect $1.15 per share, according to a FactSet survey.

The first-quarter loss amounted to 34 cents per share excluding special items, which was worse than the loss of 27 cents per share forecast by analysts.

Revenue was $12.57 billion.

CEO Robert Isom said American is less impacted by Boeing’s problems because the airline had already received hundreds of new planes in recent years. The airline said eight Boeing jets it expected to get won’t show up this year as planned. American has ordered Boeing Max 10s, a larger model that has not yet been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, but those planes are not due until 2028.

“I’ve talked to everyone at Boeing that I can possibly address and the message is the same: Get your act together,” Isom said on a call with analysts and reporters. “It starts with producing quality products one at a time off the assembly line … I can’t tell you if they’re making progress or not.”

American has had no problem getting new, smaller regional jets from Embraer. Isom said the Brazilian manufacturer has been “incredibly reliable.”

CEO David Calhoun said the company is in “a tough moment,” and its focus is on fixing its manufacturing issues, not the financial results.

Company executives have been forced to talk more about safety and less about finances since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane.

The accident halted progress that Boeing seemed to be making while recovering from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed 346 people, are now back in the spotlight, too.

About a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the second crash met with government officials for several hours Wednesday in Washington. They asked the officials to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement, but left disappointed.

Boeing officials made no mention of the meeting, but talked repeatedly while discussing the quarterly earnings of a renewed focus on safety.

“Although we report first-quarter financial results today, our focus remains on the sweeping actions we are taking following the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident,” Calhoun told employees in a memo Wednesday.

Calhoun ticked off a series of actions the company is taking and reported “significant progress” in improving manufacturing quality, much of it by slowing down production, which means fewer planes for its airline customers. Calhoun told CNBC that closer inspections were resulting in 80% fewer flaws in the fuselages coming from key supplier Spirit AeroSystems.

“Near term, yes, we are in a tough moment,” he wrote to employees. “Lower deliveries can be difficult for our customers and for our financials. But safety and quality must and will come above all else.”

Calhoun, who will step down at the end of the year, said again he is fully confident the company will recover.

Calhoun became CEO in early 2020 as Boeing struggled to recover from the Max crashes, which led regulators to ground the planes worldwide for nearly two years. The company thought it had sidestepped any risk of criminal prosecution when the Justice Department agreed not to try the company for fraud if it complied with U.S. anti-fraud laws for three years — a period that ended in January.

Boeing has been reaching confidential settlements with the families of passengers who died, but the relatives of those killed in the Ethiopia crash are continuing to press the Justice Department to prosecute the company in federal district court in Texas, where the settlement was filed. On Wednesday, department officials told relatives that the agency is still considering the matter.

Leaving the meeting, Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called it “all for show.” He said the Justice Department appears determined to defend the agreement it brokered in secret with Boeing.

“We simply want that case to move forward and let the jury decide if Boeing is a criminal or not,” he said.

It was an emotional meeting, according to Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the 2019 crash.

“People are angry. People are shouting. People are starting to talk over other people,” said Milleron, who watched online from her home in Massachusetts while her husband attended in person. Relatives believe the Justice Department is “overlooking a mountain of evidence against Boeing. It’s mystifying,” she said.

According to Milleron, the head of the fraud section of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Glenn Leon, said his agency could extend its review beyond this summer, seek a trial against Boeing on the charge of defrauding regulators who approved the Max, or ask a judge to dismiss the charge. She said Leon made no commitments.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

A federal judge and an appeals court ruled last year that they had no power to overturn the Boeing settlement. Families of the crash victims hoped the government would reconsider prosecuting Boeing after the Jan. 5 door-plug blowout on the Alaska Airlines jetliner as the plane flew above Oregon.

Investigators looking into the Alaska flight say bolts that help keep the door plug in place were missing after repair work at a Boeing factory. The FBI told passengers that they might be crime victims.

Boeing stock has plunged by about one-third since the blowout. The Federal Aviation Administration has stepped up its oversight and given Boeing until late May to produce a plan to fix problems in manufacturing 737 Max jets. Airline customers are unhappy about not getting all the new planes that they had ordered because of delivery disruptions.

The company said it paid $443 million in compensation to airlines for the grounding of Max 9 jets after the Alaska accident.

Several former and one current manager have reported various problems in manufacturing of Boeing 737 and 787 jetliners. The most recent, a quality engineer, told Congress last week that Boeing is taking manufacturing shortcuts that could eventually cause 787 Dreamliners to break apart. Boeing pushed back aggressively against his claims.

Boeing, however, has a couple things in its favor.

Along with Airbus, Boeing forms one-half of a duopoly that dominates the manufacturing of large passenger planes. Both companies have yearslong backlogs of orders from airlines eager for new, more fuel-efficient planes. And Boeing is a major defense contractor for the Pentagon and governments around the world.

Richard Aboulafia, a longtime industry analyst and consultant at AeroDynamic Advisory, said despite all the setbacks Boeing still has a powerful mix of products in high demand, technology and people.

“Even if they are No. 2 and have major issues, they are still in a very strong market and an industry that has very high barriers to entry,” he said.

And despite massive losses — about $24 billion in the last five years — the company is not at risk of failing, Aboulafia said.

“This isn’t General Motors in 2008 or Lockheed in 1971,” Aboulafia said, referring to two iconic corporations that needed massive government bailouts or loan guarantees to survive.

All of those factors help explain why 20 analysts in a FactSet survey rate Boeing shares as “Buy” or “Overweight” and only two have “Sell” ratings. (Five have “Hold” ratings.)

Boeing said the first-quarter loss, excluding special items came to $1.13 per share, which was better than the loss of $1.63 per share that analysts had forecast, according to a FactSet survey.

Revenue fell 7.5%, to $16.57 billion.

Moody’s downgraded Boeing’s unsecured debt one notch to Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating, citing the weak performance of the commercial-airplanes business.

Boeing Co. shares closed down 3%. They have dropped 34% since the Alaska blowout.

CEO David Calhoun, who has been under unrelenting pressure since a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max jetliner during a January flight, said he would retire at the end of the year. He said the decision to leave was his and the timing would allow for an orderly transition.

The head of the company’s commercial airplanes unit, Stan Deal, is already out. Boeing said he was replaced immediately by Stephanie Pope, a fast-rising insider who just became chief operating officer on Jan. 1.

In a third high-profile decision, board Chairman Lawrence Kellner, a former Continental Airlines chief, won’t stand for reelection in May, Boeing said. A former Qualcomm CEO who was appointed to succeed Kellner will lead the search for Calhoun’s replacement.

Calhoun was on the Boeing board during its worst time — the crashes of two 737 Max planes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. He leaves with the company under intense scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers since a door-plug panel blew off a brand-new Alaska Airlines Max jet in midflight on Jan. 5.

Investigators say bolts that help keep the panel in place were missing after repair work at the Boeing factory.

The Federal Aviation Administration reviewed Boeing’s 737 factory near Seattle and gave the company failing grades on nearly three dozen aspects of production. The company has until late May to give the FAA a plan for improvement. In the meantime, the federal agency is limiting production of 737s.

The FBI recently told passengers from the Alaska Airlines flight that they might be victims of a crime.

Airline executives have expressed their frustration with Boeing, and even minor incidents involving jets the company produced are attracting extra attention.

In a note to employees on Monday, Calhoun called the Alaska Airlines blowout a “watershed moment for Boeing” that requires a ”total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company.”

“The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years,” he said.

Boeing’s most significant effort to improve quality has been opening discussions about bringing Spirit AeroSystems, which builds fuselages for the Max and many parts for that and other Boeing planes, back into the company.

Mistakes made at Spirit, which Boeing spun off nearly 20 years ago, have compounded the company’s problems. Bringing the work of the supplier back in-house would, in theory, give Boeing more control over the quality of manufacturing key airplane components.

Calhoun said the two companies were making progress in talks “and it’s very important.”

Calhoun had been a Boeing director since 2009 when he became CEO in January 2020, replacing Dennis Muilenburg, who was fired in the aftermath of the Max crashes. In 2021, Boeing’s board raised the mandatory retirement age for CEO to keep Calhoun in the job.

He oversaw the Max’s return to service after a worldwide grounding that lasted nearly two years, and orders for the plane quickly picked up. Since then, however, a series of manufacturing flaws have delayed deliveries of new 737s and larger 787 Dreamliners to airlines, forcing the carriers to reduce growth plans.

Boeing has not filed its proxy statement for 2023, but previous filings show that Calhoun received compensation valued at more than $64.6 million from 2020 through 2022. Almost all of it was in the form of stock awards, options and bonuses.

The company, which moved its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, has lost more than $23 billion since Calhoun took over, although most of that is residual damage from the two Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Boeing shares have fallen more than 40% in that time — 24% since the Alaska incident, through trading on Friday.

Last week, Chief Financial Officer Brian West warned that Boeing burned between $4 billion and $4.5 billion more cash than it expected in the first quarter as it slowed down airplane production after the Alaska Airlines accident.

The company tapped former Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf to become the new board chairman and lead the search for Calhoun’s replacement.

Some Boeing critics in Congress said the shake-up in the top ranks is not enough and that Boeing needs to worry more about safety and less about producing more airplanes. That view is shared by a leading Boeing whistleblower.

“It is going to be hard to fix the culture, but the people at Boeing (who build planes) are capable of it,” said Ed Pierson, a former manager at Boeing’s 737 factory who is now director of a safety foundation. “Those employees need to feel valued and supported instead of (management) just directing them and pressuring them to produce planes.”

The focus on Boeing since early January took some of the surprise out of Monday’s news. Citi analyst Jason Gursky called the shake-up “both predictable and thoughtful.”

Some analysts had viewed the fast-rising Pope as a likely successor to Calhoun. Gursky said, however, that her move to lead commercial airplanes opens the way for an outsider to become CEO.

Before her promotion to chief operating officer at the beginning of the year, Pope, 51, was president and CEO of Boeing’s services business, where she dealt with both airline and military customers. She served as chief financial officer of the airplanes division before that.

Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aerospace analyst and now a consultant at AeroDynamic Advisory, said the management shake-up “is likely to be a pivotal moment in Boeing’s history, and probably a very positive one,” but the outcome depends on the next CEO.

Rebuilding Boeing will be “very hard, and a long road,” Aboulafia said. Putting people with technical skill in higher leadership positions would be a plus, he said.

He said Patrick Shanahan — a former Boeing executive and acting U.S. defense secretary during the Trump administration who has led Spirit AeroSystems since the fall — would be a “great choice.”

Cai von Rumohr, an aerospace analyst at financial services firm TD Cowen, said the management changes are “a partial step toward changing its culture to underscore safety and rebuild investor confidence in the company.” He said the fact that Calhoun gave more than eight months’ notice will help the Boeing board make “a considered decision” instead of “a knee-jerk reaction.”

The CEO of Irish airline Ryanair, a major Boeing customer, welcomed the management changes, including the replacement of Deal at the head of the commercial airplanes division. Michael O’Leary said in a video posted on X that Deal did a good job at Boeing sales, “but he’s not the person to turn around the operation in Seattle, and that’s where most of the problems have been in recent years.”

Shares of The Boeing Co. rose about 1% in trading Monday.

AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman contributed from New York.

There was a time when things like cracked windshields and minor engine problems didn’t turn up very often in the news.

That changed in January, when a panel plugging the space reserved for an unused emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner 16,000 feet above Oregon. Pilots landed the Boeing 737 Max safely, but in the United States, media coverage of the flight quickly overshadowed a deadly runway crash in Tokyo three days earlier.

And concern about air safety — especially with Boeing planes — has not let up.

Is flying getting more dangerous?

By the simplest measurement, the answer is no. The last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner occurred in February 2009, an unprecedented streak of safety. There were 9.6 million flights last year.

The lack of fatal crashes does not fully capture the state of safety, however. In the past 15 months, a spate of close calls caught the attention of regulators and travelers.

Another measure is the number of times pilots broadcast an emergency call to air traffic controllers. Flightradar24, a popular tracking site, just compiled the numbers. The site’s data show such calls rising since mid-January but remaining below levels seen during much of 2023.

Emergency calls also are an imperfect gauge: the plane might not have been in immediate danger, and sometimes planes in trouble never alert controllers.

Safter than driving

The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor-vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation tell a similar story.

“This is the safest form of transportation ever created, whereas every day on the nation’s roads about a 737 full of people dies,” Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aerospace analyst and consultant, said. The safety council estimates that more than 44,000 people died in U.S. vehicle crashes in 2023.

But a shrinking safety margin

A panel of experts reported in November that a shortage of air traffic controllers, outdated plane-tracking technology and other problems presented a growing threat to safety in the sky.

“The current erosion in the margin of safety in the (national airspace system) caused by the confluence of these challenges is rendering the current level of safety unsustainable,” the group said in a 52-page report.

What is going on at Boeing?

Many but not all of the recent incidents have involved Boeing planes.

Boeing is a $78 billion company, a leading U.S. exporter and a century-old, iconic name in aircraft manufacturing. It is one-half of the duopoly, along with Europe’s Airbus, that dominates the production of large passenger jets.

The company’s reputation, however, was greatly damaged by the crashes of two 737 Max jets — one in Indonesia in 2018, the other in Ethiopia the following year — that killed 346 people. Boeing has lost nearly $24 billion in the last five years. It has struggled with manufacturing flaws that at times delayed deliveries of 737s and long-haul 787 Dreamliners.

Boeing finally was beginning to regain its stride until the Alaska Airlines Max blowout. Investigators have focused on bolts that help secure the door-plug panel, but which were missing after a repair job at the Boeing factory.

The FBI is notifying passengers about a criminal investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is stepping up oversight of the company.

“What is going on with the production at Boeing? There have been issues in the past. They don’t seem to be getting resolved,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said last month.

CEO David Calhoun says no matter what conclusions investigators reach about the Alaska Airlines blowout, “Boeing is accountable for what happened” on the Alaska plane. “We caused the problem and we understand that.”

Where do design and manufacturing fit in?

Problems attributed to an airplane manufacturer can differ greatly.

Some are design errors. On the original Boeing Max, the failure of a single sensor caused a flight-control system to point the nose of the plane down with great force — that happened before the deadly 2018 and 2019 Max crashes. It is a maxim in aviation that the failure of a single part should never be enough to bring down a plane.

In other cases, such as the door-plug panel that flew off the Alaska Airlines jet, it appears a mistake was made on the factory floor.

“Anything that results in death is worse, but design is a lot harder to deal with because you have to locate the problem and fix it,” said Aboulafia, the aerospace analyst. “In the manufacturing process, the fix is incredibly easy – don’t do” whatever caused the flaw in the first place.

Manufacturing quality appears to be an issue in other incidents too.

Earlier this month, the FAA proposed ordering airlines to inspect wiring bundles around the spoilers on Max jets. The order was prompted by a report that chafing of electrical wires due to faulty installation caused an airliner to roll 30 degrees in less than a second on a 2021 flight.

Even little things matter. After a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 flying from Australia to New Zealand this month went into a nosedive — it recovered — Boeing reminded airlines to inspect switches to motors that move pilot seats. Published reports said a flight attendant accidentally hitting the switch likely caused the plunge.

Not everything is Boeing’s fault

Investigations into some incidents point to likely lapses in maintenance, and many close calls are due to errors by pilots or air traffic controllers.

This week, investigators disclosed that an American Airlines jet that overshot a runway in Texas had undergone a brake-replacement job four days earlier, and some hydraulic lines to the brakes were not properly reattached.

Earlier this month, a tire fell off a United Airlines Boeing 777 leaving San Francisco, and an American Airlines 777 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles with a flat tire.

A piece of the aluminum skin was discovered missing when a United Boeing 737 landed in Oregon last week. Unlike the brand-new Alaska jet that suffered the panel blowout, the United plane was 26 years old. Maintenance is up to the airline.

When a FedEx cargo plane landing last year in Austin, Texas, flew close over the top of a departing Southwest Airlines jet, it turned out that an air traffic controller had cleared both planes to use the same runway.

Separating serious from routine

Aviation-industry officials say the most concerning events involve issues with flight controls, engines and structural integrity.

Other things such as cracked windshields and planes clipping each other at the airport rarely pose a safety threat. Warnings lights might indicate a serious problem or a false alarm.

“We take every event seriously,” former NTSB member John Goglia said, citing such vigilance as a contributor to the current crash-free streak. “The challenge we have in aviation is trying to keep it there.”

The meeting is likely to take place next week, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions between Boeing and the airlines.

The request by airline leaders was reported first by The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper said that Boeing CEO David Calhoun is not expected to meet with the airline officials, and that Boeing has offered to send its chairman, former Continental Airlines CEO Lawrence Kellner, and other board members.

Boeing declined to comment.

The company’s chief financial officer, Brian West, said at an investor conference Wednesday that the slowdown in aircraft production would cause Boeing to burn through $4 billion to $4.5 billion in cash flow during the first quarter, which ends March 31.

“We put the customers in a tight spot … the slowdown has impacted us, and it has impacted them,” West said. He said airline customers “have been supportive of everything we are trying to do to enhance safety and quality for the industry.”

United Airlines and American Airlines declined to comment on the airlines’ request, and Alaska Airlines did not immediately respond to an inquiry. A Southwest spokesman declined to comment on specific meetings but said, “We have ongoing, frequent communication with Boeing, which is not new and will continue.”

Airline CEOs have been outspoken in their frustration with Boeing’s manufacturing problems, which have slowed deliveries of planes that the carriers were counting on.

Southwest, which has an all-Boeing fleet, said last week that the company told it to expect 46 new planes this year instead of 79, which will force Southwest to reduce its planned schedule.

United is considering buying Airbus jets because increased scrutiny of Boeing is likely to further delay the launch of a planned new, larger Max model.

Boeing shares have dropped 28% this year from fallout over the Alaska accident and production problems.

CEO Scott Kirby said the Chicago-based airline was already planning an extra day of training for pilots starting in May and changes in training curriculum for newly hired mechanics.

In a memo to customers on Monday, Kirby tried to reassure travelers that safety is the airline’s top priority.

“Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, our airline has experienced a number of incidents that are reminders of the importance of safety,” he said. “While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus.”

Kirby said the airline is reviewing each recent incident and will use what it learns to “inform” safety training and procedures. He did not give any details beyond measures that he said were already being planned, such as the extra day of training for pilots.

Some of the recent incidents — such as cracks in multi-layer windshields — don’t normally attract much attention but have gained news coverage and clicks on social media because of the sheer number of events affecting one airline in a short period of time.

To a degree, United may be a victim of heightened concern about air safety since January when a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max at 16,000 feet above Oregon; investigators say bolts securing the panel were missing.

“I don’t see a major safety issue at United,” said John Cox, former airline pilot and now a safety consultant. “The media is enhancing the events with extra scrutiny. Anything right now that happens to a United airplane makes the news.”

Cox said the incidents “are unfortunate, and they are getting a lot of attention, but I don’t see that they are showing an erosion in the safety of the commercial aviation system.”

In the most recent incident at United, on Friday a chunk of the outer aluminum skin fell off the belly of a Boeing 737-800 that was built in 1998.

Also last week, a United flight from Dallas to San Francisco suffered a hydraulic leak, and another flight bound for San Francisco returned to Australia two hours after takeoff because of an undescribed “maintenance issue.”

Earlier this month, a United flight returned to Houston after an engine caught fire, and a tire fell off a United Boeing 777 during takeoff in San Francisco.

United planes have even had mishaps while on the ground. Last month, pilots on one plane reported that rudder pedals used to steer on the runway briefly failed after touchdown in Newark, New Jersey.

This month, a jet landing in Houston rolled off an airport taxiway in Houston and got stuck in grass. Workers had to haul out moveable stairs to help passengers exit the plane.

There were no injuries in any of the incidents, several of which are under investigation by federal officials.

Shelley Adler in Fairfax, Virginia, contributed.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday a preliminary report on the Jan. 5 incident that the lack of certain damage on the plane indicates that all four bolts were missing before the plane took off from Portland, Oregon.

Without the bolts, nothing prevented the panel from sliding upward and detaching from “stop pads” that secured it to the airframe.

The Alaska Airlines pilots were forced to make a harrowing emergency landing with a hole in the side of the plane, but no serious injuries were reported.

The NTSB report included a photo from Boeing, which worked on the panel called a door plug, that showed that three of the four bolts that prevent the panel from moving upward are missing. The location of a fourth bolt is obscured by insulation.

The preliminary report said the plane arrived at Boeing’s factory near Seattle with five damaged rivets near the door plug, which had been installed by supplier Spirit AeroSystems. A Spirit crew replaced the rivets, which required removing the four bolts and opening the plug.

The report did not say who removed the bolts. It said that a text message between Boeing employees who finished working on the plane after the rivet job included the photo showing the plug with missing bolts.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., was upset at Boeing’s lack of documentation about who did what and when the bolts went missing.

“They didn’t write any of this down,” she said in an interview. “It is very much Boeing’s responsibility, absolutely, but I’m concerned that we may have multiple points of failure here.”

The NTSB did not declare a probable cause for the accident — that will come at the end of an investigation that could last a year or longer.

“Whatever final conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened,” CEO David Calhoun said in a statement. “An event like this must not happen on an airplane that leaves our factory. We simply must do better for our customers and their passengers.”

Investigators said they were still trying to determine who authorized the Boeing crew to open and reinstall the door plug.

Safety experts have said the accident could have been catastrophic if the Alaska jet had reached cruising altitude. The decompression in the cabin after the blowout would have been far stronger, and passengers and flight attendants might have been walking around instead of being belted into their seats.

When Alaska and United Airlines began inspecting their other Max 9s, they reported finding loose hardware including loose bolts in some of the door plugs. Boeing said none of the other Alaska and United Max 9s have been discovered to be missing the critical bolts.

The incident has added to questions about manufacturing quality at Boeing that started with the deadly crashes of two Max 8 jets in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. In 2021, Boeing reached a settlement with the Justice Department to avoid criminal prosecution on a charge of conspiring to defraud government regulators by failing to accurately describe a flight-control system that was implicated in the crashes.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether Boeing and its suppliers followed proper safety procedures in manufacturing parts for the Max. The FAA has barred Boeing from speeding up production of 737s until the agency is satisfied about quality issues.

FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker said Tuesday that his agency is about halfway through a six-week audit of manufacturing processes at Boeing and Spirit, its key supplier on the Max. He said the agency is confronted with two questions: What’s wrong with the Max 9? And, “what’s going on with the production at Boeing?”

Spirit, which Boeing spun off as a separate company nearly 20 years ago, said in a statement that it is reviewing the NTSB preliminary report and is working with Boeing and regulators “on continuous improvement in our processes and meeting the highest standards of safety, quality and reliability.”

The plug that broke off Alaska flight 1282 is used to seal holes left for extra emergency doors. Alaska and United don’t have enough seats on their Max 9s to trigger a requirement for the extra exits, so they tell Boeing to install plugs instead because they are lighter and cheaper than doors.

Alaska Airlines has estimated the grounding of its 65 Max 9s will cost the Seattle-based carrier $150 million, and it expects to be compensated by Boeing. United said the grounding would cause it to lose money in the first quarter and plan for a future without new, larger Max jets that have not yet been approved by the FAA.

This story has been corrected to note that a Spirit AeroSystems crew, not a Boeing crew, repaired the rivets.