We learned from Reuters that executives from Boeing(BA.US) and Spirit AeroSystems(SPR.US) will testify at a two-day hearing starting Tuesday on the in-flight explosion of a door on a January Alaska Airlines(ALK.US) 737MAX9 aircraft.
The NTSB said that Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president of quality at Boeing, and Doug Ackerman, vice president of supplier quality at Boeing, will also testify. Terry George, Spirit's senior vice president and Boeing project manager, and Scott Grabon, Spirit's senior vice president of 737 quality, will also appear. Spirit makes the engines for the Boeing MAX aircraft.
Last month, Boeing agreed to buy Spirit shares for $4.7bn, after Spirit sold its core factory in 2005. Airbus began to take over the supplier's loss-making business, focused on Europe.
A number of FAA officials will also testify at the hearing, which will last for 20 hours over two days, discussing the door explosion and missing fasteners on the Alaska Airlines 737MAX9 aircraft.
The hearing will review the manufacture and inspection of the 737, safety management and quality systems, FAA oversight, and the issues surrounding the door opening and closing. Boeing said it had no written record of the removal of the fasteners. A spokesman for Spirit said the company “will fully cooperate with the NTSB in its investigation of this event”.
The FAA banned Boeing from expanding 737 production in January this year. In June, Mike Whitaker, the FAA administrator, said the agency had been “too hands-off” in its oversight of Boeing before January. Similarly in June, the NTSB said Boeing had violated its disclosure rules by giving information to the media and speculating on possible causes.
The NTSB said that Ms Lund's statements to the media were “either inaccurate or not known to the NTSB”, and that other statements had not been previously disclosed. The NTSB said that Boeing would no longer be able to see information generated during the investigation, and that unlike other parties, Boeing would not be allowed to ask questions of other participants during the hearing.
Last month, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a criminal conspiracy charge and pay a $243m fine to settle a US Department of Justice investigation into two fatal crashes involving 737 MAX aircraft.