Alaska Airlines enhances own oversight of Boeing production

Alaska Airlines will enhance its quality oversight of in-production aircraft at Boeing in Renton. The carrier will deploy additional experienced professionals to validate the assembly and production work on the MAX line, it said in a media statement on January 13.

Traditionally, all airlines have quality inspectors on-site at airframers to check if the production of an individual aircraft is going as planned. The accident with the Alaska MAX 9 on January 5 seems to indicate that the left-hand door plug might have blown out six minutes after take-off from Portland as a result of a production quality and oversight problem. Further investigation by the NTSB

of the door plug to be done in Washington should reveal what happened.

The FAA said on Friday that it will increase oversight of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and do an audit of the MAX 9 production line. Alaska Airlines said on Saturday that its own quality and audit team has started a thorough review of Boeing’s production quality and control systems. This includes production vendor oversight. The team “will partner with our maintenance team on the design of enhanced processes for our own quality control over aircraft at Boeing.”