On Tuesday, Boeing’s president and chief executive Dave Calhoun said the firm was “acknowledging our mistake”.
The door “plug” which fell away from the aircraft weighed 27kg (60lb) and was used to fill an emergency exit that was built into the plane, but not required by Alaska Airlines.
The missing section of the plane was retrieved from the back garden of a Portland teacher, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Speaking to Boeing staff, Mr Calhoun said: “We’re going to approach this number one acknowledging our mistake. We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.”
Mr Calhoun reassured staff that Boeing would work with the NTSB to investigate the cause of the accident.
This is of course a heinous act of negligence, and Boeing sucks, but I can’t help but wish that toxic chemical train derailments got this kind of scrutiny and regulatory revision.
This could have been prevented by not even offering a plug door. Just the emergency exit and that’s it.
This could have been prevented if engineers, and not accountants, still ran the company.
I mean loose bolts are loose bolts no matter what part they’re in. They could have just as easily not installed the door correctly. Who know what else is only being kept in check by other redundancies
I dare say, that because an emergency exit door is more critical, that there would be more oversight and inspection in its installation, therefore, being safer
Difference between an industry used to being regulated like planes dropping out of the sky onto people’s houses might be a Bad Thing, versus one that is used to regulatory capture and a low public profile.