Boeing CEO Admits ‘Mistake’ Regarding Terrible Alaska Airlines Flight

(CNN) — Boeing CEO David Calhoun acknowledged the company’s “error” in the Alaska Airlines incident during a “safety meeting” with all staff on Tuesday.

“We’re going to admit our mistake and address this issue number one,” Calhoun told staff, according to a partial readout of the meeting shared with CNN. “We’re going to approach it with 100% transparency every step of the way. We’re going to work with the NTSB, which is investigating to determine the cause of the accident.”

A company source said the company believes there was an “error in question” in the plane’s manufacturing supply chain. However, it is not yet known whether Calhoun identified any specific errors during the presentation.

The meeting also included a reminder about the seriousness of the situation, the source said. Employees were told that the company’s chief security officer is now in charge of the 737 Max fleet. Mike Delaney is Boeing’s director of aerospace safety.

The meeting, which took place at noon Pacific time from the 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington, “also included an expression of confidence in Boeing, the plane and (Boeing) employees,” the source said.

The meeting highlighted the steps taken by the flight crew and Alaska Airlines to control the situation, the source said.

The Company is committed to working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure that appropriate investigations are conducted. Earlier Tuesday, the FA said it was in talks with Boeing to determine the best way to conduct those inspections and that the planes would be grounded until the inspections were completed.

During the meeting, Boeing also pledged to work with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as it tries to determine what happened, the source said. CNN has reached out to Boeing for comment.

On Friday, an Alaska Airlines flight carrying 177 people made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Portland, Ore., when part of the wall of the week-old 737 Max 9 plane collapsed, leaving a huge hole in its side. airplane On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered most Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to be temporarily grounded while regulators and Boeing investigated the cause of the incident. The order applies to about 171 aircraft worldwide.

On Tuesday, the FAA said Boeing’s plan to inspect the door plugs on the 737 Max 9 plane needed revisions and the plane would remain grounded in the meantime.

“Yesterday Boeing provided a preliminary version of the instructions that they are now revising in response to comments received,” the FAA said in a statement Tuesday. “After receiving a revised version of Boeing’s instructions, the FAA will conduct a thorough review.”

Amazingly, no one was killed or seriously injured in Friday’s mid-air crash, which was partially captured in a terrifying video shared by passengers on the same flight.

Calhoun said the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting included discussing the company’s response to the accident, according to an internal memo that invited all employees to attend and was shared publicly by Boeing.

“When it comes to the safety of our products and services, every decision and every action matters,” Calhoun wrote in a memo to employees. “And when serious accidents like this happen, it’s important for us to work transparently with our customers and regulators to understand and address the causes of those incidents and ensure they don’t happen again.”

Calhoun also cited Boeing’s mounting safety-related problems in recent years following two fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019. Things like this remind us that we must focus on continuing to improve every day,” the CEO wrote.

Meanwhile, the accident also caught the attention of legislators. In a statement Tuesday, Sen. JD Vance asked the Senate Commerce Committee to convene a hearing to “evaluate incidents involving the 737 MAX, Boeing’s engineering and safety standards, and the quality of oversight provided by Boeing.” FAA and other relevant government agencies”

“I hope the hearing takes place as soon as possible,” added Vance, an Ohio Republican.

US President Joe Biden is personally following the grounding of several Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for inspection after the dramatic emergency landing of an Alaska Airlines flight, the White House said on Tuesday, adding that an investigation is ongoing.

The White House is “relieved” that all passengers and crew of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 are safe, White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said, adding that the plane will remain grounded until Federal Aviation Administration operators “complete an advanced investigation.”

The latest in investigation

What caused the sudden opening of a refrigerator-sized hole in the passenger plane on Friday is still under investigation. A preliminary report is expected in three to four weeks, National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss said.

The board said Monday night that it was continuing to recover the items removed from the plane. On Sunday, a Portland school teacher found a piece of the plane’s fuselage that had landed in her backyard and contacted the agency. Two cell phones that likely flew through the hole in the plane were also found in the yard and on the side of the road and turned over to investigators.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homandy also told reporters over the weekend that Alaska Airlines had previously barred the incident plane from flying over the ocean after the plane’s automatic pressurization warning light turned on three times. Homandy, however, insisted during a news conference that the NTSB has “no indication that this is in any way related” to the incident that caused part of the plane to fly away.

Partly complicating the investigation is the loss of critical audio recordings from the cockpit, Homandy said, due to a device setting that overrides the recordings after two hours of audio have been collected. He advocated to the FAA and Congress that cockpit audio recordings be kept 24 hours a day in all aircraft.

Still, the first details of the investigation are harrowing, as investigators continue to examine data, eyewitness accounts and the plane itself. The damage extended to several rows of the plane. The two seats next to the detached door stopper were unoccupied when the explosion occurred, but the headrests were torn off, according to Homandy.

Homdy said the video of the incident “looks very calm, but I’m sure it was completely chaotic.”

In a company statement Saturday, Boeing said it agreed with the FAA’s decision to ground most 737 Max 9 planes during inspections, saying “safety is our highest priority.” On Monday, Boeing said it had sent instructions to airlines and maintenance companies on how to inspect planes.

Also on Monday, United Airlines, which has more Max 9s than any other US airline, said it had found loose door cap bolts on an unknown number of its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes during inspections of the planes ordered by the FAA. Alaska Airlines also said Monday that it had found loose hardware during an inspection of some of its 737 Max 9 planes.

Boeing’s fall from grace

Friday’s high-profile incident is once again highlighting Boeing’s fall from grace in recent years. The company has faced repeated quality and safety issues with its aircraft over the past five years, leading to prolonged grounding of some of its models and stalled deliveries of others.

The most obvious quality problems for Boeing arose with the design of the 737 Max, which was found to be responsible for two fatal accidents: one in Indonesia in October 2018 and the other in Ethiopia in March 2019. Together, the two accidents killed 346 people. People and the company’s best-selling planes were grounded for 20 months, costing more than US$21 billion. But the design flaws that led to the accidents raised questions about the decision-making process at Boeing. An internal communication released during the grounding of the 737 Max showed an employee describing the plane as “designed by clowns, who in turn are overseen by monkeys”.

The latest safety saga also highlights the fact that Boeing won’t have to worry about going out of business anytime soon, no matter how widespread its mistakes are. Boeing and Airbus are the only two major global aviation companies, neither of which can meet all demand for commercial aircraft on its own, and both have a backlog of orders dating back years.

Shares of Boeing fell nearly 8% on Monday as investors grew concerned about further damage to its business.

— CNN’s Chris Isidore, Gregory Wallace, Pete Munten, Betsky Klein and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.