A 737 Max jet left a Boeing factory missing four bolts designed to secure a door panel that blew off in mid-flight last month, according to a preliminary report by a US regulator.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s report on Tuesday is the first official account of how the door plug could have fallen out of the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane 16,000 feet over Oregon on January 5. The incident has raised questions about manufacturing and safety processes at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the Max fuselages.
The NTSB said that “four bolts that prevent upward movement of the [door] plug were missing” before the plug detached from the plane.