US justice department investigates door blowout on Alaska Airlines flight

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The US Department of Justice is investigating the mid-air door panel blowout that terrified passengers of an Alaska Airlines flight two months ago.

The airline said that “In an event like this, it’s normal for the DOJ to be conducting an investigation. We are fully co-operating and do not believe we are a target of the investigation.”

Since January Boeing has been facing a civil investigation of the incident conducted by the US Federal Aviation Administration. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board found that four bolts meant to secure the door panel were missing.

A six-week audit by the FAA into Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems’ production and quality control processes found “multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements”.

Neither Boeing or the justice department immediately responded to a request for comment.

The aerospace manufacturer has been functioning under a justice department deferred prosecution agreement since 2021. Boeing admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay $2.5bn to resolve a criminal charge of fraud, tied to deceiving regulators about a design flaw on the 737 Max. The flaw, which could force the nose of a plane downward based on erroneous sensor readings, caused two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed a combined 346 people.

The three-year agreement between prosecutors and Boeing said that if the manufacturer continued to operate a compliance programme established in the wake of the crashes, the department would ask the court to dismiss the fraud charge.

The Alaska Airlines blowout happened two days before the three-year probationary period expired. Boeing said in a January Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the justice department “is currently considering whether we fulfilled our obligations under the DPA…