Money
will be changing hands.
Boeing
has paid Alaska Airlines $160 million in financial compensation for business
losses incurred from the January 5 incident in which a faulty door plug led to
a door blowing off an airplane in mid-flight.
In a
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it is expected that Boeing
will continue to pay Alaska
Airlines in the coming months. The $160 million was apparently only the
payment for the first quarter.
The
incident put a spotlight on Boeing’s production issues as well as its safety
standards. There have been several Boeing-related mishaps since then.
And
it has cast aspersions on previous incidents involving the airplane
manufacturer. Reportedly, the company has lost $31 billion. Its chief executive
officer and two other executives will step down at the end of the year.
Airplanes Were Temporarily Grounded
Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft were grounded temporarily in the wake
of the incident. Alaska Airlines estimated it would be a significant loss in profits
as thousands of flights were subsequently canceled. Boeing is being
investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and, recently, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) became involved.
There are also questions about
whether Boeing has impeded the investigation of the NTSB.
“We’ve known [about Boeing] for five years,” Mark Pegram, father
of one of the Ethiopian Airlines flight victims, told NPR in March. Ethiopian
was one of two airlines that suffered crashes within months of each other in
2018. “I think the rest of the world is
finally waking up to it, that these weren’t just isolated incidents.”
Boeing has paid out billions of dollars in compensation since
that time. That includes a $500 million payment to fund a compensation endowment
for victims of the families that were killed in the two crashes. Almost 400
people perished in the crashes of the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air planes
five years ago.
An FAA-commissioned panel review was critical of the safety
culture at Boeing and found that executives and employees were not aligned
with safety standards. The investigation also found that many employees were
afraid of retaliation for speaking up.
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