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Boeing has acknowledged in a letter to Congress that it cannot find records for work done on a door panel\u00a0that blew out<\/a>\u00a0on an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon two months ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation,\u201d Ziad Ojakli, Boeing executive vice president and chief government lobbyist, wrote to Sen. Maria Cantwell on Friday.<\/p>\n The company said its \u201cworking hypothesis\u201d was that the records about the panel\u2019s removal and reinstallation on the 737 MAX final assembly line in Renton, Washington, were never created, even though Boeing\u2019s systems required it.<\/p>\n The letter,\u00a0reported earlier by The Seattle Times<\/a>, followed a contentious\u00a0Senate committee hearing<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday in which Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board argued over whether the company had cooperated with investigators.<\/p>\n The safety board\u2019s chair, Jennifer Homendy, testified that for two months Boeing repeatedly refused to identify employees who work on door panels on Boeing 737s and failed to provide documentation about a repair job that included removing and reinstalling the door panel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s absurd that two months later we don\u2019t have that,\u201d Homendy said. \u201cWithout that information, that raises concerns about quality assurance, quality management, safety management systems\u201d at Boeing.<\/p>\n Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, demanded a response from Boeing within 48 hours.<\/p>\n Shortly after the Senate hearing, Boeing said it had given the NTSB the names of all employees who work on 737 doors \u2014 and had previously shared some of them with investigators.<\/p>\n In the letter, Boeing said it had already made clear to the safety board that it couldn\u2019t find the documentation. Until the hearing, it said, \u201cBoeing was not aware of any complaints or concerns about a lack of collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n Boeing has been under increasing scrutiny since the\u00a0Jan. 5 incident<\/a>\u00a0in which a panel that plugged a space left for an extra emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines Max 9. Pilots were able to land safely, and there were no injuries.<\/p>\n In a preliminary report last month, the NTSB said four bolts that help keep the door plug in place\u00a0were missing<\/a>\u00a0after the panel was removed so workers could repair nearby damaged rivets last September. The rivet repairs were done by contractors working for Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, but the NTSB still does not know who removed and replaced the door panel, Homendy said Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Federal Aviation Administration recently gave Boeing\u00a090 days<\/a>\u00a0to say how it will respond to quality-control issues raised by the agency and a panel of industry and government experts.\u00a0The panel<\/a>\u00a0found problems in Boeing\u2019s safety culture despite improvements made after two Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSubscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n