Workers on the Boeing 737 Max that lost a door plug on a January flight told federal safety investigators that they felt pressure to do their jobs too fast to avoid mistakes, according to testimony released Tuesday at the start of a two-day investigative hearing.
The revelation came at the start of the hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board into the blowout, with investigators questioning Boeing personnel about safety issues at the plane maker and what that might mean for passengers on its ubiquitous planes.
Previously, the NTSB said the door plug ripped off in mid-flight because the plane left a Boeing factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place.
Many of those documents were transcripts of interviews conducted by NTSB investigators during the seven months since the accident. One of those interviewed, identified only as “Assembler Installer Doors B,” told the investigator that the workload at the Boeing factory was too great to avoid mistakes from being made.
“As far as the workload, I feel like we were definitely trying to put out too much product, right?” said the unidentified Boeing worker. “That’s how mistakes are made. People try to work too fast. I mean, I can’t speak for anybody else, but we were busy. We were working a lot.”
One transcript showed that a Boeing employee, identified as a Door Master Lead, told investigators their planes required much of the work during the assembly process to be redone because of problems that are discovered, as happened with the door plug that was removed to fix some rivets. The worker said there was no special training to open, close, or remove a door plug versus a regular door.