Proposed penalty is for safety violations from September 2023 to February 2024.
ByALEX VEIGA AP business writer
September 13, 2025, 12: 25 PM
The Federal Aviation Administration is seeking $3.1 million in fines from Boeing over safety violations, including ones related to an Alaska Airlines jetliner losing a door plug panel on its fuselage in midflight.
The proposed penalty is for safety violations that occurred from September 2023 through February 2024, the FAA said Friday.
That period includes the January 2024 blowout of a paneled-over exit door — called a door plug —- on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 shortly after it took off from Portland, Oregon.
None of the 171 passengers or six crew members on the flight were seriously injured. Pilots landed the plane safely back at the airport.
In June, the National Transportation Safety Board said its 17-month long investigation found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the FAA, led to the door plug blowout.
The FAA said Friday that it identified hundreds of quality system violations at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Washington, and Boeing subcontractor Spirit AeroSystems’ 737 factory in Wichita, Kansas.
Among other violations, the regulator also found that a Boeing employee pressured a member of Boeing’s ODA unit, which is tasked with performing certain inspections and certifications on the FAA’s behalf, to sign off on a 737 Max airplane “so that Boeing could meet its delivery schedule, even though the O