On Tuesday, Boeing’s president and chief executive Dave Calhoun said the firm was “acknowledging our mistake”.
The door “plug” which fell away from the aircraft weighed 27kg (60lb) and was used to fill an emergency exit that was built into the plane, but not required by Alaska Airlines.
The missing section of the plane was retrieved from the back garden of a Portland teacher, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Speaking to Boeing staff, Mr Calhoun said: “We’re going to approach this number one acknowledging our mistake. We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.”
Mr Calhoun reassured staff that Boeing would work with the NTSB to investigate the cause of the accident.
It seems like it would have been hard to avoid acknowledging the mistake, given that the mistake was very clearly lodged into somebody’s backyard, as opposed to still being attached to the rest of the plane, but alright.
Hey, some people can have a human interaction when doing damage control during a crisis, and apparently this CEO I didn’t know about until just now isn’t one of those. There are now two different lessons to take away from this, apparently.
For the record, flashy as this thing was it’s not that big of a deal, but it sure is funny and spectacular.
We’re so used to companies lying and cheating every chance they have that even something as obvious as this is seen as honesty.