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The NTSB is conducting a new round of interviews with Boeing and FAA personnel this week in its probe of the January Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in-flight emergency. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy on Wednesday said investigators were back at the 737 plant in Renton, Washington, this week for more interviews. "We are looking at other instances where a door plug was opened and closed to make sure that those records are available," Homendy said at a U.S. Senate hearing, saying investigators want to make sure those other instances were documented. Boeing, whose shares fell 2% on Wednesday, declined to comment on the interviews. Last month, Boeing said it believed that required documents detailing the removal of the door plug in the Alaska Airlines plane involved in the emergency were never created. Homendy said on Wednesday that Boeing and investigators still do not know the personnel who worked on the Alaska Boeing 737 MAX 9 that suffered the emergency. "This work occurred in September. They move a lot of planes through that factory," Homendy said. "The biggest concern is missing records." At issue is the process not the individuals, she said. "This isn't a gotcha on anybody," Homendy said, adding the NTSB has still been unable to interview the door plug team manager, who has been on sick leave.<br/>

Qatar Airways has successfully dodged an Australian lawsuit over an incident at Doha airport in which women were forcibly removed from planes by armed guards and some intimately examined. However, while the federal court dismissed the case against the airline, justice John Halley determined the five Australian women bringing the case could instead refile their claims for damages against Matar, a Qatar Airways-owned subsidiary engaged by the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) to run Doha airport. The five women initiated legal action against the airline in 2022, later adding the QCAA and Matar to the case over the October 2020 incident, seeking damages over alleged “unlawful physical contact”, false imprisonment and mental health impacts, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. They were among more than a dozen passengers who were escorted off the Sydney-bound Qatar Airways plane by armed guards as authorities searched for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a plastic bag at Hamad international airport. The infant survived. The women were taken to ambulances on the tarmac and some were forced to submit to invasive examinations for evidence they had recently given birth. The lawsuit claims one passenger was forced to undergo a strip-search holding her five-month-old son. Qatar Airways and Matar had been seeking to prove that the “men in dark uniforms” who took the women off the plane, as alleged by the women, were Qatari police under the command of Qatar’s ministry of interior (MOI), and not employees or agents of the airline or airport. They also claimed a nurse in an ambulance who performed the examinations was not employed by them. Story has more.<br/>