Boeing and Alaska Airlines have separately denied any legal responsibility for the injuries allegedly caused to dozens of passengers after a door plug blew out of a 737-Max 9 jet during a flight in January.

In its formal answers this week to a class-action lawsuit brought by dozens of passengers of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, Boeing generally acknowledged the preliminary findings of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation that determined the door plug was improperly installed. The company also acknowledged that, in an interview with CNBC, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun publicly described the incident as “our mistake.”

But Boeing denied liability for any damages alleged by the passengers, saying their lawsuit should be dismissed. The company also contended it cannot be held responsible for any injuries that may have resulted because its products were “improperly maintained, or misused by persons and/or entities other than Boeing.”

Likewise, Alaska Airlines denied liability, claiming that any injuries stemming from the door plug blowout “were caused by the fault of persons or entities over whom Alaska Airlines has no control … including Defendant The Boeing Company and/or non-party Spirit AeroSystems.”

Alaska Airlines also denied that the activation of the plane’s cabin-pressure warning light three times within the previous month — including on the day before the door incident —  was related or meant that the plane was unsafe to fly.    

The legal filings, submitted as part of the case in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, represent the first formal response from the companies to any of the several lawsuits filed in the wake of the Jan. 5 incident.

Daniel Laurence, an attorney representing passengers who are part of the class action, said Wednesday he was “frankly surprised” that Boeing and Alaska Airlines “don’t want to simply admit liability and put this case behind them.” 

“They’re putting up a wall and circling the wagons,” added Laurence, with the Strimatter Kessler Koehler Moore law firm in Seattle. “That’s disappointing, given what I think most of the population believes and the evidence appears to clearly support — that they put this aircraft into the air with an unsecured door plug that, had it come out a few minutes later, would have killed everybody on board.”

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Jan. 25.Aaron Schwartz / NurPhoto via Getty Images file

The incident occurred shortly after the Boeing-manufactured jet, carrying 171 passengers and six flight crew members, took off from Portland International Airport bound for Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County, California. After reaching an altitude of about 16,000 feet, the door plug blew out, leaving a large hole in the plane’s fuselage and forcing the plane to turn back to Portland, where it landed safely.

Following the incident, which has brought new scrutiny to Boeing and its troubled 737 Max airplanes, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded some models of the plane. The NTSB investigation preliminarily found no bolts had been installed to secure the plug.

The FAA separately launched an audit into Boeing and its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, finding “multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.” The Department of Justice has also separately opened a criminal probe into the door plug blowout, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

In the wake of the incident, at least three separate lawsuits have been filed by Flight 1282 passengers and their spouses, including cases in state courts in Washington and Oregon. 

Passengers involved in the federal lawsuit, seeking class-action status, claim they were physically injured and traumatized by the door plug’s blowout, which caused rapid depressurization of the plane’s cabin and led to widespread panic.

“The pressure change made ears bleed and combined with low oxygen, loud wind noise and traumatic stress made heads ache severely,” the lawsuit states. “Passengers were shocked, terrorized and confused, thrust into a waking nightmare, hoping they would live long enough to walk the earth again.”

Since the incident, some passengers have avoided flying on any airplane, and some have sought counseling to deal with emotional trauma, Laurence said.

The lawsuit also alleges that several passengers had trouble breathing in the aftermath of the door plug blowout because oxygen masks that dropped during the incident weren’t functioning.

Alaska Airlines denied that any oxygen masks did not work in its filing this week.

The airline acknowledged that the jet’s auto cabin pressure controller light had activated three times before the door plug blowout, leading Alaska Airlines to restrict the plane from flying on long routes over water. But the airline disputed that the light warnings “made the aircraft unsafe to fly (and) denies any correlation between the pressurization controller warning light activations and the door plug accident on Flight 1282,” its filing says.

Security camera footage showing work being done on a Boeing Max 9 door plug that later blew out mid-air has been overwritten, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said.

In a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that is reviewing the incident and Boeing’s role in it, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said her agency still lacks critical information about the chain of events that led up to the January incident that caused an Alaska Airlines flight carrying 177 people to make an emergency landing.

‘We still do not know who performed the work to open, reinstall, and close the door plug on the accident aircraft,’ Homendy wrote. ‘Boeing has informed us that they are unable to find the records documenting this work.’

She continued: ‘A verbal request was made by our investigators for security camera footage to help obtain this information; however, they were informed the footage was overwritten. The absence of those records will complicate the NTSB’s investigation moving forward.’

Homendy said in the letter that she also personally called Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and asked him for the names of the workers who performed the work in question. But, Homendy said, Calhoun stated he was ‘unable to provide that information and maintained that Boeing has no records of the work being performed.’

A Boeing spokesperson said the company, like many others, does not retain security footage for longer than 30 days. The Alaska Airlines plane in question was in the factory last year in September and delivered in October.

“We will continue supporting this investigation in the transparent and proactive fashion we have supported all regulatory inquiries into this accident,’ Boeing said. ‘We have worked hard to honor the rules about the release of investigative information in an environment of intense interest from our employees, customers, and other stakeholders, and we will continue our efforts to do so.” 

Homendy had previously publicly reprimanded Boeing for failing to turn over information her agency had requested, calling it “absurd.”

Last week, NBC News confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a criminal case into the incident.

On Monday, South Carolina officials confirmed a Boeing whistleblower was found dead of an apparent self-inflected gunshot wound. The former employee, John Barnett, 62, was preparing to testify in a deposition in a federal legal action against Boeing dating back to at least 2017.

Barnett’s family in a statement that he had encountered “a culture of concealment” that valued “profits over safety” at Boeing.

The New York Times also reported this week that an FAA audit of Boeing’s 737 Max production reportedly found ‘dozens of issues.’

This week, major carriers that fly Boeing fuselages including Alaska Airlines, Southwest, and United Airlines said they may have to trim capacity and push back orders as a result of Boeing’s issues.

“Boeing needs to become a better company and the deliveries will follow that,” Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan said at a JPMorgan industry conference Tuesday, according to CNBC.

Wholesale prices accelerated at a faster-than-expected pace in February, another reminder that inflation remains a troublesome issue for the U.S. economy.

The producer price index, which measures pipeline costs for raw, intermediate and finished goods, jumped 0.6% on the month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. That was higher than the 0.3% forecast from Dow Jones and comes after a 0.3% increase in January.

Excluding food and energy, the core PPI accelerated by 0.3%, compared with the estimate for a 0.2% increase. Another measure that also excludes trade services rose 0.4%, compared with the 0.6% gain in January, and was above the estimate for a 0.2% advance.

On a year-over-year basis, the headline index increased 1.6%, the biggest move since September 2023.

The data did little to dent what looks like a positive open on Wall Street. Futures tied to major stock market indexes all were positive, though Treasury yields rose as well.

A busy morning for economic data also showed that retail sales rebounded, up 0.6% on the month, according to Commerce Department data that is adjusted seasonally but not for inflation. The increase helped reverse a downwardly revised 1.1% slump in January, but was still below the estimate for a 0.8% rise.

Also, initial filings for unemployment insurance nudged lower to 209,000 last week, a decrease of 1,000 and below the estimate for 218,000, the Labor Department reported. Continuing claims edged higher to 1.81 million, though the previous week’s count was revised sharply lower.

The market focused on the PPI release, which comes two days after the consumer price index, which measures what consumers pay in the marketplace, showed that inflation was slightly higher than anticipated on a year-over-year basis.

The PPI is considered a leading indicator for inflation as it indicates costs early in the supply chain.

The BLS reported that about two-thirds of the rise in the headline PPI came from a 1.2% surge in goods prices, the biggest increase since August 2023. As with the CPI, the acceleration was traced to energy prices, with saw a 4.4% increase in the final demand measure. Gasoline prices jumped 6.8% at the wholesale level.

Services costs increased 0.3%, boosted by a 3.8% surge in traveler accommodation services.

On the retail sales side, the data indicated that consumers kept ahead of CPI inflation, which increased 0.4% on the month, though sales were still sluggish.

Excluding auto, retail sales rose 0.3%, one-tenth of a percentage point below expectations. Motor vehicle parts and dealers saw an increase of 1.6%, second only to the 2.2% gain for building material and garden centers on the month.

Despite slumping prices, gasoline stations reported an increase of 0.9%. Electronics and appliance sales rose 1.5% while miscellaneous store sales climbed 0.6% and restaurants and bars were up 0.4%.

Retail sales posted a 1.5% gain on a year-over-year basis, below the 3.2% increase in the CPI.

Inflation-related data is being watched closely on Wall Street, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting starting next Tuesday.

While the central bank is almost certain to hold its benchmark interest rate in place, markets will be looking for clues about the future of monetary policy. Futures pricing is pointing toward the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee to start cutting interest rates in June, with three quarter-percentage point decreases expected this year.

At the meeting, policymakers will update their outlooks for rates, economic growth, inflation and unemployment.