By JOSH FUNK

National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said Tuesday that the heroic actions of the crew aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 ensured everyone survived the terrifying incident last year when the door plug panel flew off the plane shortly after takeoff in January of 2024.

But Homendy said “the crew shouldn’t have had to be heroes, because this accident never should have happened” if Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration had done enough to ensure the safety of the Boeing 737 Max plane.

She said the investigation over the past 17 months found bigger problems than just the revelation that bolts securing what is known as the door plug panel were removed and never replaced during a repair because “an accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures.”

Homendy said Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has made many improvements in safety since he took the job last summer but more needs to be done. The board is expected to approve several recommendations at Tuesday’s meeting to keep something similar from happening again.

The blow out aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 occurred minutes after it took off from Portland, Oregon, and created a roaring air vacuum that sucked objects out of the cabin and scattered them on the ground below along with debris from the fuselage. Seven passengers and one flight attended received minor injuries, but no one was killed. Pilots were able to land the plane safely back at the airport.

Oxygen masks dropped and phones went flying

The accident occurred as the plane flew at 16,000 feet (4,800 meters). Oxygen masks dropped during the rapid decompression and a few cellphones and other objects were swept through the hole in the plane as 171 passengers contended with wind and roaring noise.

The first six minutes of the flight to Southern California’s Ontario International Airport were routine. The Boeing 737 Max 9 was about halfway to its cruising altitude and traveling at more than 400 mph (640 kph) when passengers described a loud “boom” and wind so strong it ripped the shirt off someone’s back.

“We knew something was wrong,” Kelly Bartlett told The Associated Press in the days following the flight. “We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how serious. We didn’t know if it meant we were going to crash.”

The 2-foot-by-4-foot (61-centimeter-by-122-centimeter) piece of fuselage covering an unoperational emergency exit behind the left wing had blown out. Only seven seats on the flight were unoccupied, including the two seats closest to the opening.

Missing bolts put the focus on Boeing’s manufacturing

The panel that blew off was made and installed by a supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. It was removed at a Boeing factory so workers could repair damaged rivets, but bolts that help secure the door plug were not replaced. It’s not clear who removed the panel.

The NTSB said in a preliminary report that four bolts were not replaced after a repair job in a Boeing factory, but the company has said the work was not documented.

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Investigators determined the door plug was gradually moving upward over the 154 flights prior to this incident before it ultimately flew off.

Boeing factory workers told NTSB investigators they felt pressured to work too fast and were asked to perform jobs they weren’t qualified for, including opening and closing the door plug on the particular plane involved. Only one of the 24 people on the door team had ever removed one of these plugs before and that person was on vacation when it was done on the plane.

A Boeing door installer said he was never told to take any shortcuts, but everyone faced pressure to keep the assembly line moving.

“That’s how mistakes are made. People try to work too fast,” he told investigators. The installer and other workers were not named in documents about the probe.

Investigators said Boeing did not do enough to train newer workers who didn’t have a background in manufacturing. Many of its workers who were hired after the pandemic and after two crashes involving the 737 Max planes lacked that experience.

But the NTSB staff also told the board Boeing didn’t have strong enough safety practices in place to ensure the door plug was properly reinstalled, and the FAA inspection system did not do a good job of catching systemic failures in manufacturing.

Problems with the Boeing 737 Max

The Max version of Boeing’s bestselling 737 airplane has been the source of persistent troubles for the company since two of the jets crashed, one in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019, killing a combined 346 people.

Investigators determined those crashes were caused by a system that relied on a sensor providing faulty readings to push the nose down, leaving pilots unable to regain control. After the second crash, Max jets were grounded worldwide until the company redesigned the system.

Last month, the Justice Department reached a deal allowing Boeing to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the Max before the two crashes.

But regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration have capped Boeing’s 737 Max production at 38 jets a month while investigators ensure the company has strengthened its safety practices.

Boeing hired Ortberg last year and created a new position for a senior vice president of quality to help improve its manufacturing.

The company was back in the news earlier this month when a 787 flown by Air India crashed shortly after takeoff and killed at least 270 people. Investigators have not determined what caused that crash, but so far they have not found any flaws with the model, which has a strong safety record.

Associated Press writer Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

By SEUNG MIN KIM

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday injected some uncertainty over whether the U.S. would abide by the mutual defense guarantees outlined in the NATO treaty as he headed to its summit — comments that could revive longstanding concern from European allies about his commitment to the military alliance.

“Depends on your definition,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday as he was headed to The Hague, where this year’s summit is being held. “There’s numerous definitions of Article Five, you know that, right? But I’m committed to being their friends.” Asked later to clarify, Trump said he is “committed to saving lives” and “committed to life and safety” but did not expand further, saying he didn’t want to elaborate while flying on an airplane.

The remarks, which came to reporters on Air Force One as Trump traveled to the Netherlands, previewed what could be another volatile appearance by Trump at a summit celebrating an alliance that the Republican president has often derided.

And it comes amid a backdrop of tumult in the Middle East, after Trump moved to strike three nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran as well as the president’s sudden announcement that Israel and Iran had reached a “complete and total ceasefire.” The sharp U-turn in hostilities — followed hours later by Trump’s declaration that both parties violated the agreement — had already started to shape the summit, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte publicly dancing around the issue even as hundreds of people showed up in The Hague on Sunday to denounce the conflict in a protest that was initially focused on defense spending.

Still, other NATO countries have become accustomed to the unpredictable when it comes to Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for the alliance, which was created as a bulwark against threats from the former Soviet Union.

Trump’s debut on the NATO stage at the 2017 summit was perhaps most remembered by his shove of Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, as the U.S. president jostled toward the front of the pack of world leaders during a NATO headquarters tour.

And he began the 2018 summit by questioning the value of the decades-old military alliance and accusing its members of not contributing enough money for their defense — themes he has echoed since. In Brussels, Trump floated a 4% target of defense spending as a percentage of a country’s gross domestic product, a figure that seemed unthinkably high at the time.

“NATO was broke, and I said, ‘You’re going to have to pay,’” Trump said Tuesday, recounting his initial encounters with the alliance. “And we did a whole thing, and now they’re paying a lot. Then I said, ‘You’re going to have to lift it to 4% or 5%, and 5% is better.’”

That 5% figure is “good,” Trump said, adding: “It gives them much more power.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will also attend the NATO summit this week. She said if Trump does anything to sow division within the alliance, it would benefit Xi Jinping of China, which NATO countries have accused of enabling Russia as it invades Ukraine.

“That does not help America, does not help our national security,” Shaheen said in an interview. “What it does is hand a victory to our adversaries, and for an administration that claims to be so concerned about the threat from (China), to behave in that way is hard to understand.”

Trump heavily telegraphed his attitude toward global alliances during his presidential campaigns.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump suggested that he as president would not necessarily heed the alliance’s mutual defense guarantees outlined in Article 5 of the NATO treaty. And during a campaign rally in 2024, Trump recounted a conversation with another NATO leader during which Trump said he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to members who weren’t meeting the alliance’s military spending targets.

In The Hague, Trump will tout the pledge to hike military spending, which requires other NATO countries to invest in their defense at an unprecedented scale. In a private message from Rutte that Trump posted on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, the secretary-general praised him for driving NATO “to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world.”

“You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” Rutte wrote in the message that Trump published, which NATO confirmed he sent. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”

Last week, the president went as far as to argue that the U.S. should not have to abide by the 5% spending pledge he wants imposed on the other NATO countries, although he appeared to soften those comments on Tuesday.

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That 5% is effectively divided into two parts. The first, 3.5%, is meant to be made up of traditional military spending such as tanks, warplanes and air defense. What can comprise the remaining 1.5% is a bit fuzzier, but it can include things like roads and bridges that troops could use to travel. According to NATO, the U.S. was spending about 3.4% of its gross domestic product on defense as of 2024.

Most NATO countries — with Spain as the key holdout — are preparing to endorse the pledge, motivated not just by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to bolster their own defenses but also perhaps appease the United States and its tempestuous leader.

“He hasn’t said this in a while, but there are still a lot of worries in Europe that maybe the United States will pull out of NATO, maybe the United States won’t honor Article 5,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former Pentagon official. “I think there is a real fear among Europeans that we need to deliver for Trump in order to keep the United States engaged in NATO.”

Kroenig added: “Like it or not, I do think Trump’s tougher style does get more results.”

European allies have taken note of potential signs of a broader U.S. retreat. France and other NATO countries have been concerned that the Trump administration is considering reducing troop levels in Europe and shift them over to the Indo-Pacific, which Cabinet officials have signaled is a higher priority.

Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker have underscored the U.S.’ commitment and have said the Trump administration is only seeking a stronger alliance.

The White House has not said which world leaders Trump will meet with at the World Forum in The Hague. Trump said Tuesday that he’ll “probably” see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The two leaders were scheduled to meet at the Group of 7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, earlier this month before Trump abruptly cut his trip short and returned to Washington as the Israel-Iran conflict was intensifying.

But Trump does get quite the royal treatment this week: He plans to stay Tuesday night at Huis Ten Bosch palace, home to Dutch King Willem-Alexander.

Associated Press writers Mike Corder and Lorne Cook in The Hague, Netherlands, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members, a fired department lawyer alleged in a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday.

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The filing seeks an investigation into the claims about Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who is set to face lawmakers Wednesday for his confirmation hearing to become a federal appeals court judge.

The former DOJ lawyer, Erez Reuveni, was fired after he conceded in a court hearing that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should not have been deported to El Salvador, and expressed frustration over a lack of information about the administration’s actions.

The whistleblower filing from Reuveni’s lawyers describes a Justice Department meeting in March after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act over what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The filing alleges that Bove raised the possibility that a court might block the deportations before they could be carried out. Reuveni claims Bove used a profanity, saying the department would need to consider telling the courts “f— you,” and “ignore any such order,” according to the filing.

“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership – in any Administration – had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with” an expletive, the filing says.

Reuveni’s claims were first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche denied the allegations in a post on X Tuesday morning. Blanche said Reuveni’s claims are “utterly false,” adding that he was at the meeting and “at no time did anyone suggest a court order should not be followed.”

“Planting a false hit piece the day before a confirmation hearing is something we have come to expect from the media, but it does not mean it should be tolerated,” Blanche wrote.

Reuveni was fired shortly after he had been promoted to serve as acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation. He had worked for the Justice Department for nearly 15 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

By BEN FINLEY

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, has been back in the United States for more than two weeks after being charged with human smuggling in Tennessee.

But the 29-year-old Maryland construction worker’s future is far from certain.

A federal judge has raised questions about the strength of the government’s smuggling allegations, including its claim Abrego Garcia is in the violent MS-13 street gang. The judge on Sunday denied federal prosecutors’ request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail while he awaits trial. The conditions of his release will be discussed at a court hearing on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors have said they will appeal the judge’s decision. Even if Abrego Garcia is released, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expected to detain him and try to deport him.

Here’s what to know about Abrego Garcia’s case:

The smuggling charges

Abrego Garcia is charged with smuggling throughout the U.S. hundreds of people living in the country illegally, including children and members of MS-13, from 2016 to 2025.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee during which he was driving a vehicle with nine passengers who didn’t have any luggage.

Body camera footage shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. The officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. One of the officers says, “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope.

Abrego Garcia was allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

A Department of Homeland Security special agent, Peter Joseph, testified at a June 13 court hearing in Nashville that witnesses testified to a grand jury that they saw Abrego Garcia smuggling people, guns or drugs and that he earned upward of $100,000 a year.

A not guilty plea

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty at the June 13 hearing. His attorneys have characterized the case as an attempt by Trump’s Republican administration to justify his mistaken deportation in March.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers told the judge that some government witnesses cooperated to get favors regarding their immigration status or criminal charges they were facing. Joseph, the special agent, acknowledged in testimony that one witness was living in the U.S. illegally with a criminal record and is now getting preferred status.

Casting doubt, an assistant federal public defender, Richard Tennent, noted that a witness claimed that Abrego Garcia would drive from Maryland to Houston — a 1,400-mile (2,250-kilometer) trip taking about 24 hours — two or three times per week.

Judge raises questions

In her ruling Sunday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes rejected the government’s request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail.

The judge echoed defense attorneys’ doubts that Abrego Garcia could make multiple roundtrips per week from Maryland to Houston, which she wrote would “approach physical impossibility.”

The judge also noted inconsistencies about Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to MS-13, writing that two witnesses offered “general statements” and “hearsay.”

Meanwhile, a third witness who’d known Abrego Garcia for 10 years said “there were no signs or markings, including tattoos, indicating that Abrego is an MS-13 member,” the judge wrote.

Holmes also noted the contrast between the government’s allegations and the fact that Abrego Garcia “has no reported criminal history of any kind.”

Original MS-13 allegation

Abrego Garcia grew up in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, and helped his family run a business selling pupusas, tortilla pouches filled with cheese, beans or pork.

In 2011, the year he turned 16, he fled a local gang that extorted and terrorized his family, court records state. He traveled illegally to Maryland, where his brother already lived as a U.S. citizen.

Abrego Garcia found work in construction and began a relationship with an American woman, Jennifer Vasquez Sura. In 2018, he moved in with her and her two children after she became pregnant with his child. They lived in Prince George’s County, just outside Washington.

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In March 2019, Abrego Garcia went to a Home Depot seeking work as a laborer when he and three other men were detained by local police, court records say. They were suspected of being in MS-13 based on tattoos and clothing.

A criminal informant told police that Abrego Garcia was in MS-13, court records state, but police did not charge him and turned him over to ICE.

Abrego Garcia then went before a U.S. immigration judge and sought asylum, which was denied. The judge, however, granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador.

The judge said Abrego Garcia had demonstrated a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution there, court records state. He was released.

Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit, his attorneys said. He joined a union and was employed full-time as a sheet metal apprentice.

In February, the Trump administration designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization, and in March it deported Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The administration described its violation of the immigration judge’s 2019 order as an administrative error. Trump and other officials doubled down on claims Abrego Garcia was in MS-13.

US could try to deport him again

Holmes acknowledged in Sunday’s ruling that considering release was “little more than an academic exercise.” Prosecutors had told Holmes that ICE would take Abrego Garcia into custody if he were released.

Another public defender, Will Allensworth, told the judge he expects a full hearing before an immigration judge, who would have to consider Abrego Garcia’s 2019 protection order from deportation to El Salvador.

If the U.S. wanted to try to deport Abrego Garcia somewhere else, the government would have to prove the other country wouldn’t just send him to El Salvador, Allensworth said.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor, said the Trump administration would be “fully within its legal power to attempt to remove him to some other country.”

“The Trump administration would have to pull its diplomatic levers,” the professor added. “It’s unusual. But it’s not unheard of.”

Abrego Garcia could contest the criminal allegations in immigration court while demonstrating his ties to the U.S., García Hernández said.

“The fact that he has become the poster boy for the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to immigration bolsters his persecution claim,” the professor said. “Because he’s a known quantity at this point, and not just in El Salvador or Central America, but really across much of the world.”

Associated Press reporter Travis Loller in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.