WASHINGTON (AP) — The heroic actions by the crew of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 ensured everyone survived last year when a door plug panel flew off the plane shortly after takeoff, leaving a gaping hole that sucked objects out of the cabin, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said Tuesday.

But Homendy said “the crew shouldn’t have had to be heroes, because this accident never should have happened.” The board found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the Federal Aviation Administration, led to the terrifying malfunction.

The NTSB investigation over the past 17 months found that four bolts securing what is known as the door plug panel were removed and never replaced during a repair as the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft was being assembled.

The blowout occurred minutes after the flight took off from Portland, Oregon, and created a roaring air vacuum. Seven passengers and one flight attendant sustained minor injuries, but none of the 177 aboard were killed. Pilots landed the plane safely back at the airport.

Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems — the company that made and installed the door plug — are redesigning them with another backup system to keep the panels in place even if the bolts are missing, but that improvement isn’t likely to be certified by the FAA until 2026 at the soonest. The NTSB urged the companies and the regulator to make sure every 737 Max is retrofitted with those new panels.

Both Boeing and the FAA have improved training and processes since the incident, according to the NTSB, but board officials said the company and agency need to better identify manufacturing risks and address them to make sure such flaws never sneak through again.

Homendy did single out Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, for improving safety since he took over last summer, though she said more needs to be done.

The NTSB recommended that Boeing continue improving its training and safety standards and make sure everyone knows when actions must be documented. Board members also highlighted the need to ensure that everyone throughout the company understands its safety plan as well as executives do.

The board also urged the FAA to step up and make sure its audits and inspections address key areas based on past problems and systemic issues. The agency was also encouraged Tuesday to assess Boeing’s safety culture and reconsider its longstanding policy not to require children under 2 to travel in their own seats with proper restraints.

Many of the NTSB recommendations echo a report the Transportation Department’s Inspector General issued last year and that the FAA is already working to implement.

The FAA said in a statement that it “has fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues. We are actively monitoring Boeing’s performance and meet weekly with the company to review its progress and any challenges it’s facing in implementing necessary changes.”

In a statement, Boeing said it will review the NTSB report as it continues to improve.

“We at Boeing regret this accident and continue to work on strengthening safety and quality across our operations,” the company said.

Oxygen masks dropped and phones went flying

The accident occurred as the plane flew at 14,830 feet (4,520 meters). Oxygen masks dropped during the rapid decompression and a few cellphones and other objects were swept through the hole in the plane as the passengers and crew contended with wind and roaring noise.

The first six minutes of the flight to Southern California’s Ontario International Airport were routine. The plane 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 unused 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.

NTSB member J. Todd Inman said the Alaska Airlines accident would have been worse if it had happened over the ocean and far from land, but the carrier had already restricted the plane used for flight 1282 to overland flights because of an unresolved maintenance issue with a fuel pump. The airline took that step on its own, going beyond FAA requirements, Inman said.

Missing bolts put the focus on Boeing’s manufacturing

The panel that blew off was was removed at a Boeing factory so workers could repair five 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 the repair job but the work was not documented.

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. None of the 24 people on the door team were ever trained to remove a door plug before working on the plane in question and only one of them had ever removed one before. That person was on vacation when it was done in this instance.

No one from the door team was working when the plug was reinstalled.

Investigators said Boeing did not do enough to train newer workers who didn’t have a background in manufacturing. Many who were hired after the pandemic and after two crashes involving the 737 Max planes lacked that experience, and there weren’t clear standards for on-the-job training.

NTSB staff also told the board that 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. Boeing was required to adopt a more rigorous set of safety standards after a 2015 settlement, but the NTSB said that plan had only been in place for two years before the specific Alaska Airlines plane that suffered the door plug’s failure was made and that it was still being developed.

The FAA regularly conducts more than 50 audits a year on Boeing’s manufacturing, but there aren’t clear standards for what those audits cover. The agency routinely discarded past inspection records after five years and didn’t always base its inspection plan on those past findings.

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.

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, and the agency said it has no plans to lift that cap “until we are confident the company can maintain safety and quality while making more aircraft.”

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.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — A tentative truce faltered Tuesday when Israel vowed to retaliate after saying Iran launched missiles into its airspace more than two hours after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect.

Iran’s military denied firing on Israel, state media reported — but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning. Earlier, both Israel and Iran had accepted the ceasefire plan to end their 12-day war.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the missiles a violation of the ceasefire and instructed Israel’s military to resume “the intense operations to attack Tehran and to destroy targets of the regime and terror infrastructure.”

The shaky agreement was announced early Tuesday morning by U.S. President Donald Trump after Tehran launched a limited retaliatory missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday.

Between Trump’s post and the start of the ceasefire, Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn and Iran replied with an onslaught of missiles that killed at least four people in Israel.

An Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations said Iran launched two missiles at Israel hours into the tenuous ceasefire. Both missiles were intercepted, the official said.

“Tehran will tremble,” Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich wrote on X after the missiles were launched.

Netanyahu accepts ceasefire as Iranian state TV says fighting has stopped

The midmorning barrage of missiles came after regional leaders, including in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, welcomed Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire.

“THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!” he wrote on his social media platform Tuesday morning.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran in coordination with Trump, pledging to respond to any subsequent violation. He said he had told Israel’s security cabinet that the country had achieved all of its war goals, including removing the threat of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Israel also damaged Iran’s military leadership and several government sites and achieved control over Tehran’s skies, Netanyahu said.

Iranian officials did not comment either after Trump announced the ceasefire or Israel claimed it had intercepted additional missiles hours after it supposedly went into effect. Hours earlier, Iran’s top diplomat had said the country was prepared to halt airstrikes.

“As of now, there is NO ‘agreement’ on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X. “However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards.”

Araghchi added: “The final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later.”

Iranian missiles kill 4 in Israel as hostilities expand

The shaky ceasefire followed a day of hostilities spreading further across the region.

Iran launched a limited missile attack Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, retaliating for earlier American bombing of its nuclear sites. The U.S. was warned by Iran in advance, and there were no casualties. Israel’s military said Iran launched 20 missiles toward Israel before the ceasefire began on Tuesday morning. Police said they damaged at least three densely packed residential buildings in the city of Beersheba.

First responders said they retrieved four bodies from one building and were searching for more. Earlier, the Fire and Rescue service said five bodies were found before revising the number downward.

At least 20 people were injured.

Outside, the shells of burned out cars littered the streets. Broken glass and rubble covered the area. Hundreds of emergency workers gathered to search for anyone else trapped in the buildings.

Police said some people were injured even while inside their apartments’ reinforced safe rooms, which are meant to withstand rockets and shrapnel but not direct hits from ballistic missiles.

Bases hit in Iraq

Drones attacked military bases in Iraq overnight, including some housing U.S. troops, the Iraqi army and a US military official said Tuesday.

No casualties were reported and no group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Iraq. Some Iran-backed Iraqi militias had previously threatened to target U.S. bases if the U.S. attacked Iran.

Iraqi army spokesperson Sabah Al-Naaman in a statement called the attacks a “treacherous and cowardly act of aggression” and said they had damaged radar systems at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, and at Imam Ali Base in Dhi Qar province. Iraqi forces shot down drones at other locations, he said.

A senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said U.S. forces had shot down drones attacking Ain al-Assad in the desert in western Iraq and at a base next to the Baghdad airport, while another one crashed.

Trump says ceasefire is in effect

Trump promised last night’s ceasefire would bring an “official end” to what he at the time coined the “12 Day War” ahead of Israel’s promise to resume operations on Tuesday.

Trump had communicated directly with Netanyahu to secure the ceasefire, according to a senior White House official who insisted on anonymity to discuss the Monday talks. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff communicated with the Iranians through direct and indirect channels.

The White House has maintained that the Saturday bombing helped get the Israelis to agree to the ceasefire and that the Qatari government helped to broker the deal.

It’s unclear what role Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, played in the talks. He said earlier on social media that he would not surrender.

Attacks force temporary closure of Israel’s skies

Israel’s Airports Authority said Iran’s barrage forced them to close the country’s airspace to emergency flights for several hours.

Some flights were forced to circle over the Mediterranean Sea, according to Israeli media.

Israel’s airports have been closed since the war with Iran began, but a handful of emergency flights started arriving and departing over the past few days.

By early Tuesday, Qatar Airways resumed its flights after Qatar shut down its airspace over the Iranian attack on Al Udeid Air Base. Flight-tracking data showed commercial aircraft again flying in Qatari airspace, signaling Doha believed the threat on the energy-rich nation had passed.

Conflict has killed hundreds

In Israel, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the war. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 974 people and wounded 3,458 others, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from Iranian unrest such as the protests surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, said of those killed, it identified 387 civilians and 268 security force personnel.

The U.S. has evacuated some 250 American citizens and their immediate family members from Israel by government, military and charter flights that began over the weekend, a State Department official said.

There are roughly 700,000 American citizens, most of them dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, believed to be in Israel.