PORTLAND (AP) — Federal officials have briefed a congressional committee on their investigations into a jetliner that lost a panel of its fuselage in midflight this month and revealed that airlines have inspected 40 identical Boeing planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it will review information from those inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets while it develops a maintenance process before letting the planes carry passengers again.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, and FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker spent two hours briefing members of the Senate Commerce Committee in Washington on Wednesday as questions continue to swirl around how the panel of an Alaska Airlines jetliner blew off while traveling 16,000 feet above Oregon. The officials indicated that their separate investigations of Boeing and the accident are in the early stages.

“Nothing was said about penalties or enforcement, but when there is an end result, I have no doubt but that there will be consequences,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, in an interview after the closed-door session.

Moran said Whitaker indicated that the FAA is focusing “on the challenges that Boeing has faced over a longer period of time, of which this incident, this potential disaster, was only one component.”

During the briefing, “there was also interest in trying to make sure that the FAA is doing its job in its oversight,” Moran said.

The FAA and NTSB declined to comment on the briefing.

Separately, Homendy said her agency will look into how exactly the panel was produced by Spirit AeroSystems and installed on the Alaska Airlines plane. She told reporters after the briefing that the panel was manufactured in Malaysia by Boeing’s leading supplier.

That development puts more attention on Boeing’s global supply chain. Over a period of many years, the company outsourced much if its manufacturing.

A spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems confirmed that the plug was made in Malaysia and said the company is committed to cooperating with the NTSB.

Meanwhile, Boeing’s CEO David Calhoun spent the day visiting the Wichita, Kansas, factory of Spirit AeroSystems. He vowed that the two companies will work together to “get better.”

Calhoun and Spirit CEO Patrick Shanahan — a former Boeing executive and acting U.S. defense secretary whose nomination by President Donald Trump to lead the Pentagon failed — met with about 200 Spirit employees in what the companies termed a town hall.

“We’re going to get better” because engineers and mechanics at Boeing and Spirit “are going to learn from it, and then we’re going to apply it to literally everything else we do together,” Calhoun said.

Shanahan told the workers that by working with the NTSB, FAA, the airlines and Boeing, “we will restore confidence.”

The meeting of CEOs occurred as both companies face scrutiny over the quality of their work.

An Alaska Airlines Max 9 was forced to make an emergency landing on Jan. 5 after a panel called a door plug blew out of the side of the plane shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon.

The NTSB is investigating the accident, while the FAA investigates whether Boeing and its suppliers followed quality-control procedures.

Alaska and United Airlines, the only other U.S. airline that flies the Max 9, reported finding loose hardware in door plugs of other planes they inspected after the accident. Both airlines have canceled hundreds of flights while their Max 9s are grounded.

Boeing shares gained 1% on Wednesday but have dropped 18% since the accident, making the Arlington, Virginia, company the worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in that span.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed a court order to take effect that could loosen Apple’s grip on its lucrative iPhone app store, threatening to siphon billions of dollars away from one of the world’s most profitable companies.,

The justices rejected Apple’s appeal of lower-court rulings that found some of Apple’s app store rules for apps purchased on more than 1 billion iPhones constitute unfair competition under California law.

Apple outlined in court documents filed late Tuesday how it plans to change in-app payments, while indicating it will preserve most of the fees it collects from developers who make money from their services provided on iPhones and iPads. The proposal provoked claims that Apple is acting in bad faith and set the stage for more legal sparring.

The rejected appeal to the Supreme Court stemmed from an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2020 by Epic Games, maker of the popular Fortnite video game. Epic lost its broader claim that Cupertino, California-based Apple was violating federal antitrust law, and the justices also rejected Epic’s appeal Tuesday.

But in turning away Apple’s effort to maintain exclusive control over in-app payments, the court lifted a hold on an order to allow app developers throughout the U.S. to insert links to other payment options besides its own within iPhone apps. That change would make it easier for developers to avoid paying Apple’s commissions ranging from 15% to 30%.

In its Tuesday court filing, Apple said it will now allow app developers to provide payment links to external websites but would still seek to collect commissions ranging from 12% to 27% from them to prevent “free-riding” on the software system that powers its iPhones and iPads.

Apple also plans to impose a potentially cumbersome approval process before the external links or buttons can be placed within iPhone and iPad apps in an effort “to minimize fraud, scams, and confusion.”

The protections also will include a so-called “scare screen” warning to consumers who click on a link for an alternate payment system saying that Apple is “not responsible for the privacy or security of purchases made on the web.”

In a series of social media posts, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney attacked Apple’s plan with as “bad-faith compliance” and maintained the revised commissions remain anti-competitive. He vowed to oppose Apple’s proposal in federal court.

Apple has strong incentive to maintain as much of its commissions on in-app transaction as possible.

Those fees have turned into a significant part of Apple’s service’s division, which generated $85 billion in revenue during the company’s last fiscal year ending in September. The specter of consumers being able to defect to other payment channels for in-app transactions is one of several factors that has been weighing on Apple’s stock, which has declined 5% so far this year.

The drop has enabled Apple’s long-time rival, Microsoft, to eclipse it as the world’s most valuable company. Apple’s shares dipped 1% Tuesday leaving the company with a market value of slightly more than $2.8 trillion. Microsoft, whose stock has edged up 4% so far this year, is valued at $2.9 trillion.

Besides the possibility of the Supreme Court refusing to consider the payment issue in the Epic case, investors also have been fretting about new European regulations scheduled to take effect in March that also could force Apple to allow alternate payment methods inside iPhone apps.

Epic, based in Cary, North Carolina, had claimed that Apple’s app store — which was launched in 2008, a year after the first iPhone went on sale — had turned into an illegal monopoly that stifles innovation and competition while generating billions of dollars in profit for Apple. Although a federal judge rejected the assertion that Apple had a monopoly on mobile apps, she concluded consumers should have more discretion in how to pay inside apps.

Back in August 2020, Epic tried to offer an alternative way to get its mobile app, attempting to evade Apple’s commissions charged when digital goods were purchased by players on Fortnite and other games.

Apple ousted Epic from its app store after it tried to get around Apple’s restrictions.

Although it lost most of its claims in the Apple case, Epic last month won a jury trial against Google and its Play Store for apps on Android phones in a lawsuit mirroring its action against Apple. A federal judge still must determine what changes Google will have to make to its Play Store.