WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. National

Transportation Safety Board will hold a hearing on Tuesday to

determine the probable cause of a mid-air cabin panel blowout of

a new Boeing 737 MAX 9 flight in January 2024 that spun

the planemaker into a major crisis.

The board is expected to harshly criticize Boeing's ( BA ) safety

culture and its failure to install four key bolts in a new

Alaska Airlines MAX 9, officials told Reuters.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy has said the incident was

entirely avoidable because the planemaker should have addressed

unauthorized production work long ago.

"This accident should have never happened. This should have

been caught years before," Homendy said last August during a

two-day investigative hearing. "The safety culture needs a lot

of work."

The accident prompted the Justice Department to open a

criminal investigation and declare that Boeing ( BA ) was not in

compliance with a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement and CEO

Dave Calhoun announced he would step down within a few months of

the mid-air panel blowout.

The incident badly damaged Boeing's ( BA ) reputation and led to a

grounding of the MAX 9 for two weeks and a 38 planes per month

cap by the Federal Aviation Administration on MAX production

that still remains in place.

Boeing ( BA ) created no paperwork for the removal of the 737 MAX 9

door plug - a piece of metal shaped like a door covering an

unused emergency exit - or its re-installation during

production, and did not know which employees were involved, the

NTSB said last year.

Boeing ( BA ) did not respond to a request for comment ahead of the

meeting.

Then-FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker said in June 2024

the agency was "too hands off" in Boeing ( BA ) oversight and it has

boosted the number of inspectors at Boeing ( BA ) and Spirit

AeroSystems ( SPR ) factories.

Boeing ( BA ) had agreed last July to plead guilty to a criminal

fraud conspiracy charge after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in

Indonesia and Ethiopia. But it last month struck a deal with the

Justice Department to avoid a guilty plea.

The Justice Department has asked a judge to approve the

deal, which will allow Boeing ( BA ) to avoid pleading guilty or facing

oversight by an outside monitor but will require it to pay an

additional $444.5 million into a crash victims fund to be

divided equally per crash victim.