Boeing Max 9 jets remain grounded as airlines await inspection instructions

A Boeing passenger plane, the 737 Max 9, remained grounded in the United States on Sunday as airlines waited for instructions from the plane maker and the Federal Aviation Administration on how to inspect the planes and resume service, two days after a harrowing flight caused concern. about the jet.

No one was seriously injured during Friday evening’s delivery of an Alaska Airlines flight in which part of a Max 9 fuselage blew out in the air, exposing passengers to howling winds. The plane landed safely, but the event, on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, has scared travelers and prompted an immediate call for safety inspections on Max 9 planes with similar seat configurations.

Boeing and the FAA were working to draft a notice to airlines — mainly Alaska and United Airlines — with detailed instructions on how to inspect the planes, according to a person familiar with the process. Those discussions were in full swing on Sunday and the FAA has final approval on the contents of the message, as is usually the case.

In the meantime, Alaska, United and other airlines said they had parked all their Max 9 planes, despite saying Saturday that some were considered safe to fly. Federal authorities have drawn attention to a door plug in the center of the cabin, part of the plane’s bodywork that tore loose Friday at an altitude of 16,000 feet and is being used to fill the space where an emergency exit would be placed if the plane were to be shot down. were configured with more seating.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading an investigation into the incident, has not yet determined a cause and is searching for the missing part of the plane. The board said it would examine a wide range of possible factors, including FAA oversight, Boeing’s manufacturing process and installation or maintenance work on the plane.

“Everything is in, we are going very broadly, nothing is excluded,” said Jennifer Homendy, chairman of the board, at a press conference on Saturday evening.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday that the required inspections would affect 171 Max 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or on U.S. soil. It said the inspections would take four to eight hours by plane. Airlines abroad, including Turkish Airlines and Copa Airlines in Panama, also parked Max 9 aircraft.

The FAA order contributed to hundreds of canceled flights this weekend. By early Sunday evening, Alaska had canceled 163 flights, or 21 percent of flights scheduled for the day, according to FlightAware. The airline has 65 Max 9 aircraft. Travelers took to social media to complain about long wait times on the phone for customer service and inadequate compensation as they waited at the airport and faced lengthy delays and abrupt cancellations.

United Airlines said it canceled about 270 flights it planned to operate aboard its Max 9 planes on Saturday and Sunday. It said it could maintain an additional 145 flights over both days by swapping in other aircraft.

United has 79 Max 9 aircraft, more than any other airline. In a statement on Sunday, the airline said it had parked all those planes and had begun removing door panels and conducting preliminary inspections on those planes while it waited for further instructions from the FAA on what inspections should be conducted to to get the planes flying again. .

“We continue to work with the FAA to clarify the inspection process and requirements for returning all Max 9 aircraft to service,” the airline said in a statement. “We are working with customers to accommodate them on other flights and in some cases we have been able to avoid cancellations by switching to other aircraft types.”

Greg Feith, an aviation safety expert and former NTSB investigator, said this was the type of incident where this was not the case “until you actually get into the investigation – you identify all the facts, circumstances and circumstances of this particular event – ​​you determine either or this is just a one-off or a systemic problem.”

In the meantime, those who make, maintain, operate and regulate the planes will all be in the spotlight.

It is not clear whether Boeing is responsible for what happened to the Alaska Airlines plane, but the episode raises new questions and puts additional pressure on the manufacturer. Another version of the Max, a 737 Max 8, was involved in two crashes that killed hundreds of people in 2018 and 2019 and led to a global grounding of that plane.

“The problem is what’s going on at Boeing,” said John Goglia, a longtime aviation safety consultant and a retired member of the National Transportation Safety Board who investigates plane crashes.

Last month, the company called on airlines to inspect more than 1,300 delivered Max planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system. Over the summer, Boeing said it was a major supplier there were incorrectly drilled holes in a part that helps maintain cabin pressure. Since then, Boeing has invested in and worked more closely with that supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, to address production issues.

“We are seeing increased stability and quality performance within our own factories, but we are working to bring the supply chain to the same standards,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said on a call with investor analysts and reporters in October. .

Spirit AeroSystems also worked on the fuselage of the 737 Max 9, including the fabrication and installation of the door plug that failed during the Alaska Airlines flight.

Deliveries of another Boeing plane, the twin-aisle 787 Dreamliner, were halted for nearly a year, until the summer of 2022, as the planemaker worked with the FAA to address several quality issues, including paper-thin gaps in planes from the plane. body.

Another error discovered last summer caused plane deliveries to be delayed again. And production of both the 737 and 787 is slow to ramp up due to these and other quality and supply chain issues.

The Max was grounded in early 2019 after two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed a total of 346 people. For 20 months, Boeing worked with regulators around the world to resolve problems with the plane’s flight control software and other components.

By the time passenger flights aboard the Max resumed in late 2020, the crisis had cost the company about $20 billion.

The aircraft’s two mid-size variants, the Max 8 and Max 9, have been flying ever since. But the smallest, the Max 7, and the largest, the Max 10, still need to be approved by regulators.

The Max is the best-selling aircraft in Boeing history. The more than 4,500 outstanding orders for the aircraft account for more than 76 percent of Boeing’s order book. The plane is also popular among airlines: Of the nearly three million flights scheduled worldwide this month, about 5 percent will be operated with a Max, mostly the Max 8, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider.

“Every American deserves a full explanation from Boeing and the FAA about what went wrong and the steps being taken to ensure there is not another incident in the future,” said Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio, in a post on Saturday. on X.

Mark Walker reporting contributed.