Boeing is testing its planes around the world — especially the 737 9MAX — following the accident on an Alaska Airlines flight that took off from Portland toward California last Friday, when a large hole was made in the middle of the plane while it was still in the sky. The plane landed safely and there were no casualties in the incident.
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Saturday it had ordered inspections of 171 9 MAX planes operated by U.S. airlines or based on U.S. territory, causing hundreds of flight cancellations over the weekend.
The airline with the most 9 MAX planes is United Airlines – 79. Yesterday, it canceled about 180 flights scheduled on those planes, hoping to get them back into service soon after testing is complete.
Alaska Airlines' 737 Max 9, which made an emergency landing, is parked at Portland International Airport, Photo: AP
Reuters said about 215 737 MAX 9s were in service worldwide. Only about 171 include the door that was blown up during an Alaska Airlines flight.
After grounding its planes, Alaska Airlines returned 18 of them to service on Saturday following preliminary maintenance checks. On Sunday, it cancelled 163 flights, and said the disruptions were expected to continue until at least the middle of the week.
The hole in the Alaska Airlines plane, Photo: Reuters
A company under pressure
The New York Times notes that even if Boeing is not to blame for what happened to Alaska Airlines, there is a lot of pressure on it, given that an earlier version of the plane, the 737 8 MAX, was involved in two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed hundreds of people in Indonesia and Ethiopia – and planes of this type around the world were grounded.
It also emerged that over the summer, one of their suppliers had incorrectly drilled holes in a component that helps maintain cabin pressure – problems that were eventually addressed
"The problem is what's going on at Boeing," said John Goglia, a longtime aviation safety consultant and retired member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane accidents. It turns out that last month the airline ordered airlines to inspect more than 1,300 MAX planes that needed to be detected with a loose screw in the steering control system. Even before that, over the summer, it was discovered that one of their suppliers had incorrectly drilled holes in a component that helps maintain cabin pressure – problems that were eventually addressed.
Boeing 737 MAX, photo: AP
The MAX is the best-selling plane in Boeing's history, and of the nearly three million scheduled flights worldwide this month, five percent of them are scheduled to take place.
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