Economy With at least ten aircraft
“Now a fleet problem” – United and Alaska find cause of Boeing emergency landing
As of: 04:28 a.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
Airline bans Boeing Max 9 from take-off after emergency landing
Alaska Airlines has banned all of its aircraft of this type from taking off after a window and parts of the fuselage of a Boeing 737-9 Max broke. Each of the 65 aircraft will be carefully examined before they are allowed to fly again, said CEO Ben Minicucci.
During extensive inspections of several aircraft, the American airline United found loose screws on the part that broke off a few days ago during the flight of a Boeing 737 Max 9. Alaska also has new insights.
During inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, the US airline United Airlines found loose screws on the fuselage component that had broken off a few days ago during the flight of such a machine. A United spokeswoman did not say Monday how many planes had the problem. The airline has a total of 79 aircraft of this type.
United has now discovered loose screws on ten aircraft, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. The number of affected machines could still increase. The airline Alaska Airlines also later reported that it had discovered problems with other Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft. In initial checks of a fuselage fragment that broke out of a machine of this type in flight last week, loose parts were found, Alaska announced on Tuesday night.
The industry website “The Air Current” first reported on the find. “This changes everything because it is now a fleet problem. It’s a quality control issue,” said US aviation safety expert John Cox. Investigators said on Sunday that it was still too early to determine the cause.
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The incident raises new doubts among industry experts about the production of the 737 Max. “It was really important to find out if just this one plane was affected on Friday evening,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “The fact that United has now found several aircraft with loose screws means the investigation is expanding.”
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At the weekend, the US aviation authority FAA ordered 171 aircraft worldwide to be grounded and inspected. Before the 737 Max 9 models are allowed to take off again, they must be examined carefully. This takes four to eight hours per aircraft, according to a statement from the US authority.
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The now faulty component closes a door opening that is not needed in the model variant. On an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday, the part suddenly tore off shortly after takeoff while climbing at an altitude of around five kilometers. The 171 passengers largely escaped in horror. According to experts, this is also due to fortunate circumstances: no one was sitting directly next to the part that broke out and all passengers were still wearing their seatbelts during this phase of the flight.
The pilots of the plane, which was scheduled to fly from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, initiated an emergency landing and returned to the airport after 20 minutes.
According to the local authority EASA, no aircraft in the European Union are affected by the decommissioning and inspections.
It is not the first time that the Max variant has caused major problems for Boeing: After two crashes in 2018/2019 with a total of 346 deaths, the Max variant of Boeing’s best-selling aircraft series was banned from flying worldwide from March 2019 to November 2020. Boeing slipped into its worst crisis and has been in the red continuously since 2019. There are also problems in the armaments sector.
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