No flight till checks complete: US regulators have grounded 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 jetliners for safety checks temporarily following an Alaska Airlines emergency landing this week.
The cabin panel blowout had forced a new Alaska Airlines jet carrying passengers to make an emergency landing.
The plane was en route to Ontario in California from Portland, Oregon when a piece of fuselage tore off the left side of the jet.
Pilots turned the plane back and landed safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board, but several passengers suffered injuries.
The plane had been in service for just eight weeks, Reuters reported.
Alaska said it was halting 18 flights of its MAX 9 planes that it had resumed use of, after recent in-depth inspections. The airline was in discussions with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “to determine what, if any, further work is required before these aircraft are returned to service,” it added.
The FAA decision is well short of the global grounding of Boeing MAX jets about five years ago, which was due to two crashes that caused nearly 350 people to lose their lives.
The American airline, nevertheless, has suffered a blow following the decision as it tries to recover from back-to-back crises over safety, and after the pandemic which has resulted in heavy debt for them.
Further action is likely, as the FAA did not rule out more of them on Saturday. A probe began into the apparent structural failure, which left a rectangular hole in an area of fuselage reserved for an optional extra door. The door was deactivated on the particular Alaska aircraft.
The FAA said Boeing 737 MAX 9s are fitted with a special door replacement “plug” and cannot fly until they are inspected and repaired if necessary.
“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” FAA chief Mike Whitaker said.
The Alaska Airlines jet had oxygen masks deployed and a portion of the aircraft’s side wall missing, some social media posts shared reflect.
A section of the fuselage reserved for the optional door had vanished, which left a door-shaped gap on the plane. The seat next to the panel, containing an ordinary window, was unoccupied.
Emma Vu, a passenger on the Alaska flight, told CNN she awoke to the plane “just falling.”
She added that she knew it was not just normal turbulence, because the masks came down “and that’s when the panic definitely started to set in.”
The extra door is usually installed by low-cost airlines using extra seats that require more paths for evacuation.
Those doors are permanently “plugged,” or deactivated on jets with fewer seats, including those of Alaska Airlines.
Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, which separated from Boeing in 2005, made the fuselage for Boeing 737s. The company manufactured and installed the plug door that suffered the blowout, a source told Reuters on Saturday.
Boeing did not respond to media queries, or issue a statement on the report.
The FAA said its inspection directive covers 171 MAX 9 aeroplanes but did not specify the precise inspection requirements.
The MAX 9 is among almost 220 of the 1,400 MAX jets delivered so far. Notably, most of the planes have the deactivated door – which means they are potentially covered by the order.
Boeing supported the FAA decision, it said.
Foreign regulators, including those from China, sought details on the incident, as per a person familiar with the matter.
China, the first country to ground MAX flights in 2019, was considering whether to take action, as per reports.
MAX planes were grounded worldwide for 20 months following the crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia, which was linked to poorly designed cockpit software.
ALASKA, UNITED AFFECTED
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are the only US carriers which use the MAX 9, as per aviation data provider Cirium.
Alaska had cancelled 160 flights on Saturday, which comprise 20 per cent of its scheduled trips. United cancelled 104 flights or 4 per cent of its departures.
Travel disruptions from the grounding are expected to last through at least mid-week, Alaska said.
The airline had earlier said it had voluntarily grounded its fleet of 65 Boeing MAX 9 jets for checks, while United said it suspended service on about 45 MAX 9s for inspections. The airline however had resumed flights with 33 aeroplanes.
Boeing is awaiting certification of its smaller MAX 7 and larger MAX 10 which are needed to compete with the Airbus A321 neo model.
The American planemaker has suffered numerous production issues on the MAX planes in the years since the crashes.
Only last week, it said it was urging airlines to inspect all 737 MAX aeroplanes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system.
Flight 1282 had reached just above 16,000 feet when the blowout happened, according to FlightRadar24.
The pilot told air traffic control “We’d like to get down,” as per a recording posted on liveatc.net.
“We are declaring an emergency. We do need to come down to 10,000,” the pilot added.
This was referring to the initial staging altitude for such emergencies. Breathing is considered possible for healthy people without extra oxygen below the 10,000-mark of altitude.
“I can’t imagine what these passengers experienced,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an air safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “The wind would be rushing through that cabin. It was a probably pretty violent situation, and definitely a scary situation.”
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency adopted the FAA MAX 9 directive.
However, it noted that no EU member state airlines “currently operate an aircraft in the affected configuration.”
A British air safety regulator said it would require any 737 MAX 9 operator to comply with the FAA directive to enter its airspace.
Panamanian carrier Copa Airlines said it had temporarily grounded 21 737 MAX 9 aircraft, saying it expects to return these aircraft “safely and reliably to the flight schedule within the next 24 hours.” Some delays and cancellations are expected, it added.
(With Reuters Inputs)
