US launches Boeing investigation after blowout

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An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane sits at a gate at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on 6 January, 2024 in Seattle, Washington.
Photo: AFP/ Getty Images – Stephen Brashear

Airline regulators in the US have formally launched an investigation of Boeing’s processes, after a door plug blew off one of its planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it would examine whether Boeing failed to ensure its completed jets matched their approved design.

The FAA has already grounded most of the 737 Max 9 fleet.

Inspections following the Alaska Airlines emergency have uncovered issues such as loose bolts.

“This incident should have never happened and it cannot happen again,” the FAA said. “Boeing’s manufacturing practices need to comply with the high safety standards they’re legally accountable to meet.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said earlier that the government would not be rushed into clearing the grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 planes, which has led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights.

He said the aircraft “need to be 100 percent safe”. It is unclear when the planes will be allowed to fly again.

Boeing’s boss, Dave Calhoun, has described the problem revealed by the incident on the flight from Portland, Oregon to California as a “quality escape”.

It means the incident was caused by some failure in quality control in the plane, which had been in service for just eight weeks before the blowout.

Calhoun told CNBC that there were still questions that needed to be answered about how the incident was allowed to happen. “What broke down in our gauntlet of inspections? What broke down in the original work that allowed for that escape to happen,” he said.

Earlier this week, Calhoun admitted that Boeing was at fault after a section of the fuselage from a 737 Max 9 plane operated by Alaska Airlines blew-out within minutes of take-off.

No one was injured when the panel – or door plug – broke away from the Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded 171 Boeing jets on Saturday that were installed with the same door plug.

Dave Calhoun, president and CEO of The Boeing Company.
Photo: Stefani Reynolds / AFP

The door plug is a piece of fuselage, with a window, that fills the space where an emergency exit would be in certain configurations.

Buttigieg declined to say when the suspension will end. “The only consideration on the timeline is safety,” he said. “Until it is ready, it is not ready. Nobody can or should be rushed in that process.”

Alaska Airlines has cancelled about 20 percent of its flights after 65 of its Max 9s were grounded. United Airlines, the other US 737 MAX 9 operator, has 79 of the planes in its fleet out of action.

It said it expects “significant” cancellations on Thursday after 167 flights did not go ahead on Wednesday.

Alaska Airlines said it still needs revised inspection and maintenance instructions from Boeing, which must be approved by the FAA before it can begin flying the planes again.

“We will only return these aircraft to service when all findings have been fully resolved and meet all FAA and Alaska’s stringent standards,” the airline said.

Both Alaska and United said on Monday they had found loose parts on a number of the grounded aircraft.

United said it had found bolts in need of “additional tightening” during inspections of the door plug that came away from the Alaska Airlines plane.

The part which fell off was eventually found in a teacher’s back garden without its four bolts.

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating what happened on the flight, said on Monday it was possible the bolts were missing from the start but they might have come off in the descent.

– This story was first published by BBC