Part of the cabin wall of the 737 Max 9 version plane built by Boeing came off on an Alaska Airlines flight. The company's Max 8 machine type suffered a system error that cost 346 lives just five years ago.
Confidence for the planes of the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing is again being tested. On Friday, a piece of the cabin wall came off the plane of the company's 737 Max 9 version mid-flight.
Flight 1282, which departed Portland, Oregon, for California at 4:52 p.m. Friday night, had reached an altitude of nearly 5,000 feet when the cabin heard a pop and then a loud bang.
of The Wall Street Journal according to the passengers who heard, a huge soft blanket, a mobile phone and a child's shirt had flown out of the opening the size of the emergency exit in the plane's fuselage. The oxygen masks fell in front of the passengers automatically after the sudden drop in cabin pressure.
Fortunately, the passengers' seat belts were fastened because the plane was still in the takeoff phase. Therefore, passengers were not sucked out of the plane through the opening.
The plane managed to land back at the Portland field safely just 35 minutes after take off. No one was seriously injured in the emergency landing.
authorities are investigating the cause of the accident. At the opening created in the side of the machine, there was no actual emergency exit, but only a reservation for the exit, which was blocked during the equipment phase of the machine. The number of emergency exits to be activated depends on how many seats are installed in the plane.
The US aviation safety authority, the FAA, has asked the public for help in finding a piece that came off the plane. Immediately after the accident, the FAA grounded 171 Max 9 planes until they were inspected for a similar problem.
In Europe, these planes are known to be used by at least Turkish Airlines and Iceland Air.
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 type plane pictured at Seattle Airport on Saturday.
Accident again raises serious questions about Boeing's safety culture. The experts interviewed by the news agency Bloomberg estimate that it is a mistake in the manufacturing of the machine, not in the design. The filling part of the emergency exit, which came off in the middle of the flight, has been in use for a long time without problems.
Boeing reports last year due to quality problems observed several times in the work of its subcontractor Spirit Aerosystems.
The Max 9 is a longer version of Boeing's 737 Max 8, which had serious problems with its flight control systems just five years ago. Two disastrous accidents happened to the type of machine that had jus
t entered the market, in which a total of 346 people died.
Friday's accident plane was also a piece of fire. Less than 150 flights had been flown with the plane that was commissioned in November.
Max 8 machines were taken out of service in March 2019 and they remained out of service for a year and a half, in Europe almost two years. In the background of the events, the cover-up of the detected problems on the part of Boeing and alleged negligence on the part of the US Aviation Authority in the processing of aircraft permits were revealed.
Decommissioned Boeing 737 Max planes at an airport in Washington state in November 2020.
US channel CNN counted in 2020, that the problems with the engine version cost Boeing around 20 billion dollars, i.e. more than 18 billion euros, in direct costs alone. The company had to pay compensation to the airlines and put more than 11 billion dollars of additional money into the production and product development of the plane.
CNN estimates that the final bill will be significantly higher in the end, because the company had to lower the price of already ordered machines due to reputational damage.
Boeing's in March 2019, before the problems were revealed, the share price was at an all-time record level of more than $440. Like other operators in the aviation industry, the company's value collapsed after the corona pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020.
On Friday, the stock cost $249 and Boeing's market value was about $150 billion.
It is still too early to assess the economic effects of Friday's accident. The accident happened after the stock market had already closed on Friday. Boeing says in its press release that it supports the authorities' investigation and the decision to remove other planes of the same version from traffic.
Correction on January 7, 2024 at 6:22 p.m.: After the accident, the US aviation safety authority grounded 171 planes, not 177 planes as was erroneously written earlier in the story.
Correction January 7, 2024 at 6:50 p.m.: Changed article image of the Alaska Airlines plane. The previous picture did not show the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane.
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