Boeing, Alaska Airlines, United Airlines and some other airlines will have to be patient. Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft will remain grounded indefinitely. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has taken a tough line on the manufacturer to ensure that there is no repeat of a scare — or worse — like the one that affected Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which lost a panel. in mid-flight, leaving a hole in the fuselage. This Friday, just one week after the accident, the aeronautical authorities released a statement with new demands on the company that prevent the return of that version of the plane to the skies.
The headline of the press release was long, four lines, but it had the virtue of making the message clear from the beginning: “For the safety of American travelers, the FAA will ground the Boeing 737-9 Max until a thorough inspection and maintenance is carried out and inspection data are reviewed.” It was the third salvo from the aeronautical agency at the company in just two days, after on Thursday it announced the opening of a formal investigation and this same Friday it announced closer supervision of its production process, audits and possible submission to a company. external for its quality controls.
They are somewhat humiliating announcements for Boeing, which was trying to recover from the unprecedented crisis it suffered due to the two catastrophic accidents suffered by two 737 Max 8 (a different version of the plane) in 2019. Although the problems that caused those accidents are not directly related With the current case, the message from the FAA is that it no longer trusts Boeing enough. And in an airline, trust is crucial.
The latest announcement this Friday indicates that the 737 Max 9 will take time to fly and will do so again gradually and under special surveillance. “We are working to ensure that nothing like this happens again,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement. “Our only concern is the safety of American travelers and the Boeing 737-9 Max will not return to the skies until we are completely satisfied that it is safe,” he adds.
“After reviewing Boeing's proposed inspection and maintenance instructions, the FAA determined that it needed additional data before approving them. As a result, the FAA is requiring door inspections on 40 aircraft,” explains the agency, which says it “is encouraged by the comprehensive nature of Boeing's instructions for inspections and maintenance.” “However, in the interest of maintaining the highest level of safety, the agency will not approve the inspection and maintenance process until it reviews data from the initial round of 40 inspections.”
That is, the FAA has communicated its instructions for the preliminary inspections of those 40 airplanes, then it will analyze the data collected and prepare a new definitive instruction for the reviews of the entire fleet, which the airplanes will have to approve to return to service. It's going to be long.
After a complete review of the data, the FAA will determine whether the instructions meet the highest safety standards. If the FAA approves Boeing's inspection and maintenance instructions, operators will be required to apply that regime to all planes before they return to service.
This points, therefore, to a long and expensive process, which will harm not only the manufacturer, but also the airlines that have aircraft of that version in their fleet. The one that has the most is United Airlines (79), but in the case of Alaska Airlines, a smaller company, the 65 it has represent approximately a fifth of its fleet, which greatly complicates its operations.
The inspections launched by the companies United Airlines and Alaska Airlines preliminarily detected defects in some of the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft immobilized after the incident on the flight from Portland (Oregon) to Ontario (California) last Friday. In it, a panel that covers a gap that in other configurations is used as an emergency door detached from the plane, with its interior coating and insulating material leaving a gap in the fuselage in mid-flight.
United Airlines already reported on Monday that it had found somewhat loose bolts and other “installation problems” in those panels that cover the space reserved for emergency doors. “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found cases that appear to be related to installation problems in the door panel, for example, bolts that needed to be tightened more,” the airline said. Then it was Alaska Airlines: “When our maintenance technicians began preparing our 737-9 Max fleet for inspections, they entered the area in question. The first reports from our technicians indicate that some loose components were seen on some aircraft,” the company said in a statement.
This Wednesday, Boeing Chairman and CEO Dave Calhoun and company leadership held a teleconference meeting with all employees dedicated to the importance of safety and highlighting how every detail matters. In it, Calhoun intoned a mea culpa “We are going to address this, first of all, by acknowledging our mistake,” said the manager, speaking from a factory in Renton (Washington) where those planes are produced. “We are going to approach it with total transparency at all times. We will work with the NTSB [Junta Nacional de Seguridad en el Transporte] that is investigating the accident itself to find out what the original cause is,” said Calhoun, according to a fragment of the intervention published by the company. In it, he referred to the fact that as a father and grandfather he was aware of the danger that the passengers and crew had been in when a panel fell off the plane in mid-flight.
Boeing's share price has fallen 12.5% this week, losing around $18 billion in stock market value. The company is worth $132 billion, less than half what it was in March 2019, before the second fatal accident of one of its 737 Max 8.
The American company closed the 2022 financial year with losses of 4,935 million dollars (just over 4,500 million euros at the current exchange rate), in what was its fourth consecutive year of red numbers. The company has been hit in recent years by the 737 Max crisis, by the pandemic and by the ruinous contract for the manufacture of the new United States presidential plane, Air Force One. In the first nine months of 2023 it reduced its losses almost in half, to 2,212 million dollars, thanks to a 20% increase in income that seemed to point to a takeoff. The company carries a debt of 52.3 billion dollars.
In fact, the new incident has once again put Boeing and its 737 Max model in the eye of the hurricane after its flight permit was withdrawn in 2019 — the American manufacturer even suspended its manufacturing — following two fatal accidents that cost the lives of more than 300 people on another version of the 737 Max, the 8. In October 2018, the flight crashed in the Java Sea, in Indonesia. 610 of the low-cost company Lion Air operated by a 737 Max 8; A few months later, in March 2019, 157 people died on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in the largest air disaster of that year — the plane model was the same, the Max 8. The investigation that was launched after the two accidents revealed flaws in the design of the model's stabilization system (MCAS) and that the company, despite having assured that the 737 Max were as safe as any other type of aircraft, knew of the flaw.
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