All Boeing 737 Max 9 Jets With Plug Doors to Remain Grounded Until Boeing Sends New Instructions – FAA
The FAA tweeted on X this afternoon that “the safety of the flying public, not speed” will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 Max to service.
(Washington, D.C.) This afternoon, in response to Boeing (NYSE: BA) submitting plans for servicing its 737 Max 9 jets and getting them back in service – after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the temporary grounding of some of the jets due to a door plug that flew off of the Alaskan Airlines Flight 1282 plane midair on Friday, January 5th – the FAA instructed Boeing to submit revisions before it could review the grounded aircraft and return them to service.
Photo published by NPR courtesy of AP via the National Transportation Safety Board.
Along with a statement posted in a tweet from its @FAANews account this afternoon at 2:40pm EST, the FAA wrote on X, “The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737 Max 9 to service.”
About 170 planes have been removed from service after the incident involving the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that had just taken off from Portland, Oregon on Friday night, according to NPR. According to Statista, there were previously about 212 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft in operation as of January 2024, though Statista notes that its list may not be exhaustive.
Chart showing the number of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft in operation as of January 2024, by airline, courtesy of Statista; source: Skift.
“Every Boeing 737-9 Max with a plug door will remain grounded until the FAA finds each can safely return to operation,” read the statement posted in a tweet from the FAA’s Twitter account, @FAANews. “To begin the process, Boeing must provide instructions to operators for inspections and maintenance. Boeing offered an initial version of instructions yesterday which they are now revising because of feedback received in response. Upon receiving the revised version of instructions from Boeing the FAA will conduct a thorough review.”
National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy said on yesterday, on January 8th, that the agency would broaden its investigation into other Boeing Max aircraft if necessary. The NTSB also confirmed that two “stop fittings” at the top of the door on the faulty Alaska Airlines plane’s fuselage had fractured guide plugs; four bolts that secure the door plug were found missing during the agency’s inspection of the aircraft. It has not yet been determined whether the four missing bolts were ever installed, or whether they were lost in the plug failure, according to yahoo! finance.
Photo: @JacdecNew via X (formerly Twitter), courtesy of Mentour Pilot.
Both Alaska Airlines and United Airlines – the two major U.S. carriers that fly Boeing jets with this particular configuration of door plugs – said yesterday that they have found loose parts on their 737 Max 9 aircraft since they started inspecting some of their grounded Boeing jets, according to NPR.
The grounding order led to flight cancellations that are adding to the ongoing disruptions of flights across the United States due to a winter storm across the Midwest and eastern seaboard, according to yahoo! finance. Per
FlightAware data, more than 200 United departures were canceled as of Tuesday morning, accounting for 8% of United daily flights, as well as 108 Alaska Airlines flights, or 18% of Alaska’s flight load.
This afternoon’s yahoo! finance article pointed out that last Friday’s incident with Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max 9 isn’t the first time the 737 Max has been under scrutiny. Two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together killed all 346 passengers and crew on board led to a 20-month grounding of planes as safety changes were made.
In this past Friday’s incident, no one was seriously injured and Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned to Portland shortly after the blowout – however, the incident has prompted new questions about the door plug system itself and whether it’s still safe to fly, according to NPR.
Photo: @JacdecNew via X (formerly Twitter), courtesy of Mentour Pilot.
On the day of this plugged door incident, Alaska Airlines’s 737 MAX-9 had 171 passengers and 6 crew on board. The flight was about 25 minutes late, when its crew took off “uneventfully,” using runway 28L in Portland, according to Mentour Pilot.
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board say they have recovered the door plug that blew off the 737 Max 9 on Friday night in a backyard near Portland — and they hope it will yield important clues about why this section of fuselage detached from the rest of the plane at 16,000 feet, per NPR.
