The US Civil Aviation Regulatory Authority (FAA) announced on Thursday, January 11, the opening of a formal investigation into a possible failure by Boeing that likely played a role in blocking a door on a 737 MAX 9 aircraft during an Alaska Airlines flight played flight.
The investigation must “determine whether Boeing failed to ensure that the.” [appareils] conformed to the intended design and were safe to operate,” the FAA released in a statement. “Boeing’s methods must meet the highest standards required by law,” recalled the regulator, which informed the manufacturer of the opening of the investigation.
“This incident should never have happened and must never happen again,” the regulator stressed, noting that the 737 MAX 9 for which it had ordered an inspection would have to remain grounded until further notice. The FAA investigation is being carried out in parallel with the investigation by the American traffic safety authority NTSB, which has been in operation since Saturday.
Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers Crash avoided by Alaska Airlines flight: Boeing is under pressure after the reliability of the 737 Max is questioned
Outages observed by the 737 MAX 9's two largest customers
A door dislodged from the cabin of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight connecting Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, on Friday, January 5, but the incident caused only a few minor injuries the plane was able to land safely at the original airport.
On Wednesday, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun promised that the plane maker would identify “what was flawed in the original work and admit that error.” During checks carried out since Saturday, the two largest customers of the 737 MAX 9, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, have discovered loose pieces of equipment on some of their aircraft.
Boeing suggests that its customers on the MAX 9 lock certain doors if the number of emergency exits is already sufficient in relation to the number of seats in the aircraft.
Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers. Airbus and Boeing have record orders but are having difficulty delivering aircraft
Airbus has a record year
While Boeing is embroiled, Airbus is happy with 2023. The European aircraft maker said Thursday that it received 2,094 net orders last year, breaking its previous record of 1,503 net orders set in 2013. The group is building on the success of its A320 family single-aisle aircraft and its A350 long-haul aircraft.
After the pandemic, “we had originally forecast aviation to recover between 2023 and 2025, but what we have seen in 2023 is that in addition to the single-aisle market, the wide-body market has also started much earlier than planned and with momentum has returned,” commented Christian Scherer, CEO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, is quoted in a press release.
Mega orders will therefore pile up for Airbus in 2023, be it the Indian low-cost airline IndiGo, which signed the largest volume in the history of civil aviation (500 A320s), Air India (250 aircraft, including 40 A350s) or Turkish Airlines (230 aircraft, including 60 A350).
The order backlog of 8,598 devices as of December 31st ensures many years of production. To respond to this, the aircraft manufacturer has begun a significant ramp-up. The company therefore aims to increase monthly production from 48 A320s in 2023 to 75 by 2026. It produced 60 in 2019, before the pandemic that shut down its industrial facilities. Ultimately, the plan is to increase A350 monthly production by five to nine by 2025.
Read the analysis: Article reserved for our subscribers. At Boeing it's finances versus engineers