After an incident on an American airline Alaska Airlines plane in which a door was lost after take-off, arrests for inspection of Boeing 737 MAX 9 multiplied worldwide on Sunday, leading to dozens of flight cancellations.
• Also read: Emergency landing: Alaska Airlines plane window breaks mid-flight
• Also read: A plane door comes off: “We were lucky it happened at 16,000 feet”
Like American companies such as United Airlines, one of the first in the world, Turkish Airlines, Aeromexico and the Panamanian company Copa Airlines put their aircraft of this type up for inspection after receiving an order from the American Federal Aviation Administration, FAA).
According to information from Boeing to AFP, around 218 copies of the 737 MAX 9 have been delivered so far.
The FAA on Saturday ordered the “immediate inspection of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft” before a new flight, saying about 171 aircraft were affected worldwide. The duration of the operation is estimated at four to eight hours per aircraft.
For its part, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) indicated that it would follow the American recommendations, but added that this should not have any impact on the fact that no operator in Europe uses the 737 MAX 9 with the option techniques in question.
These devices “can continue to function normally,” the European agency based in Cologne, Germany, states in a press release.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) said it does not use any equipment of the type being inspected and is therefore “not affected” by the measure.
The incident occurred around 6:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. Eastern Time) on Friday, shortly after an Alaska Airlines flight took off from Portland International Airport in northwestern Oregon.
According to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), a door opened mid-flight and separated from the cabin. The aircraft, which was carrying 171 passengers and 6 crew members, was at an altitude of almost 5,000 m at the time.
Minor injuries
According to the NTSB, it is a door that is blocked and obscured by a bulkhead, revealing only a porthole, a configuration that Boeing offers to customers upon request.
The FAA directive also affects models “where the center door is blocked,” according to the document posted on its website.
After the plane turned around, it landed back in Portland, with the incident causing only a few minor injuries.
The NTSB said it had sent a team to Portland to investigate the reasons for this malfunction.
United, which has the largest 737-9 fleet in the world, told AFP it is grounding 46 planes, 33 of which have already been inspected.
Alaska, which had already grounded all 65 aircraft of that model before the FAA's announcement, clarified on Saturday, saying it had found “no cause for concern” at this time.
Copa Airlines has suspended the operation of its 21 aircraft of this model for review, and Turkish Airlines has suspended the operation of its five aircraft.
“It was really brutal. As soon as we got up, the front of the window came off,” said a passenger on the flight, Kyle Rinker, on the American broadcaster CNN.
According to the NTSB, no one was sitting in the two seats next to the partition that was blown away.
But according to passengers quoted by Portland newspaper The Oregonian, a teenager sitting in that row had his shirt ripped off by decompression, resulting in minor injuries.
“Frightening incident”
“A terrible incident,” said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on X.
“We're very, very fortunate that this didn't end more tragically,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters.
The official revealed that initial analysis showed the door collapsed over Cedar Hills in Portland's inner suburbs and urged residents in the area to come forward if they found it.
The incriminated device was certified in November, according to the FAA registry available online.
“We support their decision (the FAA, editor's note) to require an immediate inspection of 737-9 with the same configuration as the accused aircraft,” Boeing responded in a statement sent to AFP.
The incident comes after a series of technical problems and two crashes on the 737 MAX in recent years.
The two accidents, which killed 346 people in October 2018 and March 2019, resulted in the 737 MAX being grounded for 20 months and requiring changes to the in-flight control system.
Most recently, Boeing had to slow deliveries due to problems with the fuselage, particularly the aircraft's rear bulkhead.
At the end of December, Boeing had delivered a total of more than 1,370 copies of the 737 MAX and the order backlog reached more than 4,000 units.