On Friday, the window pane of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew off after takeoff.
The day after an incident during a flight near Portland (Oregon), the American Civil Aviation Authority (FAA) ordered the immediate inspection of 171 737 MAX aircraft 9 from Boeing this Saturday, January 6, suspending them from flight until then were.
The FAA directive “requires operators (airlines) to inspect the aircraft before a new flight,” the agency said in a news release, estimating that process required between 4 and 8 hours per aircraft.
According to information from Boeing to AFP, around 218 copies of the 737 MAX 9 have been delivered so far. Before the FAA's announcement, the American airline Alaska had already neutralized all 65 aircraft of this model.
The door comes off mid-flight
This decision is made the day after an incident on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9. On Friday, January 5, Flight 1282, which was scheduled to fly from Portland to Ontario (USA) with 177 people on board, had to make an emergency landing in Oregon. A few minutes after takeoff, a window pane flew off.
Images posted on social media showed a door opening and detaching from the cabin mid-flight. The plane, which had 171 passengers and 6 crew on board, was at an altitude of almost 5,000 m at the time, according to flight data from the FlightAware website.
According to several experts, particularly the manager of the trade site The Air Current, Jon Ostrower, it appears to be a door blocked and obscured by a partition that only reveals a porthole. After the plane turned around, it landed back at its original airport, with the incident causing only a few minor injuries.
The incident comes as the 737 MAX has suffered a series of technical problems and two crashes in recent years. These two accidents, which killed 346 people in October 2018 and March 2019, resulted in the 737 MAX being grounded for 20 months before being cleared to fly again.