Boeing 737 Max 9s are not leaving the tarmac anytime soon. Since a portion of a Max 9’s fuselage blew off midair during an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, this month, 171 airliners have been grounded as federal investigators try to get to the bottom of what happened and whose fault it may be.
The central question is whether the door panel from the Boeing 737 Max had been properly bolted onto the body of the plane. In search of answers, two government agencies are conducting separate investigations. The Federal Aviation Administration was responsible for immediately grounding the aircraft and is looking into whether Boeing failed to ensure that its Max 9 planes were safe to fly and manufactured to match the design the agency had approved. It also ordered the inspection of all Max 9s in the United States. United Airlines and Alaska Airlines both said on Monday that they had found loose bolts or “loose hardware” on Max 9s in the process of those inspections.
The same day, the National Transportation Safety Board — the other agency that has opened an inquiry — said it was possible that the bolts had never been installed on the Max 9 before it took off. The safety board is investigating a wider set of factors that may have contributed to the plane’s malfunction, including Boeing’s manufacturing process, any maintenance or installation work Boeing or Alaska Airlines carried out on the plane and potential gaps in the FAA’s oversight.
Ultimately, Boeing is in the hot seat again. A different 737 model, the Max 8, was involved in crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed a total of 346 people. Hundreds of flights have been canceled since this latest grounding, affecting tens of thousands of customers and undoubtedly frightening many travelers. It has also spooked Wall Street: In the first trading session after the Jan. 5 accident, Boeing’s share prices fell about 8%.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
