The US air safety regulator announced on Saturday it was grounding some Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes pending inspections, a day after a panel blew out of one of the planes over the western state of Oregon.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” the agency said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
About 171 aircraft worldwide would be affected, with each inspection taking four to eight hours, the agency said.
Photo: The Oregonian via AP
“Safety will continue to drive our decision-making,” it said in a statement.
Alaska and United airlines fly the largest number of MAX 9 planes, while Icelandair and Turkish Airlines have smaller fleets of the aircraft.
Boeing has so far delivered about 218 737 MAX 9 planes worldwide, the company said.
US-based Alaska Airlines grounded all 65 of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes on Friday after a flight carrying 171 passengers and six crew was forced to make an emergency landing, with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) saying a sealed-over door panel had opened and come off mid-flight.
Alaska Flight 1282 had departed from Portland International Airport and was still gaining altitude when the cabin crew reported a “pressurization issue,” the FAA said.
The plane quickly returned to Portland, and there were no major injuries.
Images posted on social media showed a side panel of the plane blown out, with emergency oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.
“Following tonight’s event on Flight 1282, we have decided to take the precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement on Friday.
“Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” he said.
Passenger Kyle Rinker told CNN the problem occurred soon after takeoff.
“It was really abrupt. Just got to altitude, and the window/wall just popped off,” he told the broadcaster.
The NTSB said no one was sitting in the two places nearest the panel, but the Oregonian newspaper quoted passengers as saying a young boy seated in the row had his shirt ripped off by the sudden decompression, injuring him slightly.
Another passenger, Vi Nguyen, told the New York Times that a loud noise during the flight had woken her.
“I open up my eyes and the first thing I see is the oxygen mask right in front of me,” Nguyen told the newspaper. “And I look to the left and the wall on the side of the plane is gone.”
“The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m going to die,’” she added.
Aviation specialist John Ostrower, of the Air Current Web site, said the affected panel was a “mid-aft door,” which, for some carriers, Boeing deactivates before delivering the new planes.
To passengers, the panel would appear like a normal window, he said.
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