WHAT IS BOEING’S RESPONSE?īoeing CEO Dave Calhoun called a companywide webcast to talk about the incident with employees and senior leadership for Tuesday. That incident involved an earlier version of the Boeing 737, not a Max. In 2018, a passenger on a Southwest Airlines jet was killed in when a piece of engine housing blew off and shattered the window she was sitting next to. “When passengers board a flight they should feel confident that the aircraft they are flying on is safe,” Brickhouse said. Metal fatigue was blamed in that case, which led to tougher rules for airlines to inspect and repair microscopic fuselage cracks. In 1988, a flight attendant for Aloha Airlines was blown out of the cabin of a Boeing 737 over the Pacific Ocean after an 18-foot-long chunk of the roof peeled away. But he said that doesn’t mean passengers should feel scared to leave their seats once the pilot turns off the “fasten seatbelt” sign because it’s so unlikely for holes to open in the fuselages of airliners. Brickhouse said passengers should feel confident that regulators and airlines will make sure the grounded Max 9s are safe before returning them to service.īrickhouse said it was lucky that the emergency occurred shortly after takeoff when passengers were all seated with their seatbelts on. However, those past issues are unrelated to Friday’s blowout, which is an exceedingly rare event in air travel.Īnthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said it’s too soon to say whether the blowout involved an issue with Max 9s or that specific flight. And in December, Boeing told airlines to inspect the planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder-control system. Last year, the FAA told pilots to limit use of an anti-ice system on the Max in dry conditions because of concern that inlets around the engines could overheat and break away, possibly striking the plane. Boeing changed an automated flight control system implicated in the crashes. Regulators around the world grounded Max 8 planes for nearly two years after a Lion Air flight crashed in Indonesia in 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 crashed in 2019. There are two versions of the aircraft in service: the Max 8 and the Max 9, which is the larger of the two. The incident has also renewed questions about the safety of Boeing’s Max aircraft, which the newest version of the company’s storied 737. airports in the past year prompted the FAA to convene a “safety summit” last year, in which officials encouraged airlines and pilots to redouble their attention to careful flying. However, a surge in close calls between planes at U.S. airliner since 2009, when a Colgan Air plane operated for Continental crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground. There has not been a fatal crash of a U.S. HOW SAFE IS IT TO FLY ON ONE OF THESE PLANES?įederal officials and airline executives regularly tout the safety of air travel. Turkish Airlines said it pulled its five Max 9s from service. Six other airlines use the Max 9: Panama’s Copa Airlines, Aeromexico, Turkish airlines, Icelandair, flydubai, and SCAT Airlines in Kazakhstan, according to Cirium.Ĭopa said it had temporarily suspended 21 Boeing 737 Max 9s to comply with the FAA’s order. The companies operate nearly two-thirds of the 215 Max 9 aircraft in service around the world, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. passenger airlines that operate Max 9 aircraft, have canceled hundreds of flights since Saturday due to the Max 9 groundings. United Airlines, the world’s biggest operator of Max 9s, grounded its entire fleet of 79 Max 9s and is seeking to “clarify the inspection process and requirements for returning” them to service.Īlaska and United, the only two U.S. But the airline pulled those jets from service Saturday night to comply with an FAA directive for all operators of Max 9s to conduct specific inspections. The airline initially kept 18 of its Max 9s in service Saturday because they had received in-depth inspections as part of recent maintenance checks. Alaska Airlines has grounded its entire fleet of 65 Max 9s for inspections and maintenance.
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