Airlines (Commonwealth Union)_ A dramatic incident on an Alaska Airlines flight last month was apparently triggered by a door plug that hadn’t been properly attached before the plane was delivered by Boeing, US investigators said on Tuesday.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 departed from Portland Airport on Friday 5th January evening and was heading towards California when around half an hour into the flight, however, the plane was forced to return after a window as well as a piece of the outer fuselage blew out mid air.
The 177 passengers and several members of crew onboard the flight were left fearing for their lives last week after the plane made a shock emergency landing 35 minutes into the journey. They were thankfully returned to Portland safely following the unexpected emergency landing.
Evidence shows four bolts to hold panel in place on aircraft were missing.
On 9th January, both United Airlines and Alaska Airlines issued a statement, admitting they’d discovered several loose parts of the aircraft that were dropped during the flight.
According to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, four bolts that acted as a fail-safe mechanism to hold a panel in place were not installed on the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet.
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The incident has become the biggest crisis for Boeing since following two fatal crashes in 2019, its entire fleet of Max jets was grounded worldwide. Max 9 planes with the same door configuration as the Alaska jet were grounded for weeks until they could be inspected, and regulators are poring over Boeing’s manufacturing processes and ratcheting up pressure on the company’s management.
The evidence from the recovered door and the fuselage indicate that the four bolts “were missing,” the NTSB report said. The report reaches no conclusions about what caused the failure on 5th January, but it is an unusually detailed account of the safety board’s initial fact gathering. It contains photos of the panel that later failed taken on the Boeing shop floor.
NTSB is still reviewing what was done and why although the panel had been worked on during final assembly. The safety board can take a year or more to conclude its formal findings.
The investigation continues to determine the manufacturing documents used to authorise the opening and closing of the left MED plug during the rivet rework, the report stated in reference to the panel that failed.
Boeing’s most important supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, has also been under scrutiny in the wake of the accident.
The incident occurred when a panel that seals an unused door opening on the left side of the Alaska Air jet blew open shortly after take off from Portland, causing it to lose pressure violently, subjecting passengers and flight crew to high winds and noise as it returned for an emergency landing. No serious injuries were reported.
The panel, identified as a door plug, is held in place by 12 braces that withstand the massive pressure differential between the cabin and the thin air at altitude and a separate set of four bolts are designed lock it in place. The panel opens by sliding upward and the bolts, that include pins to prevent them from inadvertently loosening, prevent that movement.
Issues continue to emerge with Boeing’s work on the Max family of aircraft. On 4th February, the company disclosed that it had discovered manufacturing flaws with rivet holes in about 50 undelivered 737s. A spokesman for that company said the problem originated with Spirit,.
The problem disclosed 4th February is the latest in a series of glitches originating with Boeing’s former aerostructures unit. A drilling mishap on an aft pressure bulkhead supplied by Spirit Aero slowed down deliveries of the 737 Max last year, the planemaker’s most important generator of cash flow. Earlier in 2023, a separate issue with tail-fin fittings affected output.
Later this year, Boeing will also have to contend with the possibility of labour disruption. Boeing’s largest union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, will demand a 40% pay raise over three or four years, emboldened by a resurgent US labour movement, a scarcity of qualified aerospace workers and pressure on Boeing to stabilise work in its factories.
The Federal Aviation Administration is also conducting enhanced oversight of Spirit and Boeing. The agency is about halfway through its review and expects to release findings and possible recommendations as soon as this month, FAA deputy associate administrator for aviation safety Jodi Baker, said on Monday.
