US searches for broken door patch of Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday grounded 171 Boeing planes equipped with panels covering the secondary emergency exit doors, after an 8-week-old Alaska Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing due to a hole in the fuselage.

A patch covering the secondary emergency exit door came loose and fell off in mid-air, forcing an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 to make an emergency landing on January 5. Photo: ALASKA-BOEING

Rare and scary incident

“They will remain grounded until the FAA is satisfied that they are safe to fly,” the agency said in a statement Sunday. The FAA had initially said on Saturday that the mandatory inspections would last between four and eight hours.

A door panel on the left side of an Alaska Airlines plane blew off in mid-air after takeoff from Oregon to California, forcing the pilot to turn around and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board.

"I imagine this was a pretty horrific event. We don't often talk about psychological trauma, but I certainly think that's what happened here," National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters on Saturday, adding that it was too early to say what caused the event.

The patch, which is typically installed on some planes to block an additional exit, likely crashed somewhere in the western suburbs of Portland, but has not yet been found. Authorities have asked the public to help search for it.

In the Alaska Airlines incident, NTSB Chairwoman Homendy said the two seats next to the fuselage section that broke off were unoccupied, and the headrests were missing. “We’re very, very fortunate that this didn’t result in something more tragic,” she said, adding that only a few passengers suffered minor injuries.

Secondary exits are typically found on low-cost carriers that have more seats and need more exits. However, some planes with fewer seats have had the paneling removed, making the area look like a regular window seat.

As a result, 737 MAX 9 aircraft with conventional emergency exits instead of special panels can continue to fly. The fuselage of the Boeing 737 is manufactured by Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, which also manufactures and installs the panels that cover the emergency exits.

Many parties affected

Of the 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9s on order, 144 are in service in the U.S., according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. Turkish Airlines, Panama's Copa Airlines and Aeromexico said they were grounding affected planes.

The Boeing 737 MAX 9 is a narrow-body short- to medium-range passenger aircraft developed by Boeing. Photo: Boeing

Alaska Airlines canceled 163 flights, or 21% of its flights, on Sunday and said disruptions would last until at least midweek. United canceled 230 flights on Sunday, or 8% of its scheduled departures.

The crash has put Boeing under close scrutiny as it awaits certification of the smaller MAX 7 as well as the larger MAX 10, which are needed to compete with similar models from Airbus.

In 2019, global regulators ordered a 20-month grounding of all MAX aircraft following crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly designed cockpit software that killed a total of 346 people.

Boeing has delivered 214 of the 737 MAX 9s, or 15% of the more than 1,300 MAX planes in service, most of which are still airworthy.

Huy Hoang (according to Reuters)

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/cac-nha-dieu-tra-my-tim-kiem-tam-va-canh-cua-may-bay-bi-roi-giua-khong-trung-post280076.html