After the emergency landing of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 due to a lost part of the cabin wall, the US aviation regulator FAA grounded the aircraft. “For the safety of American travelers,” the FAA will ground the Boeing 737 MAX 9 “until a comprehensive inspection and maintenance is performed and inspection dates are reviewed,” the FAA said on Friday (local time).
Last week, part of the cabin wall of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew out shortly after take-off from Portland in the northwestern US state of Oregon. The plane then turned around and made an emergency landing in Portland around 20 minutes later. No one was seriously injured in the incident. The FAA opened an investigation into the incident and ordered immediate inspections for around 170 aircraft with the same configuration.
“We are working to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” the FAA said. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 will “not return to the skies until we are fully satisfied that it is safe.”
The regulator said it needed additional information from Boeing before it could approve the manufacturer’s proposed inspection and maintenance procedures. It will not approve the inspection and maintenance process until it has reviewed the data from the first round of 40 inspections.
The Boeing 737 MAX had caused massive problems for Boeing in recent years. After two plane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia with a total of 346 deaths, a global ban on flights of this type was imposed in March 2019, which was only lifted at the end of 2020 after technical revisions.
