How the Alaska Airlines’ mid-air panel blowout adds to Boeing 737 MAX’s troubles

Do Indian operators have the MAX-9 variants?

Presently, there are 44 737 MAX-8 aircraft in operation in India. With 22 planes, Akasa Air is currently the largest operator of the 737 MAX-8 in the country, followed by SpiceJet with 13, and Air India Express with nine aircraft, as per airline fleet databases.

Although none of the Indian carriers have the MAX-9 variant that was involved in the incident, the DGCA asked Indian carriers to inspect the aircraft as an “abundant precautionary measure”, given that the MAX-8 and MAX-9 are part of the same aircraft family and have numerous similarities.

What does the DCGA directive say?

The directive required the three Indian carriers operating the 737 MAX-8 to complete the inspections by noon on Sunday. The carriers said that they are in touch with Boeing to get more information on the Alaska Airlines incident, and will comply with the DGCA’s directive on the one-time inspection of emergency exits.

In the US, while Alaska Airlines voluntarily grounded all of its 65 737 MAX-9 jets for inspections after the incident, the American aviation regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) late Saturday (India time) temporarily grounded as many as 171 planes for safety checks.

Turkish Airlines has also pulled out its five 737 MAX-9 planes from service for inspections, and so has Panamanian carrier Copa Airlines, which has 21 such planes in its fleet. More airlines and aviation regulators in different countries could follow suit.

Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX family of aircraft has had a troubled past on safety-related issues, and the Alaska Airlines incident has just dealt another blow to its reputation, which Boeing was trying to repair over the past few years.

The Alaska Airlines mid-air panel blowout: What we know so far

On Friday (January 5), an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9 plane was operating flight 1282 between Portland and Ontario (in California). It made an emergency landing soon after take-off, after a mid-air window blowout that led to a section of the fuselage also breaking away, causing decompression in the cabin and leaving a door-sized hole in the plane’s fuselage at an altitude of around 16,000 feet.

All the 171 passengers and six crew on board the aircraft returned without any serious injury. “Several guests onboard experienced injuries that required medical attention. All guests have now been medically cleared,” Alaska Airlines said in its latest update on the incident.

“The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has now assumed the lead role in the investigation. Alaska’s safety and technical teams, along with representatives from Boeing, are closely involved in supporting the NTSB,” the carrier said.

The aircraft involved in flight 1282 was brand new and delivered to Alaska Airlines on October 31, 2023. The part of the aircraft involved in the incident is called a plug door — a specific panel of the fuselage reserved for an optional emergency exit door near the rear of the aircraft. According to aviation safety experts, it could be a case of structural failure.

The extra door is usually installed in aircraft usually by low-cost carriers, as they typically pack their planes with extra seat rows, which in turn require additional paths for emergency evacuation. In aircraft with a relatively lower number of seats, typically in the case of full-service carriers, such optional doors could be permanently plugged.

Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, which separated from Boeing in 2005, manufactured and installed the particular plug door that suffered the blowout, a Reuters report said, quoting sources.

All eyes on the FAA and the road ahead

Currently, given that the probe and aircraft inspections in the US are underway, it would be premature to predict the likely impact of the incident. If inspections show that the problem was limited to just the plane involved in the incident, 737 MAX-9 operations could normalise fairly rapidly. However, if the probe reveals a broader problem with the manufacturing of these aircraft, the rectification process could be a long-drawn one, with serious ramifications for several carriers.

All aviation regulators globally and airlines operating the 737 MAX-9 planes, and even other variants of the 737 MAX family of aircraft, would be closely monitoring the inspections happening in the US. Given that the FAA is the world’s pre-eminent aviation regulator, many regulators and airlines in other countries typically follow its actions on safety-related actions and directives to airlines and aircraft manufacturers.

As things stand currently, any problem for Indian carriers would arise only if the 737 MAX-8 variant also comes under scrutiny and is grounded. In that scenario, the fledgling Akasa Air would be the most affected Indian airline as its entire fleet of 22 planes currently comprises 737 MAX-8 aircraft. Of the 65 planes in SpiceJet’s fleet, 13 are 737 MAX-8 aircraft. In the case of Air India Express, nine of the carrier’s 39 aircraft are 737 MAX-8 planes.

Boeing 737 MAX programme: a turbulent past

Launched with much fanfare by Boeing a few years ago, the 737 MAX family of aircraft suffered a major blow when two aircraft crashed within six months between October 2018 and March 2019, leading to its grounding by regulators all over the world. In October 2018, a Lion Air 737 MAX plane crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. In March 2019, all 157 people on board an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX were killed in a crash.

After months of investigations, rectifications, and testing, the FAA cleared the 737 MAX in November 2020, followed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency giving its nod in January 2021. The DGCA waited for much longer, allowing the 737 MAX to take to the skies only in August 2021, making India one of the last major aviation markets to allow the aircraft to operate.

Over the next couple of years, even as 737 MAX aircraft started winning the trust of airlines and aviation regulators globally, the aircraft’s production was hit time and again due to problems with the quality and specifications of certain parts from suppliers.

The latest Alaska Airlines incident comes just a few days after Boeing asked 737 MAX operators to carry out inspections after a loose bolt was found in the rudder control system of one of the planes. Rudders are vertical flight control surfaces on the tail of the aircraft and are primarily used to change the airplane’s yaw, or vertical axis rotation.