There are two places where no one wants to briefly ventilate: submarines and airplanes. And yet last week that’s exactly what happened in the skies over the USA. Shortly after takeoff, a part the size of a door broke out of the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane at an altitude of almost 5,000 meters. The Boeing 737 Max 9 had to turn around with the hole in the outer wall and make an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon. A few minutes after takeoff, all passengers were still wearing their seatbelts so that no one was sucked out of the cabin by the pressure drop. Some of them were slightly injured. After the incident, the US aviation authority FAA imposed a flight ban on all 171 aircraft in the series in the USA. They should be inspected.
The incident plunges the Boeing Group into another deep crisis. How this could happen and what consequences it could have for the company and air traffic – the most important questions and answers:
What exactly is a “door plug” on an airplane?
A Door plug, in German Türstöpsel or Türstöpsel, is used in some aircraft that have fewer than the maximum number of seats. In such cases, the machine does not need all of the originally planned outputs. Some of them are then sealed with these plugs.
Jennifer Homendy, head of the US transportation authority NTSB, has announced that her people could now expand the investigations to other aircraft in the series. On the broken plane, their investigators have so far found no differences between the door plug that was broken out and the intact one on the opposite side of the plane. Although the authorities can now say quite precisely how the accident happened, they still don’t know why this door plug came loose.
Homendy described the fact that no one was seriously injured in the incident as pure luck. Several items were vacuumed from the cabin, including a smartphone that a Portland resident found on the side of the road shortly afterward. After the fall from a height of almost 5,000 meters, it was still almost intact.
Is the crisis at Boeing now getting worse?
During the flight, a so-called door plug, a cover over an unused exit in the aircraft fuselage, started moving. He loosened up and finally burst out. Airlines that themselves 737 Max use, had their pilots examined. Initial results suggest that this could be a problem across the entire range. The two largest users of the 737 Max, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, have also discovered loose parts on parked jets. According to information from insiders, up to ten machines could now be affected by the defects.
This is bad news for Boeing. In 2018 and 2019 there were two machines Maxseries crashed, 346 people died. As a result, regulatory authorities worldwide imposed flight bans on the aircraft of this type, which meant heavy financial losses for Boeing.
Do the two crashes from back then and the most recent accident have something to do with each other?
No. The cause of the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia lay in the software: they were the result of an error in an automatic flight control system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. This “MCAS” was specifically for them 737 Max been developed.
What consequences could the accident have for Boeing?
The 737 Max is Boeing’s best-selling aircraft. After the flight control system was revised, the aircraft type has been allowed to take off again since November 2020. To settle a criminal case, Boeing paid a billion-dollar fine in 2021. The agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice was that the charges could be dropped if the company demonstrated that it had improved its compliance programs. This agreement was actually supposed to expire at the weekend. The latest incident now puts this deal in jeopardy.
What does the accident mean for passengers in Europe?
Passengers flying within Europe don’t have to worry at first. According to the European Aviation Safety Agency, there are currently no Boeing aircraft of this type on the continent 737 Max 9 in the configuration with a door stop in use. Anyone flying in the USA doesn’t have to worry for the time being: the aircraft in the series currently do not have permission to take off. However, this has led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights in the past few days.