Boeing in the crosshairs of the authorities. The American Civil Aviation Regulatory Agency (FAA) announced Thursday the opening of a formal investigation into a possible failure by the manufacturer, likely to have played a role in the unhooking of a door on an aircraft. 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight.
The investigations will have to “establish whether Boeing failed to ensure that the (devices) conformed to the intended design and were able to operate safely,” the FAA said in a press release.
“Boeing’s methods must meet the highest standards to which they are legally held,” recalled the regulator, who notified the manufacturer of the launch of the investigation. “This incident should never have happened and must never happen again,” insisted the FAA, indicating that the 737 MAX 9s for which it had ordered inspection must remain on the ground until further notice.
The FAA investigation will be carried out in parallel with that of the American transport safety authority, the NTSB, which has been at work since Saturday.
Loose bolts
A door came loose on Friday from the cabin of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight that was to connect Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, but the incident caused only a few injuries. light and the plane was able to land safely at its original airport.
On Wednesday, Dave Calhoun, CEO of Boeing, pledged that the aircraft manufacturer would determine “what, in the original work, malfunctioned and allowed this failure”. He acknowledged an “error”, without specifying which one.
During checks already carried out since Saturday, the two largest customers of the 737 MAX 9, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, have each revealed that they have discovered poorly secured equipment on some of their aircraft with loose bolts.
Locking certain doors is proposed by Boeing to its customers on the MAX 9 when the number of existing emergency exits is already sufficient in relation to the number of seats in the aircraft. Some 171 of the 218 aircraft of this model in service are affected by the flight suspension ordered by the FAA.