The FAA halted expanded production of new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft today, but also will be ungrounding the 737 MAX 9.
In the U.S., United Airlines and Alaska Airlines operate the plane whose door plug separated from the fuselage during a flight earlier this month, causing rapid decompression of the aircraft. United has detailed plans to bring the plane back, and I expect we’ll hear from Alaska shortly.
United has detailed its plans to bring the plane back into service, starting on Sunday. United’s Chief Operations Officer reported in a memo to employees on Wednesday that they will go through additional inspections to make this possible.
The airline inspected 26 planes starting January 13. They are the largest MAX 9 operator, and all 79 of their planes will go through a process:
- Removing the inner panel and two rows of seats to access the door plug
- Open the doors and inspect the installation
- Fixing anything required (they did find some loose bolts in those initial inspections)
- Re-securing the door
They are currently projecting that some MAX 9s will begin flying in revenue service again on January 28th. Here’s the full memo:
In the aftermath of this debacle, United’s CEO Scott Kirby has called for leadership changes at Boeing. The airline reported during its fourth quarter earnings call that it is doing fleet planning without the Boeing 737 MAX 10 going forward.
Boeing 737 MAX 9, credit: United
United is the launch customer for the larger MAX 10s with an original order for 150 of the variant places in 2021. It is unclear when the MAX 10 will be certified and production problems at Boeing’s factory raise new questions.
The FAA is prohibiting Boeing from expanding production but is not stopping production of MAXs at the rate that Boeing was conducting at the time of the Alaska incident.
Three weeks of significant disruptions come to an end tomorrow.
AS will report earnings for the 4th quarter and full year 2023 tomorrow and will provide guidance for 2024. They, like UA, are expected to post steep 1st quarter losses.
AA, DL and WN have likely seen strong demand over the past 3 weeks as UA has cxld about 7% of its capacity every day and AS has had to cxl up to 20% of its flights.
There will still likely be a negative halo effect esp. over the MAX 9 that will negatively impact bookings from some percentage of passengers just as happened when the MAX returned to service after the 2 foreign carrier accidents.
I wonder if DEI had anything to do with the failures of Boeing. If maybe some in over her head middle manager was promoted to a position she didn’t need to be in?
We’re seeing daily that failures of DEI in safety sensitive industries like aviation.
Gotta hand it to Boeing … there is no mess that they can’t obfuscate. Everybody will forget all about this in another week. Just the way Boeing wants it. If Boeing’s happy, everybody’s happy.
No we will see if those who say Boeing products are unsafe end up only booking Airbus flights. I’ll bet most will not follow through and Boeing aircraft flights will be just as full as before.
Correction: Now not No.
“The Boeing 737 MAX 9, Will Fly Starting Sunday”
Not that facts matter to Mr. Clickbait, but Alaska Airlines’ Max 9 flights resume on Friday, 1/26.
@AndyS: “I wonder if DEI had anything to do with the failures of Boeing. If maybe some in over her head middle manager was promoted to a position she didn’t need to be in? We’re seeing daily that failures of DEI in safety sensitive industries like aviation.”
Since you’re beholden to imagined conspiracies, instead of a woman, maybe a Black manager was responsible for what happened, or a Brown, or gay or Muslim or Chinese or an illegal alien.
@Dom by golly, I think you may be right! thanks.
@Dom
Conspiracies are behind the scenes and secret. These things are fully advertised and actually out there.
Meanwhile, DL still flying non-premium 767-300s everywhere. Tick, tock, tick, tock….
Meanwhile, Andys still can’t find his remote to change channels from FoxLies.
All media lies. Just Fox is the lesser of all of them but they have rogue liberals among them too.
Gene,
You do realize that United also has both models of the same 767s that DL operates and both are the same age? Whether you do or not, that is fact.
And Delta generated $4 billion more revenue than UA and $5B more than AA and generated almost 5 times more profits than AA and 2X more than UA so the 767s clearly are not a drag to DL.
And DL has already started to retire its last remaining 767-300ERs and that will continue while UA holds onto its aircraft in order to try to offset the delivery delays on the MAX.
Troll on. Facts are all that matters.
I don’t know what other flyers are going to do, but I’m not getting on the MAX 9 (or even other most recently manufactured Boeing planes).
Tim Dunn is correct with the 767-300s at Delta. They also have 21 767-400s that are in their “early 20s”. WHY…someone tell me…WHY do the airlines continue to buy the 737? The Max is a bad airplane. Boeing is no longer interested in engineering but in the bottom line! I just watched the “Downfall Of Boeing” on Netflix last night. After all of the dust settled over the two crashes of the Max, Boeing paid $2.5 billion…in fines and penalties to AVOID criminal prosecution! Wait a sec…the government took a “bribe” to look the other way? Those responsible for turning a deaf ear to the Boeing people who pleaded that issues be addressed should be IN JAIL! Look at what happened to Alaska a couple of weeks ago. If this keeps up, the Max and the “Spruce Goose” will have about the same amount of “ground time”! Look at the issues trying to certify the 777X… delayed yet again. The Max 10…delayed again. What does that tell us??? The planes are CRAP! The last person to leave Boeing/Everett/Seattle, please turn out the lights!
@Dom – this was published before Alaska Airlines announced their plans, and I even note that in the piece
@AndyS – “I wonder if DEI had anything to do with the failures of Boeing” because of all that diversity hiring for union machinists in Everett, Washington?
Who paid who off this time. Since the 747, Boeing has been run by ivy League business graduates, bean counters and profit only motivated people. Boeing lost touch with caring about passengers long ago. I grew up a Boeing brat, and I have seen inside out the horrible demise of a once stellar company. Their quality control is a joke and so is Spirits. THE FAA HAS CAPITULATED ONCE AGAIN TO BIG MONEY AND SOLD THE PUBLIC DOWN THE TUBE.
AndyS is an AI bot sent here to foment dissent
it’s the only explanation
Another PR disaster for (failed) Mayor Petey B — our fearless FAA administrator. Message: we don’t give a hot damn about passenger safety. Our job is to protect the airlines. Sorry, America. You come last.
P.S. Sorry about the whole passenger getting sucked out airplanes thing (coming soon!). It’s life. Things happen.
I do not book flights on any Max aircraft. As a rule, I stick to Delta and Jet Blue so that is easy enough. If I have to book United or American, I will only book flights scheduled to be run by other types. Yes, I know equipment can change at the last minute. So can my flight plans.
I only represent me. I don’t claim to represent any big movement of people away from Max airplanes. But I have zero confidence in the engineering or QA of those planes. YMMV.
Here is AS statement about the return of the -9 to service:
Final inspections of our 737-9 MAX fleet underway to safely return the aircraft to service
Latest Update: 8 a.m. Pacific, Jan. 25
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday, Jan. 24, approved a thorough inspection and maintenance process for the 737-9 MAX aircraft. Alaska Airlines is now performing these detailed inspections of our planes.
Each of our aircraft will only return to service once the rigorous inspections are completed and each aircraft is deemed airworthy according to the FAA requirements. We have 65 737-9 MAX in our fleet. The inspections are expected to take up to 12 hours for each plane.
Following these inspections by our skilled Alaska Maintenance technicians, we expect to bring our first few planes back into scheduled commercial service on Friday, Jan. 26.
At the request of the FAA, our Maintenance technicians completed preliminary inspections on 20 of our 737-9 MAX aircraft two weeks ago. The data we collected was provided to the FAA for further analysis. Those findings informed the FAA’s final orders for thorough inspections of the door plug on each of our 737-9 MAX aircraft. We are now implementing those final orders.
With the first of our 737-9 MAX set to resume flying on Friday, we’ll add more planes back into service every day as inspections are completed and each aircraft is deemed airworthy. We expect inspections on all our 737-9 MAX to be completed over the next week.
We greatly appreciate the FAA’s diligence and commitment to safety to get the 737-9 MAX safely back in the air.
Just face it Boeing is too big to fail. The government, airlines, and politicians will not let it fail no matter what falls out of the sky.
All I can say, and I am not wishing this, Boeing is one major crash away from going out of business.
If I was the board of directors I would immediately clean the Boeing house by firing the entire leadership to began a change of culture.
Sometimes you have to start at the top. The culture stinks. And it has nothing to do with DEI @AndyS.
@ Tim — I do not care about the revenues or profits of any airline. I am a consumer, not a board member or executive. I am well aware that UA flies 763s, and am I also aware that UA’s Polaris seats are vastly superior to DLs 763 business seats.
@ Anthony — Yes, all media lies. Video, however, does not, and Jan 6 was no tour or ordinary protest.
Gene,
you clearly don’t understand that the seats any US airline offers has to generate a profit or they can’t justify selling those seats.
And the simple fact is that UA can’t keep its Polaris 767s in markets because they are too premium. You do know how much LHR capacity UA has had to cut even though they used the 767-300ER?
You, “as a consumer” should also know that UA Polaris is not competitive with Delta One Suites on the A350 or A330NEO.
UA has simply chosen to make a single business class product that is not best in class and limits their ability to compete because the Polaris seat is too big for the 767.
In contrast, Delta is just like the vast majority of global airlines that has multiple types of cabins on its widebody and international fleet and knows how to use each of its widebody cabins in the appropriate markets.
THAT is why DL made $2 billion more than UA in 2023. DL doesn’t brag about meaningless product attributes that it can’t sell for a profit while DL is able to deliver what the market is willing to pay for.
Given that DL is already retiring the next batch of 767-300ERs, UA will be in a world of hurt as it holds onto its fuel INEFFICIENT and product UNCOMPETITIVE aircraft years after Delta has upgraded its fleet.
@ Tim — “Too Premium.” You are a piece of work.
I hope Delta is paying close attention to that Max10 nugget. As a long-time Delta flyer, I’m about as un-thrilled as I can imagine at the prospect of the 737-10. Delta’s current -900s are (by their own ‘net promoter score’ metrics) their least loved aircraft by passengers.
Yea still not flying on these, personally. No way.