The American civil aviation regulatory agency (FAA) announced, Thursday January 11, the opening of a formal investigation into a possible failure by Boeing, likely to have played a role in the stalling of a door of a 737 MAX 9 aircraft during an Alaska Airlines flight.
The investigations must “establish whether Boeing failed to ensure that the [appareils] were in accordance with the intended design and able to operate safely”the FAA released 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 regulator, indicating that the 737 MAX 9s whose inspection it had ordered 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.
Failures observed by the two largest customers of the 737 MAX 9
A door came loose on Friday, January 5, from the cabin of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight which was to connect Portland (Oregon) to Ontario (California), but the incident only caused a few minor injuries 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”. During checks already carried out since Saturday, the two largest customers of the 737 MAX 9, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, have each revealed having discovered loose equipment on some of their aircraft.
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.
Airbus records record year
While Boeing is entangled, Airbus is satisfied with its year 2023. The European aircraft manufacturer announced Thursday that it had garnered 2,094 net orders last year, shattering its previous record dating from 2013, of 1,503 net orders. The group has built on the success of its A320 family single-aisle aircraft and its A350 long-haul aircraft.
After the pandemic, “We had initially predicted that aviation would recover between 2023 and 2025, but what we saw in 2023 was that alongside the single-aisle market, the wide-body market returned much earlier than expected and with vigor »commented Christian Scherer, CEO of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, quoted in a press release.
Mega orders have therefore accumulated in 2023 for Airbus, whether it is the Indian low-cost company IndiGo, which signed the largest in volume in the history of civil aviation (500 A320s), Air India (250 aircraft including 40 A350s) or Turkish Airlines (230 aircraft including 60 A350s).
Its order book of 8,598 devices as of December 31 ensures many years of production. The aircraft manufacturer has embarked on a significant ramp-up to respond. It thus intends to go from 48 A320s produced each month in 2023 to 75 by 2026. In 2019, before the pandemic which disrupted its industrial facilities, it produced 60. It plans to increase its monthly production of A350s by five to nine at the end of 2025.