United has found loose bolts on plug doors during its inspections of its 737 Max aircrafts following the mid-air Alaska Airlines blowout on Friday.
Terrified passengers were left fearing for their lives on Friday after an emergency exit used as a cabin window fell off the Alaskan Airlines flight from Portland to California at 16,000 feet. Federal regulators swiftly grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes on Saturday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday airlines could begin safety inspections of over 100 Boeing 737 Max 9 grounded planes.
The inspection reportedly already has produced concerning findings, with United finding loose bolts on plug doors on at least five of its planes, according to The Air Current.
Also on Monday the National Transportation Safety Board issued photos pf the door plug from the Alaska Airlines plane, which was found in the backyard of a suburban home in Portland.
Alaskan Airlines decided to ground dozens of its Boeing 737-9 MAX jets for urgent safety checks after the matter
There were no serious injuries from Friday’s terrifying air failure, but passenger’s belongings including phones flew out the aircraft
A photo shows the blown out area. It is offered as a door on the aircraft. Alaska chose not to take this option – although the frame of the prospective door was entirely ripped out by the fuselage failure
The images come after Boeing shares had the biggest plunge in over a year on Monday, losing a whopping $13.5billion off its value in the first day of trading after the mid-air Alaska Airlines blowout.
The near disaster saw Boeing Corp shares plummet 8.6 percent – from 248 to 228 – between Friday evening and Monday morning. The stock continued to plunge after the market opened, reaching 226 – and analysts warned it is expected to continue falling until the aircrafts are back in service.
Meanwhile Alaska Air’s shares fell 4.3 percent, while United Airlines shares, the other U.S. carrier that operates the jet, dropped 2.4 percent.
Spirit AeroSystems, which manufactured and initially installed the fuselage part on the brand new MAX 9 jet in question, was down 20.8 percent, deepening the gloom around the supplier recently recovering from a string of quality problems.
Wall Street analysts viewed the accident as a temporary setback to Boeing, but some took a dim view of a series of quality problems related to the 737 MAX family of aircraft.
Alaskan Airlines quickly made the move to ground planes after the near-disaster in Portland on Friday, and CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement the aircraft will only go back into its fleet after clearing precautionary maintenance procedures, which he expected to be ‘in the next few days.’
The flight that was set out to arrive at Ontario International in California turned back around after the plug door came off on Friday night
In a statement shared to X on Saturday, the regulator said it is requiring immediate inspections of certain jets before they can return to the skies.
The FAA’s decision to ground the fleet of Boeing 737 MAX 9’s comes as several airlines and regulators have taken similar steps.
Boeing competes with Airbus, which has expanded its market share since two Boeing MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed nearly 350 people and led to the MAX’s worldwide grounding for 20 months.
Airbus shares were up more than 1 percent early on Monday. The company this week will announce that it delivered 735 planes last year, beating Boeing to remain the world’s largest plane maker for the fifth year in a row, according to industry sources.
There were no serious injuries from Friday’s terrifying air failure, but passengers’ belongings including phones flew out the aircraft.
One of the cellphones, an iPhone, was found by video game designer Sean Bates who said that he picked it up while out for a walk. In a series of posts on X, Bates said that the intact phone was still in airplane mode and had half of its battery life left.
Bates added that when he contacted the National Transportation and Safety Bureau, he was told that it was the second such phone to have been found. In a subsequent post, Bates showed that the charger plug was still in the phone, indicating that it was yanked out.