Torn door: the endless misfortunes of the Boeing 737 Max

Boeing is unable to turn the page on the design and manufacturing problems of its 737 Max model. The American regulator grounded 171 of these aircraft, in version 9, on Saturday. Emergency inspections were ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The decision comes after a piece of the fuselage of such an aircraft, operated by Alaska Airlines, including a part covering the location of an emergency escape door, broke off in mid-flight at 16,000 feet, twenty minutes after taking off on Friday from Portland, Oregon.

The plane, in service for only eight weeks, certainly turned around and was able to land in an emergency, without any casualties. But the images, filmed by passengers, of the gaping hole left by the incident, are shocking. Luckily, no one was sitting in the immediate vicinity of the inactivated door. However, part of the seat adjoining the fuselage was taken away. There were 171 passengers and a crew of 6 on board. “We are very, very lucky that this did not end in a more tragic way,” summarizes Jennifer Homendy, president of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the American federal transportation accident office, in charge of the investigation.

Maintenance documentation, cabin pressurization data and panel components that blocked the door location are at the heart of the NTSB investigation. The office is also asking for the public's help in locating the door-shaped element that must have fallen in the west suburbs of Portland. Some 220 Boeing 737 Max 9s have been delivered to date, out of a total of nearly 1,400 737 Max aircraft in service. The Max 9 can carry up to 215 passengers. It is therefore a little longer than the 737 Max 8, involved in two successive disasters, in 2018 and 2019, which cost the lives of 346 people and triggered a flight ban for almost two years.

The 737 Max family is the best-selling in Boeing’s lineup. The order backlog exceeds 5,900 copies. The single-aisle is the direct rival of the Airbus A320 Neo. United and Alaska Airlines are the only U.S. operators of its Version 9. Aeroméxico, Panamanian Copa Airlines and Turkish Airlines are among the other airlines that use the 737 Max 9. The model is equipped with a modular fuselage, manufactured by Spirit AeroSystems , subcontractor today in the hot seat. The system allows companies to install or not install emergency evacuation doors, depending on the configuration of the cabin and the number of passengers desired. The case comes after a series of anomalies that suspended production of the 737 Max over the past summer. It was therefore necessary to check poorly perforated holes in the fuselage.

Last month, Boeing also asked its customers to ensure that parts had not become loose in the rudder control system. These technical problems have been widely publicized since the tragedies of 2018 in Indonesia and 2019 in Ethiopia, linked to the automatic system supposed to prevent the plane from diving (MCAS). Disasters turned into scandal when multiple investigations by regulators and Congress uncovered cheating by Boeing during the 737 Max certification process. The aircraft manufacturer had to fire its boss, Dennis A. Muilenburg in 2019, and pay $2.5 billion in 2021 to the Department of Justice to end criminal proceedings. The development and certification of a new MCAS system took twenty months. The plane was only able to return to service in December 2020. The financial cost of the scandal for Boeing exceeds $20 billion.