It's a new spotlight that the American aircraft manufacturer could have done without. Frankfurt-listed Boeing shares plunged 7.7% on Monday, Jan. 8, after the loss of a door on board an Alaska Airlines plane on Friday, which led to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9s and the cancellation of dozens of flights around the world.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Saturday ordered the grounding for inspection of some 171 planes of this model, affecting companies such as United Airlines, Turkish Airlines and Aeromexico.

On Friday evening, a door detached from a 737-9 after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, on an Alaska Airlines domestic flight, while the plane with 171 passengers and 6 crew members on board was at an altitude of nearly 5,000 meters.

Dramatic images of the incident, which left only minor injuries and showed a gaping hole in the sky, went viral. The investigation by the US Transportation Safety Agency, the NTSB, has just begun and no conclusions have yet been drawn from this malfunction.

The agency announced Sunday night that it had found the lost door panel, which fell in a private backyard in Portland. "We're going to go get it and start analyzing it," said its president Jennifer Homendy.

This incident is the latest in a series of setbacks that the Arlington, Virginia-based group has experienced in recent years, particularly concerning this model of aircraft. The most serious of these were the crashes of two 737 MAX, in October 2018 in Indonesia and in March 2019 in Ethiopia, which caused the deaths of a total of 346 people.

Black Series

After these accidents, linked to the MCAS pilot software, all 737 MAX aircraft were grounded for 20 months. But the U.S. automaker has also repeatedly suspended deliveries of its long-haul 787 for nearly two years for manufacturing and inspection defects.

More recently, the 737 MAX has once again been in the news, following the discovery in the fall of defective workmanship on the aircraft's aft watertight bulkhead, and then, in December, a risk of a loose bolt on the rudder control system.

In the case of Friday's incident, the stall may have been related to the manufacture of the door or screws, but also to installation and quality control, said Scott Hamilton of Leeham News.

"If it's an installation and quality issue, related to Boeing or Spirit AeroSystems," its largest subcontractor, "it's probably limited," the analyst said.

"I think it's more of an exceptional anomaly than a systemic problem," he said.

"For me, it's a very isolated problem," said Michel Merluzeau, a specialist in the aeronautics sector at AIR. "I don't see a design problem at all."

A hypothesis validated, according to him, by the nature of the inspection requested by the FAA, which can be carried out in only 4 to 8 hours, according to the American regulator.

"We should be able to get back to normal in about a week," according to Michel Merluzeau.

"This is an event that is the result of supply chain issues and stress on production in commercial aviation at the moment," the analyst said, citing an impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Manage the situation "as quickly as possible"

In the spring of 2020, Boeing suspended production for nearly a month. Faced with the sharp slowdown in air travel, the century-old company has laid off some 30,000 people. Boeing began hiring heavily again in 2022, but many veterans did not return.

"You've got a lot of new people, who have to do their apprenticeship," says Hamilton. "Experience is something that's very, very important in this industry," says Merluzeau.

Unlike Boeing, its main competitor Airbus will have closed for only a few days in 2020 and avoided massive layoffs, recalls Scott Hamilton.

On the commercial front, "I don't see a serious long-term impact" from Friday's default, Merluzeau said. "Boeing needs to manage the situation and give customers guarantees as soon as possible on the assembly of the planes so that there is no worry."

This scenario is also echoed by Scott Hamilton, who points out that the MAX 9 is, "essentially, an American aircraft", with two-thirds of the aircraft being operated by Alaska Airlines (65) and United (79).

"Their relationship with Boeing is deep and good," according to the analyst, for whom the soaring door should weigh mainly in his relations with regulators.

The automaker recently requested an exemption from safety obligations as part of the MAX 7 homologation, related to a defect in the engines' de-icing system.

According to Hamilton, if the findings of the investigation into the Alaska Airlines incident blame Boeing, "that's going to play into the FAA's decision on those exemptions."

With AFP

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