United Boeing 737-900 Dramatic Engine Flame-Out Sparks MAX Confusion

by Gary Leff

On Monday a United Airlines Boeing 737-900 had issues with its left engine during climb out from Houston while operating flight 1118 from Houston to Fort Myers.

As the aircraft climbed through 12,000 feet, the left engine “emitted a series of bangs and streaks of flames.” Pilots returned to the airport after advising air traffic control of an engine stall, and the plane landed safely around 35 minutes after departure. United assigned another aircraft to operate the flight and passengers were delayed a little over 3 hours.

All seems pretty normal, right? Well, two things are notable about this flight:

  1. Video of the engine flaming out is really impressive!

  2. I’ve seen quite a bit of social media discussion, relating this to production problems at Boeing and to the 737 MAX 9. That doesn’t make much sense.

I guess it’s worth being really clear that this was a Boeing 737-900 – a 22 year old plane originally delivered to Continental Airlines – and not a 737 MAX 9. Aviation insiders snicker as though those who might not see that nuance are rubes, but in fact Boeing tried to create this confusion to get out from under reputational issues for the MAX.

Boeing began calling the 737 MAX 8 just 737-8, eliminating MAX from the name. So it’s easy to see why someone might conflate a 737-900 and a 737-9, even though they’re two different planes. Problems with this aircraft, on this flight at this time, seem highly unlikely to be related to recent challenges with Boeing manufacturing. In any case, the problem here may or may not turn out to be with the (CFM) engine, in any case.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. The NTSB says there was a UA 737 MAX 8 on which the pilots said the rudder did not respond to input and they are investigating.

    The engine issue has nothing to do with Boeing’s build quality but the MAX 8 issue might.

  3. United has also just told its pilots that it will stop hiring due to Boeing production delays

  4. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun probably thinks the rudder event on the MAX 8 was also a “quality escape” event.

    At this point, they should just hire ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward, who complained after the to the press that he just “wanted his life back” after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Honestly, he couldn’t do much worse.

    It’s not a question of if – but when – Boeing will fire Calhoun.

  5. and the impact to the airline industry just keeps getting worse.

    United will find out what Southwest has put up with for years of Boeing loyalty.

    American and Delta are the only two of the big 4 that are hiring at this point

  6. ABC News is airing a teaser video of a UA 777 losing a tire on departure from SFO to Japan – story in minutes.

  7. Nope. I don’t want to fly on a MAX. Ever. And I don’t trust the airlines to correctly label them. So I don’t fly 737s at all unless it’s the only option.

  8. @ Tim Dunn

    Not hiring in June and July but pilots will still be interviewed those months with larger than normal new hire classes starting in July, just to clear , I am guessing you did not know that .

  9. UA is REDUCING the number of pilots they will hire because they will have fewer planes coming in. Exactly what I said months ago would be the case. The UA NEXT strategy is high risk and would have required the world to function at a level of normality that hasn’t existed in years.

    Whether UA takes 2 or 3 or 10 months off won’t change that they will hire fewer total pilots and fly fewer airplanes in 2024 than they planned

  11. My flights tomorrow with United are on a 737-900 and 737 Max 9. The united app clearly says those things. 737-900ER for first flight and 737 Max 9 for second flight. I don’t think they are hiding the Max planes, at least not on the app. I changed a flight last month that was a Max 8 because I wasn’t sure with possible govt shutdown etc that the safety review would be done and approved by FAA in time for that flight. So they’ve been pretty consistent, again at least on the app, with labelling the planes.

    With all these issues this week with several United planes I am not sure which flight I am less looking forward to, ha.

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