Recently the door plug blew out inflight on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9, causing rapid depressurization of the aircraft – and a shirt and two phones even flew out of the aircraft. Had anyone been sitting in that spot things could have been much worse.
To passengers, though, cabin interior maintenance matters. Passengers don’t distinguish between airworthiness issues and cosmetic ones. Indeed, the only insight they have into the likelihood that a plane is being well-maintained is what they directly observe, and they infer from there. In light of what happened to the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9, everyone is especially sensitive.
Downside of Houston…flying with @united over @AmericanAir. Panel fell off while taking off. pic.twitter.com/Izdxgw653F
— Michael Torres (@Mykalt45) January 11, 2024
@AmericanAir your planes are literally falling apart. I’m a loyal customer who’s taken three flights in seven days. Bathroom was out of service across the country and now this in the exit row (where I sat). pic.twitter.com/4LBZqLhyxu
— Ali (@Ali_Brett) January 12, 2024
There’s going to be a lot of discussion over Boeing’s self-certification of planes, and why this is permitted? The problem though isn’t with self-certification. It’s necessary and there’s no way around it. The problem seems to be with Boeing.
- Self-certification dates to 1956. It is not part of a deregulatory push. It’s a system that has worked remarkably well.
- The FAA has approximately 400 engineers to work on aircraft certification. Boeing has 45,000 engineers. The FAA cannot possibly do all of the work themselves.
There have also been ongoing issues with Boeing supplier Spirit Aerosystems, whose door plug produced in Malaysia is at issue.
Two things are needed here: (1) making sure that Boeing (and other) aircraft are manufactured to approved standards, including with parts supplied by others, and (2) giving confidence to passengers. Even when they are on an American Airlines Airbus narrowbody they think they’re on a MAX 9, which American does not operate.
Not a loose bolt, but some duct tape on my last American Airlines flight ♀️ pic.twitter.com/dyxLPPsHH8
— SamInspired (@SamInspired) January 9, 2024
It’s been a long time since customers needed confidence in air travel. Air travel remains incredibly safe, even in light of recent events with Alaska’s MAX 9 and with Japan Airlines evacuating an aircraft after impacting another plane at Tokyo Haneda. And that means focusing on details that show maintenance being visibly handled correctly.
If the interior is poorly maintained and looks like crap, it’s natural to assume that the rest of the plane is also not maintained to the highest standards….
As another commenter wrote : “Skilled labor is not cheap ; cheap labor is not skilled.” If I ride in an airplane , I expect it to be built , flown , and maintained by “skilled labor” .
@Thing1 … Management is responsible … for proper employees and inspections . If management cannot do their basic job , they will not see my money .
I am not sure what all of the talk about other airlines not maintaining their airplanes has to do with Alaska Airlines not maintaining their airplanes and ignoring pressurization alerts.
@jns
Alaska did NOT ignore pressurization warnings. The NTSB says they were reported, addressed per the manual, reset and then the aircraft was restricted, voluntarily, from ETOPS service….while Alaska awaited further investigation of the problem.
NTSB even said that, SO FAR, no connection between pressurization faults and the door plug incident.
Do you have specific info on Alaska not maintaining the plane…so far no one else does. Hmmm
Food critics often say if you want to know how clean the kitchen is, check the bathrooms. If the bathrooms aren’t clean and well maintained then you can bet the kitchen isn’t.
Same idea applies to aircraft.
There is a big difference between loose or broken interior parts and structural items. Of course maintaining it all is important but planes don’t make emergency landings or risk death for broken cabin furnishings
While passengers look aghast at “self certification,” their ire should be directed towards bean counter, totally ineffective board of directors.
Subsequent purchase/merger of Boeing/Micky Donald’s, bean counters ruled the direction of the company. First came subcontracting out of manufacturing. Then came downgrading of monies to fund self certification.
A major change in HQ corporate culture will fix the rest.
As an aside, when you buy a new car from a dealer, do you honestly think that dealers check out every bolt and wire connection your car? Or the placement of the gas tank?
@Jm:
Thanks for your comment in reply to @jns, clearly that demonstrates your deep knowledge of the issue. You are factually correct regarding the NTSB, but for context AP reported the following:
“If you are afraid to take the airplane far from land, what is the reason for that? That has to be answered by Alaska Airlines,” said Steven Wallace, an air-safety consultant and commercial pilot who once headed accident investigations for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Both positions come from Aviation Safety Experts, and both should be considered in context.
The warnings were from the pressurization system, not the actual air pressure. One of the two systems had an issue, and when it was switched to the other system, there were no problems. The NTSB’s statement on this is that the warning was unrelated to the cabin door plug, but they were asking Boeing to look at the system. The pressurization system controls the position of the outflow valve/door to maintain a particular pressure. If the pressure is too high, it opens the outflow door more, and vice versa. Alaska has a policy of enforcing an ETOPS restriction if there is any repeated failure of a safety-related component withing a period of time, and the policy was not specific to this particular component. While there is an aspect of triple redundancy, the pilot workload goes up if both automated systems fail in flight. As this restriction was part of AS’s ETOPS procedures, the NTSB could not comment on why they had this restriction, as there are not a standard set of ETOPS operations processes which airlines uniformly use.
News organizations do a terrible job of giving context to statements made by experts, and leave the audience to draw their own uninformed conclusions. The NTSB operates on facts, and does not offer opinions. Answering a why question veers into opinions, and the NTSB properly redirected the question. I think they did a very good job within those constraints, such as the answer that included that the study of the plug would also be able to determine if the plug bolts had been installed at all. It opened the possibility, without saying that they believed the bolts weren’t present at all.
Closing the outflow door was one of the few things Sully forgot to do after his water landing, which led to the cabin filling with water faster than it should have.