Boeing to Modify 737 MAX 9 Design After Alaska Airlines Incident

TapTechNews August 8th news, US-based Boeing announced on Tuesday that it plans to make design modifications to the 737 MAX 9 passenger aircraft to prevent the recurrence of incidents like the in-flight cabin door detachment that occurred on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 aircraft in January this year. This accident has plunged Boeing into its second major crisis in recent years.

TapTechNews noted that the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Boeing said that it is still not determined who disassembled and reinstalled the cabin door blocker of the involved aircraft during the production process. The NTSB completed the first day of a two-day hearing on Tuesday and conducted nearly 10 hours of investigation into this near-disastrous in-flight accident. This incident has seriously damaged Boeing's reputation, resulting in the grounding of the MAX 9 model for two weeks, the Federal Aviation Administration suspending the expansion of production, and triggering criminal investigations and the departure of multiple senior executives.

Investigators said that the cabin door blocker of the newly delivered Alaska Airlines MAX 9 aircraft was missing four key bolts. Boeing, which is facing significant pressure for quality improvement, has been widely questioned about the production process of the involved MAX 9 aircraft and the lack of records of cabin door plug removal.

Boeing's senior vice president of quality, Elizabeth Lund, said, The company is making design modifications and hopes to implement them within a year and then retrofit the entire fleet.

Elizabeth Lund also said that after the accident, Boeing's monthly production of 737 MAX dropped to single digits, and currently remains at about 20 per month, and the company is striving to achieve the goal of restoring the monthly production to 38.