Alaska Airlines said this Monday that his technicians saw “some loose components” in their Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft subjected to inspection, after last Saturday one of their aircraft lost part of the fuselage in mid-flight. The Washington state-based company explained in a statement Monday night that its maintenance team found loose components on some of his aircraft when he began to prepare his 737-9 MAX fleet for an inspection. The airline did not elaborate on the findings waiting for them results of the “close inspection” which will be carried out in accordance with the requirements of the Boeing company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This Monday United Airlines also reported that it has found loose screws on its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft.

“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found cases that appear to be related to installation problems on the door panel: e.g. screws that needed additional tightening“United said in a statement. United Airlines is he largest operator of Boeing 737 Max 9, with 79 of these aircraft in its fleet, while Alaska Airlines has 65 of this class of aircraft. The Alaska Airlines plane that suffered the incident on Saturday lost the panel at almost 5,000 meters above sea level that had sealed a hole designed to house an additional emergency door, a common measure on planes that make journeys with low passenger density. .

The plane was forced to return to the city of Portland (Oregon)from where it had taken off, a few minutes after taking flight, without serious injuries. At a press conference in Portland, Oregon, Jennifer Homendychairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NSTB) said that so far They are in the research phase. The panel was found Sunday by a school teacher in the backyard of his Portland home. Homendy said the panel will help advance research to find the cause of the emergency.

215 aircraft in service worldwide

Following the incident, the FAA ordered immediately immobilize all 737 Max 9 with the same configuration as that of the Alaska Airlines plane to carry out inspections. The measure, also adopted by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), does not affect any of the company’s aircraft in Europe, since the Boeing 737 Max 9 that operate in the community space have a different configuration. In total there are 215 of these aircraft in service around the world, and in addition to United and Alaska Airlines, the Panamanian Copa Airlines, the Mexican Aeroméxico, Iceland Air, Turkish Airlines and FlyDubai have them in their fleets.

Just two weeks ago, the Boeing 737s were back in the news, after the American multinational asked airlines to inspect their planes for a possible loose screw in the control system. The latest incident has once again put the Boeing 737 Max planes in the spotlight, which were grounded in much of the world for about two years after two accidents with the 737 Max 8 model in which 346 people diedin Indonesia and Ethiopia, in 2019 and 2020. In those two cases, it was determined that the flight control software generated erroneous information and put the aircraft in a descent position, despite the pilots’ efforts to reverse that instruction.