FAA orders grounding of some Boeing 737 Max 9 jets after midair ‘incident’

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered US airlines to stop using some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes until they are inspected, less than a day after an incident in which a chunk of the body of a Max 9 plane operated by Alaska Airlines was blown out in flight. The order will affect about 171 planes.

“Safety will continue to drive our decision-making,” the agency’s administrator, Mike Whitaker, said in a statement. The FAA is working with the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading an investigation into the Alaska flight.

United Airlines has 79 Max 9s in service, more than any other airline. Alaska has 65. Earlier Saturday, Alaska said some of its Max 9s would return to service after it had completed inspections of about one-quarter of those planes in its fleet, reporting “no concerning findings.”

The FAA said the required inspections should take four to eight hours per plane to complete.

Alaska had grounded its fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft Friday after one of its planes made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon because of a midair pressure problem that passengers said blew out a chunk of the fuselage.

The airline said Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had made a safe emergency landing carrying 171 passengers and six crew members at the Portland airport shortly after takeoff for Ontario, California. Within hours, the company said it was grounding all 65 of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft until it could inspect each plane. Those planes make up about one-fifth of its fleet. It said in a statement it expected to complete the inspections within a few days.

Boeing’s Max aircraft have a troubled history. After two crashes of Max 8 jets killed hundreds of people within several months in 2018 and 2019, the Max was grounded around the world.

The cause of the midair problem was unclear as of early Saturday. The plane was new, having been certified in November. It entered commercial service that month and has since logged 145 flights.

Representatives for Alaska Airlines, the FAA and the NTSB said they were investigating what had happened.

Boeing said it was “aware of the incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282,” adding, “We are working to gather more information and are in contact with our airline customer.”