Alaska Airlines cancels flights on certain Boeing planes through Saturday for mandatory inspections
Alaska Airlines is canceling all flights through Saturday using Boeing 737 Max 9 planes, like the one that suffered an in-flight fuselage panel last week, while it awaits new instructions from Boeing and federal officials on how to inspect the fleet.
The Seattle-based airline said Wednesday it would cancel 110 to 150 flights a day while its Max 9 planes remain grounded. By midday, Alaska had canceled about 120 flights — a fifth of the day’s schedule.
“We hope this action provides guests with some additional certainty, and we are working around the clock to reaccommodate affected guests on other flights,” the airline said on its website.
United Airlines, the only other U.S. carrier that operates the Max 9, had canceled about 200 flights, but it was not clear how many of those were related to the Boeing plane.
Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately comment.
The FAA grounded all Max 9s in the United States on Saturday, the day after a panel called a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines plane over Oregon and left a hole in the side of the plane. The plug replaces additional doors used on Max 9s equipped with more seating than Alaska uses.
The pilots of Flight 1282 were able to return to Portland, Oregon, and make a safe emergency landing. No serious injuries were reported.
The FAA on Monday approved the inspection and repair guidelines developed by Boeing. On Tuesday, however, the agency ordered Boeing to revise the instructions based on “feedback received as a result.”
Alaska and United both reported finding loose bolts and other problems in the panel doors of an unspecified number of other Max 9s they had begun to inspect.
The Max – of which there are two flying, the 8 and the larger 9, with two more in development – is the latest version of Boeing’s 737, which is already half a century old. In 2018 and 2019, two Max 8 jets crashed, killing 346 people. and the aircraft has suffered from quality problems in production ever since.