Boeing is facing new questions about the 737 Max after a plane suffered a gaping hole in the side

Boeing is facing new scrutiny over the safety of its best-selling plane after federal officials announced the temporary grounding of some Boeing 737 Max planes on Saturday following a harrowing flight that left an Alaska Airlines jet with a gaping hole in its side.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was demanding immediate inspections of some Max 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or flown in the United States by foreign airlines.

The FAA's emergency order, which it says will affect about 171 planes worldwide, is the latest blow to Boeing over its Max series of fighter jets, which were involved in two fatal crashes shortly after their debut.

On Friday, a fuselage panel on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 exploded seven minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. The rapid loss of cabin pressure tore off a child's clothes and caused oxygen masks to fall from the ceiling, but miraculously none of the 171 passengers and six suffered injuries. Pilots made a safe emergency landing.

Hours after the terrifying incident, Alaska Airlines announced it would ground its entire fleet of 65 Max 9s for inspections and maintenance. CEO Ben Minicucci said Alaska expects the inspections to be completed “in the coming days.”

Alaska said Saturday that affected areas on 18 of its Max 9s were inspected during recent intensive maintenance work and cleared to resume carrying passengers.

Even the brief grounding disrupted the airline — the Max 9 accounts for more than a quarter of Alaska's fleet — and its passengers. Alaska canceled more than 100 flights, or 15% of its schedule, on the West Coast late Saturday morning, according to FlightAware.

United Airlines said it had inspected 33 of its 79 Max 9s and that removing the planes from service had caused about 60 canceled flights.

Photos showed a hole in the Alaska plane where an emergency exit is installed when planes are configured to carry a maximum number of passengers. Alaska is closing those doors because its 737 Max 9 jets don't have enough seats to trigger the requirement for a new emergency exit.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board said they would investigate Friday's incident.

Boeing declined a request to make an executive available for comment. The company, based in Arlington, Virginia, issued a statement supporting the FAA's decision to require immediate inspections. Boeing said it was providing technical assistance to investigators.

Analysts said the extent of damage to the Boeing brand will depend on what investigators determine caused the eruption.

Richard Aboulafia, a veteran aerospace analyst and consultant, said if the outburst is traced to a production problem, it would put more pressure on Boeing to change its processes, and cash-generating deliveries of new planes could be cut. delayed.

However, Aboulafia said he doesn't expect any change in Boeing's sales of the planes “unless the situation is worse than it seems.” Airlines are buying new, more fuel-efficient planes from Boeing and Airbus to meet strong travel demand due to the pandemic.

The aircraft involved in Friday's incident is brand new; it started carrying passengers in November and has made just 145 flights, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service.

The Max – the Max 8 and Max 9 differ mainly in size – is the latest version of Boeing's venerable 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle plane often used on domestic flights in the US.

More than a decade ago, Boeing considered designing and building an entirely new aircraft to replace the 737. But fearing losing sales to European rival Airbus, which was launching a similarly sized, more fuel-efficient version of its A320, Boeing decided to take the shortcut of modifying the 737 – and the Max was born.

A Lion Air Max 8 jet crashed in Indonesia in 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 crashed in 2019. Regulators around the world grounded the planes for nearly two years while Boeing changed an automated flight control system that was involved in the crashes.

Federal prosecutors and Congress questioned whether Boeing had cut corners in its rush to get the Max approved quickly, and with minimal training required for pilots. In 2021, Boeing settled a criminal investigation by agreeing to pay $2.5 billion, including a $244 million fine. The company accused two relatively low-level employees of misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about flaws in its flight control system.

Robert Clifford, a Chicago attorney representing families of passengers killed in the crash in Ethiopia, said Friday's incident raised questions about whether regulators were too quick to allow Max planes to fly again. He accused Boeing of putting profit before safety.

“This is a company that has gone from being the gold standard in technical expertise and precision to one that appears to be at the bottom of the barrel,” he said.

Boeing estimates in financial reports that the fallout from the two fatal crashes cost the company more than $20 billion. Confidential settlements have been reached with most of the families of passengers killed in the crashes.

After a lull following the crashes, airlines resumed purchasing the Max. But the plane has been plagued by problems unrelated to Friday's blowout.

Questions about components from suppliers have sometimes held up deliveries. Last year, the FAA told pilots to limit the use of an anti-icing system on the Max in dry conditions, fearing that the intakes around the engines could overheat and rupture, potentially affecting the plane. And in December, Boeing told airlines to inspect planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system.

A passenger on a Southwest Airlines plane was killed in 2018 when a piece of engine housing blew off and shattered the window she was sitting next to. However, that incident involved an earlier version of the Boeing 737, and not a Max.

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This story corrects the number of passengers on board to 171.