The Journal. - A Hole in a Plane and a Headache for Boeing

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

The last thing Boeing needed was more trouble with its 737 MAX jet. That is exactly what it got at the start of the new year. The company had just started to regain its footing after years of tumult around the popular but troubled line of narrow-body jets when a Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines had a structural failure Friday night. WSJ’s Alison Sider unpacks what happened. Further Reading: -Alaska Airlines Boeing Probe: What We Know  -Boeing Is Back in the Spotlight—This Time Over a MAX 9  -United, Alaska Find Loose Parts on Some Boeing 737 MAX 9 Jets  Further Listening: -The Pressure Inside Boeing  -How the Grounded Boeing Jet Shook the Airline Industry  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last Friday, Kelly Bartlett boarded an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California. It was going to be a one-day event that I had to be at. So my plan was to take a quick flight out Friday night, and then I was going to come home the next night. The plane took off at around 5 p.m. and began climbing into the sky. It got to 10,000 feet, then 11,000, and eventually it reached 16,000 feet. And it was right then that all of a sudden there was just this really loud boom. I mean, that was the most startling thing, but it was the combination of the boom plus this gush of wind, which you just don't expect that on an airplane.

I was like, where is that breeze coming from? It was just so unnerving, just all of it. And then, of course, at the same time, the oxygen masks drop, which I've never been on a flight where that's happened before. So all of that in combination was just really scary because you know something's wrong, but you don't know what and you don't know it yet, but three rows behind her, a panel from the plane had ripped away, leaving a gaping hole in the aircraft. In the cockpit, pilots radioed air traffic control. Last aircraft, say again?

The pressure in the cabin dropped. Passenger belongings like phones were sucked out of the plane. So when this happened, just within like two minutes probably, there was all this commotion and chaos. It was happening behind me, so I did not see it because I was putting my mask on and trying to get my bearings. But then this kid jumps over me and sits in the middle seat

and grabs the mask and puts it on. The young man had come from a couple rows behind Kelly, and she noticed that he wasn't wearing a shirt. She began communicating with him using the Notes app on her phone because it was so noisy on the plane. shirt on because the suction literally ripped it off of his body. And because he had his seatbelt on, he wasn't also tossed out of the airplane. I mean, it was crazy. And I, just to think about

that was really scary to think how close he came. His seatbelt saved his life. The plane made an emergency U-turn. It landed back at Portland Airport at 5.27 p.m., about 20 minutes after it took off. Disaster was narrowly avoided, and there were no major injuries. But the incident sent shockwaves through the airline industry, and it brought new attention to struggles within the company that made the plane, Boeing. The struggles within the company that made the plane, Boeing. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, January 9th.

Coming up on the show, the hole in Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. Introducing TD Insurance for Business, with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Our colleague Allison Sider covers the airline industry. How unusual is an incident like this? Well, I mean, I think it's very unusual. This is just not the sort of thing that we see happen. I mean, planes, you know, things go wrong on flights and they make emergency landings, they hit birds. There's, you know, there's a number of things that go wrong and some of them are scary for passengers,

but this was really dramatic. The plane involved in the incident is a Boeing 737 MAX 9. The MAX series of planes is one of Boeing's most popular aircrafts. All of the MAXs are kind of the workhorse of global aviation. They're narrow-body planes. They fly just to a lot of common destinations,

you know, airlines like them because they're very fuel efficient. And if you fly, you know, domestically, you've probably been on one. They're pretty common. When you say common, are they being used by most domestic airlines? Yes. United, Southwest, American, Alaska, they're pretty prevalent. Not every flight is on a MAX, but especially as airlines replace their fleets and buy new planes and retire old ones, they're fairly ubiquitous.

The Alaska Airlines plane that flew out of Portland Friday was a pretty new MAX 9. It went into service in November and had made 145 flights before the incident. What was it that broke away from the plane? If you're a passenger, I think it would look just like, you know, a window. It's row 26. It would look just like a window like any other, but it's actually a panel that's a plug. It's a door plug. Certain airlines have an exit door there for a possible emergency exit,

and some airlines don't need that. If you're operating with fewer seats like Alaska does or United, there's no need to have an emergency exit there. So in this case, it's a plug, I guess is what we're calling it. After the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration immediately grounded about 170 MAX 9 planes with that same door plug. And that had an impact on the airlines with the biggest MAX 9 fleets, Alaska and United Airlines. I mean, Alaska has been canceling about 20% of its flights each day. You know, it's a good

chunk of their fleet. It's not a huge airline. They've got 65 of these planes. So it has been fairly impactful for Alaska. United is a larger airline, so it's not quite as impactful. The National Transportation Safety Board also launched an investigation into what had happened with Flight 1282. One of the big priorities for the investigation was to find the door plug. Right. As kind of the central clue into what might have happened. And it's not small.

You know, it's 63 pounds. It's 48 inches by 26 inches. It's something you'd think would be pretty noticeable, but it actually took them almost like two full days, I think, to locate it. It was a pretty involved search. You know, they were using radar to try to figure out where it was, like tracking the plane's path. They were asking people to look for it in their yards, like business owners to go up on their roofs. And then it turned up Sunday night in the backyard of a local school teacher.

And he sent in some pictures and they went out this morning and got it. Here's that school teacher, Bob Sauer, in an interview. I could see that there was something gleaming white underneath the trees in the back that isn't normally there. And when I went to investigate it, it was very obviously part of a plane. It had the same curvature as a fuselage. It had a plane-type window in it.

And it was white, which is why it was gleaming. The NTSB found that four bolts used to keep the plug in place on Flight 1282 were missing. Officials are now working to figure out if they'd been installed in the first place. Loose parts have since been found on other Alaska Airlines and also United Airlines' MAX 9 jets. Alaska Airlines said the safety of its planes is a priority, and it will, quote, take the time and steps necessary to ensure their airworthiness. Boeing also said it would help address all findings from federal investigators to make sure its planes are safe. Questions about the safety of Boeing planes aren't new,

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Regency app for details. Even before this Alaska Airlines incident, Boeing was already facing scrutiny over its MAX series planes. The MAX 8, which was an earlier version of the MAX 9, was involved in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Lion Air was the operator in Indonesia, and OMAX has a fatal crash. And, you know, as they're still investigating that crash, you know, months later, there is another crash, an Ethiopian Air crash, you know, same OMAX 8, you know, similar circumstance. And then, you know, everyone became very, very worried

at that point. You know, two crashes within, you know, six months very, very worried at that point. You know, two crashes within six months or so, 346 people died. Authorities found that a flight control system, not door plugs, played a role in those crashes. It was getting kind of erroneous data that was causing it to push the plane's nose down. And the pilots weren't able to overcome it. and the pilots weren't able to overcome it. So it resulted in the system thinking that it needed to push the nose of the plane down based on faulty data and resulting in the planes crashing. Mack's eight and nine planes were taken out of service worldwide for two years.

What did that mean for Boeing? Well, I mean, it was just, you know, an enormously difficult period for Boeing. It was under investigation, facing lawsuits, facing a number of different probes over the course of the two years. And it was really just sort of nonstop in the spotlight. The CEO was fired. There was a large $2.5 billion settlement with the Justice Department where Boeing had to concede that its employees had deceived regulators about safety issues.

They had a new CEO and he was just promising that they were going to get back to basics, focus on the product and engineering and just clean everything up. And they were going to repair, focus on the product and engineering, and could just clean everything up. And they were going to kind of repair the damage with the regulator, repair the relationship with the FAA, and just get back on track. In 2020, the FAA allowed Boeing to resume deliveries of its MAX planes to airlines. But manufacturing issues have persisted, and they've included electrical problems,

misdrilled holes, and loose bolts and rudder systems. Some of those issues involve one of Boeing's most important suppliers, a company called Spirit Aerosystems. It was spun off from Boeing in 2005. Spirit Aerosystems, it's another aerospace company. It's based in Wichita, Kansas. They make the plane planes fuselage. So they're the ones that are responsible for installing the door plug in this case. So, you know, Spirits and Boeing are kind of both involved in this investigation and involved in,

you know, trying to figure out, you know, where the problem may have occurred. Last year, you know, Boeing told airlines that they had discovered a problem. Holes that had been drilled, I think, were misaligned and they had to be looked at again. That was something that was blamed on spirits. They recently brought in a new CEO, a longtime Boeing executive, aiming to kind of turn things around, stop all of these production problems that had created disruptions for Boeing, which is their customer, and sort of get that process under control. Spirit Aero Systems, along with a union that represents its workforce, have been invited to join in the investigation. The supplier didn't respond to

requests for comment. What happens next? Like, what are you going to be keeping an eye on? Well, I mean, so the next step is, like, there's sort of the two tracks, getting the planes off the ground and seeing what comes out of these inspections. Like, if they find more problems, things like these loose bolts

that point to a potential cause, or we don't know if that was the cause, but that gives some clues into what possibly could have happened. And then the investigation that the NTSB is conducting, which hopefully will answer some of these questions. It might take several months, but the NTSB has said, if we learn something sooner that has safety implications, we won't wait.

We'll tell you if something needs to change that we find out soon over the course of the investigation. Allison says that the incident on Flight 1282 is the latest in a long line of problems that have recently affected the airline industry. You know, there has been, you know, last year we saw a number of, you know, for instance, close calls on runways, you know, an uptick saw a number of, you know, for instance, close calls on runways, you know, an uptick in some of the more serious incidents on runways. And we've avoided anything in the US, especially anything kind of truly catastrophic. But we have seen concerns,

you know, about shortages of air traffic controllers, shortages of pilots, like kind of a number of incidents that are on their own are fairly minor, but that sort of have people scratching their heads when taken as a whole. And then to start this year with this incident, you know, I think that does have people a little bit worried. I think that like the FAA and Boeing and the airlines probably do have a lot of work to do to convince people that this plane is safe to fly once it's ungrounded, especially since the investigation into the root cause is still ongoing and will probably be going on for some time. What would it mean for airlines if Boeing can't sort out these issues that it's facing?

You know, like there's really only two major airplane suppliers of this size. So there's, you know, there's Boeing and there's Airbus. And that makes the airlines very dependent on these suppliers and, you know, very frustrated when things go wrong, whether it's just mundane stuff like there's supply chain snarls and delivery delays or, you know, even more so when it's serious things that undermine people's confidence in travel. When things like this happen and there's a sense that it's one thing after another, you know, it is very concerning for the airlines. That's all for today, Tuesday, January 9th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Alison Pohl, Andrew Tangle, and Sharon Turlip.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.