More Boeing 737 Max 9 Planes Have Problems

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Three days ago an Alaska Airlines operated Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a door plug as seen in the photo. A three foot by six foot opening was left where the door plug was. The flight was three miles (14850 feet) off the ground so the decompression and other issues were not catastrophic. The pressure dropped from 14.09 psi to about 11.64 psi. The plane was able to get to below 10,000 feet and then return the airport.

A door plug is used to fill a doorway and held together by 12 stop fittings, which prevent the door plug from becoming dislodged. In this case, the plug was not used for a functional door.

United and Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9 planes were grounded by the National Transportation and Safety Board. United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have found loose hardware during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. Loose bolts have been found on door plugs of several (at least five) Boeing 737 Max 9 planes during inspections.

Alaska has 65 of the Max 9 planes. United has 79, which makes United the biggest operator of the jet model. Boeing, which has spent years trying to clean up a host of quality defects, while also ramping up aircraft production, including of the 737 Max. The 737 Max is Boeing’s best-selling aircraft, with more than 4,000 orders to fill. However, the more common Max 8, which is not affected by the grounding, makes up the majority of those orders.

A teenager sitting in the row where the door plug blew out had his t-shirt ripped off his body by the wind blowing out the hole.

Video Explaining Technical Details About the Boeing 737 Max 9 and Plug Doors

The video focus on the construction and securing of the plug option. This is in response to the incident to Alaska Airlines flight AS 1282 whose mid-cabin emergency exit door plug detached in-flight whilst climbing through 16,000ft on 5 Jan 2024.

Contents:
0:58 Introduction
1:24 The Plug Option
3:57 Construction
7:26 Securing The Door
11:39 Alaska Airlines 1282
14:38 Fallout

14 thoughts on “More Boeing 737 Max 9 Planes Have Problems”

  1. This near-catastrophe triggered my memory of a Netflix Documentary just a couple of years ago on Boeing and this very SAME plane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boeing
    Summary

    Its story examines the 2018 and 2019 Boeing 737 MAX incidents, where two airliners crashed killing a combined 346 people and how Boeing may have been more concerned with financial gain over the safety of their passengers.[4]

    Kennedy said about the 21st-century history of Boeing:

    “There were many decades when Boeing did extraordinary things by focusing on excellence and safety and ingenuity. Those three virtues were seen as the key to profit. It could work, and beautifully. And then they were taken over by a group that decided Wall Street was the end-all, be-all. There needs to be a balance in play, so you have to elect representatives that hold the companies responsible for the public interest, rather than just lining their own pocketbooks.”[5]
    =============
    These events have particular relevance for me since my late uncle was a Boeing VP for International Sales back in the 70s-80s. He would give a 3-letter government agency advice (I shouldn’t say which one here) on how other companies were building their planes after traveling around the world checking out the competition. Those were the days when a single line worker could shut down the assembly line, when Boeing headquarters was in Seattle, not in Chicago while the assembly line was still in Seattle. He took me on a tour of the factory and bragged about the super-close tolerances of Boeing’s airplanes. I doubt management at his level today even knows what tolerances are.
    As the movie documents, Boeing made a major merger, became more focused on their stock price than making quality aircraft, took shortcuts and disregarded engineers in favor of B-school grads. It’s a shameful indictment of not just Boeing but American corporate “downfalls” everywhere.

  2. What the hell is wrong w/ so many of the latest 737’s”s? We have multiple MAJOR problems going back several years. It seems there is no common denotator here. We’ve seen total disasters w/ the loss of all on board, To the latest incident, where a boy in the center seat next to the “plug” that blew out got his shirt ripped off him. (I thank God he had his seat belt on, or he would not still be w/us) We see problems at Boing (of some kind) not associated w/ some manufacturing process, but it would seem, a deeper manufacturing ethos.

    I have the greatest respect for Boing. Producer of some of the greatest aircraft the world has ever seen. (I really do mean that) So what’s going on now w/Boing?

    • Boeing was once a company managed by engineers. However in 1997 Boeing acquired witMcDonald Douglas (a dying aircraft manufacture). Much of Boeings upper management was replaced by Douglas Bean counters. The companies headquarters was moved from Washington to Chicago. The reason given was that the time zone made communications easier for customer. End result Boeings factories and engines were now managed from an office thousands of miles away. Much of the software work for new aircraft was outsourced to firms to lower cost. And keeping things on schedule and on budget were priorities. End result was the 737 max.

      • Also labour lost a lot of both their formal and informal leverage with the companies due to these changes and the National ‘right to work’ type legislations that were passed.
        The labour was not seen as skilled, and simply a replaceable commodity that followed a procedure. It lost it’s value and many of the truly caring, skilled labour either just retired or our scouted by other companies thinning out the quality of Boeing’s labour force. Now they do have a lower skilled, lesser paid workforce with little to no investment or loyalty to Boeing.
        Not the only issue for certain, but an aggravating factor.

  3. A commentator on local TV said that while door plugs are common on commercial aircraft, they are usually installed from the INSIDE of the plane, so air pressure holds them tighter into the frame.

  4. Wow, must have been even louder than a normal flight on a Boeing. I always fly on Airbus if I get the option, they’re much quieter and less fatiguing.

    • Airbus has its history of crashes as well. Initially because they had flight control systems that took the pilots out of the equation of flying the plane. Bad idea. Yes, they are comfortable, well-designed planes from a passengers POV. But you still want pilots to be pilots. Airbus figured this out, eventually…

  5. Hmmm… shoddy workmanship in manufacture? IF SO, then Boeing … the company … goes down. EVERY other plane they’ve made becomes suspect. Every one, say in the last 5 years. (It is notable that the length-of-service of this particular fuselage has not been leaked. Has it been in service a month? A year? 2 or 3? Was there a particular crew of assembly hacks employed ‘back then’ that are not now? Or are they still there? Was some kind of torque-wrench supposed to be used to secure the bolts, which wasn’t, or which turned out to either be defective, or set to the incorrect torque setting?)

    This is a RED HOT POTATO for Boeing. A nuclear shît-storm. That other planes have already been discovered as having ‘loose bolts’ is a shocker, actually. Imagine of the whole-fleet correlation was done on all available maintenance data! (AI could do such a specific correlation across all sorts of potentially lethal shortcomings in mere seconds, with all the data). If Boeing doesn’t come up — VERY quickly — with some kind of “defective materials” explanation, or “deficient maintenance protocol” finding, well I think we can watch Boeing fall from grace mighty fast.

    Because Defective Materials (i.e. bolts out-of-spec, or fittings out-of-true, or a door panel torqued for some reason, or the aforementioned torque wrench being a bogey) and procedures is FIXABLE. Not only fixable, but fixable-and-provable. New procedures, second (or third, or 4th) independent QC checks, rëd-flags in software assessment, specifically keeping manual checks by “old codgers” who understand the intricacies of maintaining and building flawless commercial aircraft … really would do the trick.

    Then Boeing lives to see another day.

    Fess up, recall ALL aircraft made in the last 10 years, check ALL of the critical points-of-failure and FIX all of them FOR FREE. Don’t make another aircraft until all this work is completed, and comprehensively summarized before Congressional Board of Inquiry and Investigation.

    ‘Cuz, if they fall into the trap of calling the failure a one-off, and then evidence continues to pile up publicly that other fuselages ALREADY have had yellow-flag maintenance warnings of inadequate operational QC … then they’ve Fûqued. The 737 MAX debacle of self-crashing planes due to a software combo-bug some years back has barely worn off. Every time I geti into an Alaska 737 MAX (as I did 2× last week), I still think about it.

    And now this?

    Quite simply, I won’t be flying ANY flights in this QC nightmare bird until something seriously believable, forthright and actively remedial is done. Something water-tight. Then, and ONLY then, will I fly a Boeing bird.

    Sheesh.

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

    • This aircraft was delivered new 2 months ago. It’s a manufacturing defect and now a host of other 737’s have been found with loose bolts on these plugs. Boeing has had serious issues with quality at Spirit for ages, and they’ve tried to cover them up. The FAA have been asleep at the helm again, just like they were with prior 737-Max issues. Boeing used to be known for their engineering. Now they’re known for their defects and inability to fix problems.

      • So True, They were a great company, nice aircraft, but over the past decade, it has declined a LOT. Poor quality and zero innovation. They are overdue to be disrupted by a newcomer. That likely won’t happen though, since the cost of entry is too great.

      • I have not heard it reported in open media that “loose plugs” have been determined to be the cause of this failure, or endemic w/other Boing aircraft. Would you please quote the source of your information? I really want to know.

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