EFE, NEW YORK
United Airlines said Monday it has found loose screws on its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes, the model grounded by authorities after one of the aircraft, operated by Alaska Airlines, lost part of its fuselage mid-flight on Saturday.
"Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to be related to installation issues on the door panel: for example, screws that needed additional tightening," United Airlines said in a brief statement to the media today.
"These findings will be remedied by our Technical Operations team to safely return the aircraft to service," he added.
United Airlines is the largest operator of Boeing 737 Max 9s, with 79 of these aircraft in its fleet, while Alaska Airlines, which has not yet commented on any inspections, has 65.
The Alaska Airlines aircraft that suffered the incident on Saturday lost, at almost 5,000 meters altitude, the panel that sealed a gap designed to house an additional emergency door, a common measure in aircraft that fly routes with low passenger density.
The plane was forced to return to Portland, Oregon, from where it had taken off, just minutes after takeoff, without any serious injuries.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the immediate grounding of all 737 Max 9s with the same configuration as the Alaska Airlines plane for inspections, and on Monday Boeing sent the instructions to carry them out.
The measure, also adopted by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), does not affect any of the company's aircraft in Europe, as the Boeing 737 Max 9s operating in the EU have a different configuration.
In total there are 215 of these aircraftin service worldwide, and in addition to United and Alaska Airlines, they are also used by Panama's Copa Airlines, Mexico's Aeromexico, Icelandair, Turkish Airlines and FlyDubai.
Just two weeks ago, the Boeing 737 was back in the news, after the American multinational asked airlines to inspect their planes for a possible loose screw in the control system.
The latest incident has once again put the spotlight on Boeing 737 Max aircraft, which were grounded in much of the world for about two years after two accidents involving the 737 Max 8 model that killed 346 people, in Indonesia and Ethiopia, in 2019 and 2020.
In both of those cases, it was determined that the flight control software generated erroneous information and put the aircraft into a descent position, despite the pilots' efforts to reverse that instruction.
