United Airlines Holdings Inc. has temporarily pulled a handful of the Boeing 737 Max 9 variant from service to conduct emergency inspections following an incident on Jan. 5 during which a fuselage section broke loose during flight on the same model operated by Alaska Airlines. The US carrier, the biggest customer for that particular Boeing model, removed five recently-built jets from service at the direction of Boeing, according to a person familiar with the decision, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The airline, which has 78 737 Max 9 in operation, declined to comment, and a Boeing spokesman deferred to United for comment. The move hasn’t resulted in any additional cancellations for the Chicago-based airline, which is also dealing with a winter storm in the Northeastern US. The Boeing aircraft flying for Alaska Airlines lost an auxiliary emergency door shortly after taking off from Portland, Oregon, on Friday night. The jet returned to the airport and nobody was seriously injured. Alaska Airlines has since voluntarily grounded its fleet of 65 Max 9, and regulators in the the US, Europe and China are considering their formal response to the incident. “United would be smart to ground theirs as well until they get to the bottom of this and everybody has the chance to inspect their planes,” said Richard Healing, a former NTSB member who is CE of of Air Safety Engineering.<br/>
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Latin American carriers Copa Airlines and Aeromexico have together grounded about 40 of their Boeing 737 Max 9s after an Alaska Airlines aircraft of the same type suffered a depressurisation incident. On 6 January, the US Federal Aviation Administration said it was temporarily grounding “certain” aircraft of the type pending inspections. “In accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Aeromexico will ground its B737 Max 9 aircraft until they undergo inspection,” the Mexico City-headquartered airline said on 6 January. “The inspection of our Max 9 fleet will be completed as soon as possible to continue with scheduled operations, and we will continue to work closely with Boeing and the competent authorities.” According to Cirium fleets data, Aeromexico has 52 737 Max aircraft in service, of which 19 are the dash 9 type. It also operates 34 older-generation 737-800s. Copa, meantime, says it has ”temporarily suspended” the operation of 21 Max 9s. Cirium data show that the carrier has 29 of the type in service. ”Copa has initiated the necessary technical inspections and expects to return these aircraft safely and reliably to the flight schedule within the next 24 hours,” the Panama City-based carrier said on 6 January. ”The airline’s team is working to minimise the impact on our passengers, although some delays and cancellations are expected due to this situation beyond the airline’s control.”<br/>
A Boeing passenger jet model, the 737 Max 9, remained grounded in the United States on Sunday as airlines awaited instructions from the plane maker and the FAA on how to inspect the planes and resume service, two days after a harrowing flight raised concerns about the jet. No one was seriously injured in the episode on an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday night in which a portion of a Max 9 fuselage blew out in midair, exposing passengers to howling wind. The plane landed safely, but the event, on a flight from Portland, Ore., to Ontario, Calif., has spooked travelers and prompted an immediate call for safety inspections on Max 9 planes with similar seat configurations. Boeing and the FAA were working to draft a message to airlines — primarily Alaska and United Airlines — with detailed instructions on how to inspect the planes, according to a person familiar with the process. Those discussions were well underway on Sunday, and the FAA has final approval over the contents of the message, as is typically the case. In the meantime, Alaska, United and other carriers said they had parked all their Max 9 planes, despite stating on Saturday that some were deemed safe to fly. The federal authorities have focused attention on a mid-cabin door plug, which was part of the plane body that was torn out at an altitude of 16,000 feet on Friday and is used to fill the space where an emergency exit would be placed if the plane were configured with more seats. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading an investigation into the episode, has not identified a cause and is searching for the missing piece of the plane. The board said it would look into a wide range of possible factors including FAA oversight, Boeing’s manufacturing process and installation or maintenance work done on the plane. “Everything’s in, we go very broad, nothing’s excluded,” Jennifer Homendy, the chairwoman of the board, said at a news conference on Saturday night. The FAA said on Saturday that the required inspections would affect 171 Max 9 planes operated by US airlines or in US territory. It said the inspections should take four to eight hours per plane to complete. Airlines abroad, including Turkish Airlines and Copa Airlines in Panama, also parked Max 9 planes. The FAA order contributed to hundreds of canceled flights over the weekend. Alaska, which has 65 Max 9 planes, said it had canceled 170 flights on Sunday because of the Max 9 grounding, affecting about 25,000 customers. It said it expected a “significant” number of additional cancellations in the first half of the week. United Airlines said that it had canceled about 270 flights on Saturday and Sunday that it had planned to carry out aboard its Max 9 planes. It said it was able to preserve another 145 flights over both days by swapping in other planes. United has 79 Max 9 planes, more than any other carrier. In a statement on Sunday, the airline said that it had parked all those planes and had started removing door panels and performing preliminary inspections on those jets while it awaited further FAA instructions on what inspections would need to be carried out to get the planes flying again. “We’re continuing to work with the F.A.A. to clarify the inspection process and requirements for returning all Max 9 aircraft to service,” the airline said in a statement. “We are working with customers to reaccommodate them on other flights and in some cases have been able to avoid cancellations by switching to other aircraft types.”<br/>
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud officially invalidated Ethiopia’s agreement that granted the landlocked Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, access to the Red Sea in exchange for a stake in Ethiopian Airlines. Mohamud declared the memorandum of agreement entered into last week between the two governments as “illegal,” in a post on X, formerly Twitter, while he signed a law that repealed the deal on Saturday evening. Somalia has said the sea access deal breaches its territorial integrity and sovereignty. The government announced that it will defend and protect the autonomy in a statement following the now-nullified agreement, and recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia for urgent consultation. The president did not disclose specific details regarding the content of the new law or the timeline of its approval by the Somali parliament. Officials in Somaliland and Ethiopia didn’t immediately respond when contacted for comment by Bloomberg News.<br/>
An EgyptAir plane, en route from Cairo International Airport to Benina International Airport in Benghazi, was forced to divert to Athens International Airport due to “poor weather conditions and low visibility” in the Libyan city, said the Egyptian airline. Flight MS829, an B737-800 aircraft with 111 passengers on board, diverted to Athens airport, “the nearest alternate airport” after dust at Benina Airport which made it difficult to land, explained EgyptAir in a statement via Facebook. The airline did not disclose in its statement a date for the flight to return to Benghazi.<br/>