Boeing Max 9 jets remain grounded as airlines await inspection instructions

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/>