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Officials investigating why a panel on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew open during an Alaska Airlines flight last week say they are struggling to piece together exactly what happened because the plane’s cockpit voice recorder overwrote itself before it could be retrieved. This is not a new problem. The NTSB, which is leading the investigation, has recommended for years that recorders be programmed to capture up to 25 hours of audio before automatically resetting themselves, but the FAA has been reluctant to mandate longer recordings. The FAA last month proposed 25-hour recorders on new planes but argued that adding them to the existing fleet of U.S. planes would be too expensive. In addition, a pilots’ union has opposed the move to 25-hour recordings unless Congress puts in place protections that would prohibit their release to the public. The chairwoman of the safety board, Jennifer Homendy, said the agency’s investigators had conducted 10 investigations since 2018 in which the cockpit voice recorder had been written over, with critical recordings lost forever. The voice recorders are among the key pieces of evidence that investigators use in reconstructing the events that led up to accidents as they work to establish a cause. Homendy said a recording from the Alaska Airlines flight would have contained a lot of important information, including the bang that the crew described hearing soon after the plane took off on Friday from Portland, Ore. She said the recording would have enabled investigators to hear communications between the crew during the incident and identify any communications problems, including any audible alerts in the cockpit. “There’s so much information that we can get off of C.V.R. that’s outside of just the communication amongst the flight crew,” Ms. Homendy said. “That is such a key piece of evidence to improve safety. Without that, we are piecing together things from interviews and losing a lot.”<br/>

For Alaska Airlines and its passengers, a return to normal may take a while. The carrier has grounded a fifth of its fleet after a fuselage panel blew out on one of its Boeing 737 Max 9 jets on Friday night, leaving a hole in the side of the plane. The airline announced Wednesday that it would keep its Max 9 jets grounded until at least Saturday while it awaited instructions from Boeing on how to carry out safety inspections. United Airlines, with 79 planes, and Alaska, with 65, are the heaviest users of the Max 9 in the United States. But the jet model makes up less than 10% of United’s fleet, allowing it to fill in gaps on planned routes more easily than Alaska. Grounding the Max 9 has forced Alaska to cancel as many as 150 flights per day. About 20% of its flights were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware, which tracks flight data. “It’s been extremely disruptive,” said Bret Peyton, a director of operations at Alaska Airlines. It’s unclear when those jets will be back in the air. The day after the incident, the FAA ordered all 171 Max 9 jets in the United States to be grounded and inspected. Boeing gave airlines instructions on how to inspect the jets, but the aviation agency said Tuesday that those instructions needed to be revised. Though it’s unclear how Boeing’s initial inspection instructions fell short, the F.A.A. said the “safety of the flying public, not speed,” would take priority in returning the planes to service. “It’s a waiting game on the FAA,” said Kathleen Bangs, an aviation specialist at FlightAware. “You can be sure those airlines, especially Alaska, are in close contact with them.” The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the manufacturing and installation of the panel, known as a door plug, that flew off. Alaska and United said they had found loose parts during preliminary inspections of the panels.<br/>

NHK has learned that the pilots of the passenger plane that collided with a coast guard aircraft at Haneda Airport on January 2 said the plane was uncontrollable after the crash. The Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided with the coast guard De Havilland Canada Dash 8 on a runway immediately after touching down at the airport in Tokyo and burst into flames. All the 379 passengers and crew members aboard the JAL plane had evacuated within 18 minutes. Five of the six crew on the coast guard plane died. JAL interviewed the pilots of the jet on what happened before and after the crash. According to the airline's report, the pilots said they saw "something" momentarily immediately after the plane landed normally and felt a strong impact. They said they then felt the aircraft was skidding. The report says the captain tried to operate the brakes, tail rudder and the steering mechanism, among other actions, but they did not function. Asked about the situation after the aircraft came to a stop on the grass apron by the runway, the pilots said the cockpit was pitch black and that they immediately realized an emergency evacuation would be necessary. But they said the light to indicate the spraying of fire extinguishing agents on the engines has been completed was not on. They added that the system for instructing flight attendants to carry out an emergency evacuation was not working either. The government's Transport Safety Board is also investigating events from the collision until the evacuation.<br/>

For an airline with the marketing slogan “Move Beyond”, Cathay Pacific is struggling to put its many troubles behind it. The Hong Kong flag carrier hoped 2024 would mark its return to full capacity and an upward trajectory in its fortunes after years of pandemic-related disruptions. In terms of profitability benchmarks, the airline is on track — Cathay expects its full-year results due to be announced in March will show it breaking a three-year streak of annual losses. But more broadly, the carrier is beset with a long list of problems — an acute shortage of pilots, low cabin crew morale, a lacklustre share price and passenger complaints over flight cancellations. It has cancelled more than 80 flights since Christmas Eve, raising a public expression of concern from the territory’s leader. “It is the basic service requirement for airlines to provide satisfactory service to passengers,” John Lee said this week. The Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, its pilots’ union, have called for an inquiry into the pilot shortages and cancellations. Gary Chan, a local pro-Beijing lawmaker, was among those who saw his flight to mainland China cut this week. It would be “difficult not to foster distrust towards” the airline, he lamented. Such problems have shaken the confidence of staff of an airline ranked the world’s best four times by the Skytrax consultancy, most recently in 2014. As a pilot who has flown for more than 25 years with the airline put it, “you used to be at the top of the Premier League. Now you are near the bottom.” Cathay’s pilot workforce was about 40 per cent lower than 2019 levels as of last month, according to the HKAOA despite an active recruitment of new joiners. Cabin crew numbers were also roughly 50 per cent lower than pre-Covid figures, according to its flight attendants union.<br/>

Malaysia Aviation Group, which runs Malaysia Airlines, has a new look for its AeroDarat Services (ADS) ground crew, and it's looking chic and spiffy. The update in uniform is part of the company’s efforts in embracing diversity and transforming itself to be even better. The new set of uniforms are in navy blue, and feature one of Malaysia's iconic crafts, the songket. Focusing on modernity, the tailored ensemble – consisting of a blazer, a shirt and skirt or pants for women, and for the men, a Nehru-collared shirt and trousers – symbolises MAG’s unwavering commitment to providing quality service, and its professionalism, while celebrating Malaysia's vibrant culture. The outfits for women are interchangeable, meaning one can choose to wear either the pants or skirt, and there is also a hijab in the same colour for those who wish to wear it. According to MAG group managing director, Datuk Captain Izham Ismail, the uniform was designed in-house by creative young minds.<br/>