2024-02-05 11:19:20
One month after the incident of the door torn off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9, five years after the two fatal accidents that grounded the plane for 22 months, Boeing is once again in the grip of with manufacturing problems with its Boeing 737 Max.
The aircraft manufacturer Boeing indicated on Sunday that it had been informed by a supplier of a conformity problem on the fuselages of certain 737 MAX which, without representing an immediate danger for the planes in flight, should require intervention on around fifty examples not still delivered. It appears that an employee of supplier Spirit AeroSystems noticed that two holes in the fuselage window frame may not have been drilled exactly to the aircraft’s specifications.
“Rework around 50 undelivered planes”
“If this does not pose an immediate flight safety issue and all 737s can continue to operate safely, we believe we will need to rework approximately 50 undelivered aircraft,” Boeing said in a letter to its staff. According to some sources, this defect has so far been found in 22 fuselages, or almost half of the 47 aircraft inspected at that time in the production line. Defect that could be present on certain 737 aircraft in service.
VIDEO. Door torn off in mid-flight on a Boeing 737 Max: poorly screwed bolts on several planes
Boeing said its additional work should cause deliveries to be postponed in the short term. Already this week, the aircraft manufacturer had announced to improve the quality of its planes that it was going to take a “pause” in the ramp-up of the 737 MAX, which was expected to accelerate by 2025. This increase in production was starting of the principle that the 737 MAX 7 and the 737 MAX 10 would soon receive certifications.
This new halt comes as Boeing received 391 gross orders for the MAX 7 and 1,180 for the MAX 10, deliveries of which were initially scheduled to begin in 2023. But faced with uncertainty, several companies have just removed them from their schedules for 2024 like United and Southwest.
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