A United Airlines Boeing 737-800 aircraft flew in the air on Friday with a significant portion of its exterior missing, the most recent in a string of issues affecting the manufacturer. The 25-year-old aircraft on the San Francisco to Oregon route successfully landed down, but following inspection, the crew found a shattered external panel. The missing component was not found until all 139 passengers and six crew members had safely evacuated from the aircraft, according to United Airlines, which claims that no emergency had been declared. “Before the aircraft returns to service, we’ll carry out a comprehensive inspection and make all the necessary repairs,” the airline stated. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States is looking into the event. This week alone, there have been seven incidents involving Boeing aircraft that have been recorded.
After an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 was forced to make an emergency landing on January 5 after a door plug broke out of the side of the aircraft shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, Boeing has been under severe scrutiny about the quality of their aircraft. Afterward, three passengers filed lawsuits against Boeing and the airline, arguing that negligence was to blame for the disaster.
Boeing has been in the news since the January mishap due to unrelated safety and quality issues. Soon after takeoff at San Francisco International Airport earlier in March, a tire from a Boeing aircraft came off, smashed through a fence in the parking lot below, and collided with automobiles. A Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 passenger plane’s nose wheel also came off in January. At Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, it rolled away while the airplane waited on the runway for takeoff permission. A Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner plummeted suddenly on Monday in what LATAM Airlines reported as a “strong movement” in midair, injuring at least 50 people.
Nearly a year before the Alaska Airlines event, in March 2023, the FAA opened an inquiry into Boeing following the catastrophic disasters of the Boeing 787 MAX-8 aircraft operated by Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air in 2018. According to the assessment completed in February, Boeing is not as dedicated to safety as it claims to be. As per Boeing’s representations of the objective, the FAA “observed documentation, survey responses, and employee interviews that did not provide objective evidence of a foundational commitment to safety.”
