Is My Airplane Safe? What to Know As Boeing 737-9 Max Cleared to Return to Service

27.01.2024 - 01:27 / afar.com / Toby Enqvist / Mike Whitaker

The Boeing 737-9 Max was cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week to return to scheduled service for the first time since a harrowing Alaska Airlines incident on January 5 cast doubt on the plane’s safety. Both Alaska and United, the only two U.S. carriers that operate the model, said that flights on the Max 9 will start as early as this weekend. But the question remains: Will passengers also return, or will they steer clear of the troubled jet?

Just how fliers feel about this particular plane, or about flying in general, may not be clear for weeks or even months, if the previous Max grounding in 2019 following two fatal accidents is any indication. When that plane, the Max 8 version, returned to the skies in 2021, lingering concerns led some airlines like American to alert customers if they’d been booked on that plane, giving them the option of switching flights without penalty. This time around, Alaska and United are both offering waivers to passengers if they want to change or cancel flights that are scheduled on a Max 9, but only for a short period (although it could be extended depending on what the airlines decide).

As the Max 9 resumes service (there are 215 aircraft in this series in service worldwide, and 144 of them are in the United States), the FAA is taking pains to reassure nervous passengers.

“We made clear this aircraft would not go back into service until it was safe,” FAA administrator Mike Whitaker said in announcing the news this week. “The exhaustive, enhanced review our team completed after several weeks of information gathering gives me and the FAA confidence to proceed to the inspection and maintenance phase.”

Each plane that gets the all-clear will have had to pass inspection under close supervision, focusing on the plug door (a piece of fuselage covering an unused emergency exit door) that blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight minutes after the plane had taken off from Portland, Oregon. The FAA checks took up to 12 hours in some cases.

The FAA’s move, however, wasn’t a wholehearted endorsement: “This won’t be back to business as usual for Boeing,” Whitaker added, announcing that the agency would not approve any expansion in production lines for the 737 Max “until we are satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved.”

United Airlines also added a cautionary note in its announcement that Max 9 flights could resume as early as this Sunday, January 29, adding that it will “put safety and compliance first” as it proceeds with the necessary checks.

“We will only return each Max 9 to service once this thorough inspection process is complete,” Toby Enqvist, United’s executive vice president and chief operations officer,