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The decision by American regulators on Saturday night to temporarily ground several Boeing 737 jets is a massive blow to the US aircraft giant, as well as to the airlines that use its planes.
First launched in 1967, the Boeing 737 is one of the most commercially successful aeroplanes ever produced.
The narrow-body airliners make up the majority of the aviation giant’s sales volumes with around 10,000 delivered since their inception.
But in 2018 and 2019, two fatal crashes claimed the lives of 346 passengers. This led to a 20-month grounding of the planes while significant changes were made.
Now, after the fuselage of a brand new 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines aircraft blew out at 16,000 feet and left passengers clinging to their seats, the future of the brand has been called into question once again.
Alaska Airlines grounded more than 60 737s in an immediate response to the safety failure on Saturday morning, while civil aviation authorities around the globe held talks on the incident.
The FAA said an investigation was under way, while the country’s National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to inspect the faulty plane.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority said there were no UK-registered 737 MAX 9 aircrafts but said they would have to be inspected before arriving in British airspace.
“We have written to non-UK and foreign permit carriers to ask if inspections have been undertaken prior to operation in UK airspace,” it said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The organisation said it was also monitoring the situation “very closely”, while Boeing said it “stood ready in support”.
China’s aviation regulator conducted an emergency meeting to consider a response to the incident, including a possible grounding of the Boeing Max fleet in the country, Bloomberg reported.
China was the first to ground Boeing’s 737 Max aircrafts after the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
It comes just a week after the FAA said it was “closely monitoring targeted inspections” of Boeing 737 Max models “to look for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system”.
Fear that company’s value may be impacted
Analysts said inspections of Boeing’s 737 fleet could weigh heavily on the company and further delay the roll out of its Max 10 – of which Ryanair has made 150 orders.
Nick Cunningham, analyst at Agency Partners, said the valuation of Boeing’s stock rests on it eventually delivering 60 of these planes a month. Currently, it is delivering 20 new and 10 from its warehouse.
Mr Cunningham added: “Boeing looks fully valued even if it can pull off 60 of these planes a month, and implicitly therefore, overvalued if it can’t.