The emergency hatch of an American Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 passenger plane fell off after takeoff and immediately made an emergency landing. There were no casualties. After the accident occurred, the relevant airline announced the grounding of all aircraft of the same type. The US National Transportation Safety Board said it has begun investigating the incident.
Afterwards, a number of airlines around the world announced the temporary suspension of flights of this aircraft and carried out safety checks. The European Aviation Safety Authority said that currently no airline from an EU member state is using the same aircraft type as the plane in the accident. The British Airways Safety Supervisory Authority said any relevant aircraft must comply with instructions to enter its airspace. Copa Airlines, Aeromexico, and Turkish Airlines have all announced the grounding and inspection of this type of aircraft.
The “previous record” of the 737 MAX series
In 2018-2019, in less than five months, the Boeing 737 Max 8 had two crashes, resulting in a total of 346 deaths. These two incidents led to the global grounding of Boeing 737 Max flights. This model was Boeing's best-selling aircraft ever, when pre-order orders from airlines around the world reached hundreds of billions of dollars. There are hundreds of active aircraft around the world.
In 2021, Boeing reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice after paying 2.5 billion US dollars. The Air Traffic Control Authority is responsible for overseeing Boeing and evaluating its aircraft. It was only 20 months after the two crashes that the 737 MAX related models were re-certified. Boeing estimates that the crisis cost the company $20.7 billion.
The Boeing 737 family: the world's best-selling airliner
The Boeing 737 series is the most successful series of narrow-body airliners in the history of civil aviation. 11,000 aircraft have been delivered and used since it was put into operation.
Since 1967, the first generation 737 — the original generation (original) — came out, the 737 family has spanned four generations. The second-generation 737 Classic (Classic) first flew in 1984, the third-generation 737 Next Generation (Next Generation) first flew in 1997, and the fourth-generation 737 MAX flew for the first time in 2016.
Currently, the biggest sales volume is the third-generation 737 NG, and a total of 6,253 units have been delivered for use as of 2023. In China's civil aviation industry, 737 NG accounts for about 40% of all transport aircraft in the industry. The 737 NG series has also had some major accidents. Most recently, in March 2022, China Eastern Airlines flight 737-800 crashed in Guangxi, killing all 132 people on board.
However, the Boeing 737 MAX 9 model where the cabin door was torn this time belongs to the fourth-generation 737 series developed by Boeing in 2011. Currently, there are 215 Max 9 aircraft in service around the world, and about one-third are operated by United Airlines and Alaska Airlines.
Is the Boeing 737 really unsafe?
The airsafe website counts the rate of fatal air crashes per million flights of various civil aviation aircraft models. As of March 2019, the overall ratio of the Boeing 737 family was 0.24, ranking 11th out of the 29 models participating in the statistics. The third-generation 737 has the lowest NG ratio, only 0.07, and the safety ranking is second only to Embraer 170/190 and Boeing 747-400. However, the fourth-generation 737 MAX series had a high ratio of 3.08, ranking second to last among the 29 models.
Civil aviation expert Chen Jianguo mentioned in a 2022 article that after 60 years of testing, the safety of the 737 series aircraft is indeed a highly safe model. Especially for the 737 NG aircraft, the safety is still very good.