Sabrina Taverniese and Sydney Ember discuss issues with Boeing planes.

Feb. 18, 2024.

In this episode of The Daily, Sabrina Tavernise talks to Sydney Ember, a business reporter for The New York Times about issues with Boeing's 737 MAX 8 plane and a recent issue on an Alaska Airlines flight on a Boeing 737 MAX 9. 

Ember said that Boeing has been "under the microscope" due to plane crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 that killed nearly 350 people. People were skeptical of the safety of the planes which caused problems for Boeing, but none that were insurmountable.

Fast forward to January 2024, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 takes off from Portland, Oregon, heading to Ontario, California. During the plane's ascent to cruising altitude, at about 16,000 feet, a door plug on the plane flies off and the pilots are forced to make an emergency landing.

The door plug is not an actual door, but rather a way to close an opening where an additional emergency exit could be added if needed, depending on Federal Aviation Administration regulations and passenger numbers.

Immediately following this incident, the FAA grounds all Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes with this door plug, amounting to around 170 planes in the United States, according to Ember.

Ember notes that the only airlines that use the MAX 9 are Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, making up 65 and 79 planes in their respective fleets.

The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report regarding why the door plug came off during flight. There are supposed to be four bolts that hold the door plug in place and they were missing on this plane.

During an inspection of the plane, loose rivets were found and the door plug had to be disassembled to repair them. When the door plug was put back together, those four bolts were not put in to secure it.

The news value of this episode of The Daily relates to everyday life for a good portion of Americans. 

"Every day, FAA's Air Traffic Organization (ATO) provides service to more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers across more than 29 million square miles of airspace," per the FAA website.

Not only does this give the listener insight into Boeing, but also commercial flight and the planes that they could be getting on.

I think the main challenge reporting on this could have been getting access to the information, I am not personally aware of how secure Boeing keeps information like this but I imagine the NTSB report would be public.

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