WHAT Is going ON with Boeing?! MAX-9 Door blowout

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The passengers of this Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9 suddenly saw a section of wall in their cabin fall OUT of the aircraft, just minutes after their flight took off. HOW can such a thing be possible? Is this another problem in the 737 MAX family?

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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.

[bearcubdaycare]

178 seats capacity, 171 seats full, and the two seats closest were empty. Incredible luck.

[DanielVidz]

I'm not a mechanic, but when my car blew it's head gasket, I decided to fix it myself. I was successful. I had like 13 bolts left over, and many warning messages. It's nice to know I can still get a job working for Boeing

[arkasytyt]

I always thought that the helicopter drop tests for phone cases didn't matter because such a situation would never happen anyway. I guess I was wrong.

[tujue]

If I remember correctly, after the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and the MDD board taking over, someone said it was a matter of time that DC10 issues will repeat at Boeing. That quote always comes to my mind when 737MAX has issues...

[StrongDreamsWaitHere]

“”A Boeing aerospace engineer presented a controversial white paper in 2001 at an internal technical symposium. The engineer, John Hart-Smith, warned colleagues of the risks of the subcontracting strategy, especially if Boeing outsourced too much work and didn’t provide sufficient on-site quality and technical support to its suppliers.

“The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers, ” Hart-Smith wrote. “These costs do not vanish merely because the work itself is out-of-sight.””

[BigJohnson]

“When one door closes, another one opens.”
-Boeing

[majuuorthrus]

My dad used to work in engineering, including air and spacecraft parts. The quality control in his workplace was insanely tight. There's parts that got rejected because a hole was less than 0.1mm out of place. I asked why when I was a kid (because that seemed ridiculous and over-zealous at my young age) and got told that if they didn't hold work to that standard, people died.

[waynewestlake]

My father-in-law was a machinist for Boeing his whole life, living & working in Wichita, KS, Air Capital of the World. It absolutely breaks his heart to see the company that Boeing has become.

[ionaf]

The phone case was confirmed to be a Spigen cryo armour case. It's worth mentioning that the phone likely hit branches on its way down then landed in grass, breaking the fall.

[Maggie-trkd]

NTSB media briefing on January 7, 2024 reported that the cockpit door was blasted open upon the decompression event and smashed into the lavatory door and initially became stuck. NTSB further reported that the first officer's headset was pulled off, the captain's headset was dislodged, and the laminated Quick Reference Checklist stowed below the cockpit windows was blown out into the cabin. NTSB reported that, according to Boeing, the cockpit door was designed to open during a decompression event but the manual did not say so. This was apparently not merely an opening of vents but an opening of the entire door. The flight attendant, after several attempts, was finally able to get the cockpit door closed.

[melissapatterson]

I am a sheetmetal mech lead on the 737-800 NG and our facility also works on the max. I LOVE your post and have binge watched most of them in the past couple weeks. All our 737 are operated by either delta or American. Watching your show makes me more aware of the maintenance we are preforming on these aircrafts. Please keep doing what you do and always keep yourself and everyone you fly safe. 😊

[carloberruti]

Thanks Petter, great video as always. As to the cockpit door blowing open (min. 2:30 — with your correct caption “the door actually blew open”), I just read a declaration by the NTSB chair, Jennifer Homendy, saying that “the Board found that the cockpit door of the B737-9 MAX was designed to open during rapid decompression and that the flight crew was not made aware of this feature”. The door opened so violently that it got stuck and it took a flight attendant three attempts to close it, and a laminated quick reference checklist used in emergencies flew out. Homendy added “we found today that the cockpit door is designed to open during rapid decompression. However, no one among the flight crew knew that. They were not informed. So Boeing is going to make some changes to the manual which then hopefully will translate to procedures and information for the flight attendants and crew in the cockpit”. But… why on earth (and in the skies) does Boeing insist on hiding information to the crew? Wasn’t the MCAS lesson not enough?

[hygntup]

Re. the iPhones, I suspect they just reach terminal velocity quite quickly, so whether they drop from 2m or 2km doesn’t make a difference. The kind of surface they land on is probably key in their survival.

[WhiskyCanuck]

There's an ongoing lawsuit filed a couple months ago where former employees said that reported problems that came up during manufacturing inspections were suppressed, and inspectors that reported too many problems were rotated out or dismissed (hence the lawsuit).

Boeing ignoring manufacturing defects instead of addressing them properly seems to be a major problem.

[philsjh]

This isn’t likely to be what holds up the MAX7 certification, it’ll be the fact they want a safety exemption from the current LEAP engine issue with using anti ice in dry air which can cause the engine cowling to fall apart and can cause “flight control issues” if it impacts the plane

[robinwinsor]

Your analysis of incidents like this is the very best that I’ve found online. Thanks for what you do!

[AaronShenghao]

From “If it's not Boeing, I'm not going” to "If it's Boeing, I'm not going"... Boeing really fallen since the 90's...

[perbilse]

Boeing used to be the coolest company ever. As a kid I was totally awestruck when I saw the 747 for the first time; it was totally out of this world, and it was 30 years before Airbus became a reality. Now Airbus is the world's largest manufacturer of airliners, and Boeing can't update a 50-year old plane design without screwing up. So much for "maximising shareholder value."

[douglaswatters]

I think it's insane how safe airplanes are considering their complexity. Thousands of moving parts, miles of wiring, tons of flammable fuel, adverse weather, and a list of other things that could fill a book. Yet these planes go place to place tens of thousand a times a day without incident.

[keithmiller]

Petter, you’re probably the best to report on this issue. When we watched it land that Friday night and saw the pannel missing on the left side, we knew we were in for another long saga.