Akasa Air, SpiceJet, Air India Express ‘satisfactorily’ complete 737 MAX-8 inspections on DGCA directive
Akasa Air, SpiceJet, and Air India Express “satisfactorily” completed the inspection of all over wing emergency exits on their operating Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft by Sunday on the directions of India’s aviation safety regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a top DGCA official said. Following the mid-flight cabin plug door blowout incident on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX-9 aircraft in the United States (US) on Friday, the DGCA on Saturday directed the three carriers to conduct a “one-time inspection” of emergency exits on all of their Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft.
Akasa Air, SpiceJet, and Air India Express are the only Indian carriers that have the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in operation. Although none of the Indian carriers have the MAX-9 variant that was involved in the incident, the DGCA asked Indian carriers to inspect the aircraft as an “abundant precautionary measure”, given that the MAX-8 and MAX-9 are part of the same aircraft family and have numerous similarities. The DGCA directive required the three Indian carriers operating the 737 MAX-8 to complete the inspections by noon on Sunday.
“These checks have been satisfactorily performed on the operational fleet of Boeing B737-8 Max aircraft by Air India Express(4), Spicejet(8) and Akasa(20). Akasa Air fleet includes one B737-8200 (high-density variant of the 737 MAX-8) aircraft which has a mid-cabin door on which the operational check has been completed satisfactorily,” the DGCA official said.
There are 44 737 MAX-8 aircraft with Indian carriers currently, as per fleet databases, but not all of them are presently operational.
Akasa Air’s entire fleet of 22 planes currently comprises 737 MAX-8 aircraft. Of the 65 planes in SpiceJet’s fleet, 13 are 737 MAX-8 aircraft. In the case of Air India Express, nine of the carrier’s 39 aircraft are 737 MAX-8 planes.
“We can confirm that there are no adverse findings. We can also confirm that there was no disruption to our operations during this time. Akasa Air does not have any Boeing 737 Max-9 aircraft in its fleet, the aircraft on which the incident occurred,” an Akasa Air spokesperson said.
SpiceJet, too, confirmed that no adverse findings were identified during the inspection of its 737 MAX-8 planes. “Our flight operations remained unaffected and continued to operate as usual. It is important to note that SpiceJet does not operate the B737-9 variant of the MAX,” a SpiceJet spokesperson said.
On Friday, an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9 plane operating the flight 1282 between Portland and Ontario (in California) made an emergency landing soon after take-off after a mid-air window blowout that led to a section of the fuselage also breaking away, causing decompression in the cabin and leaving a door-sized hole in plane’s fuselage at an altitude of around 16,000 feet. All the 171 passengers and six crew on board the aircraft returned without any serious injury.
While Alaska Airlines voluntarily grounded all of its 65 737 MAX-9 jets for inspections immediately after the incident, the American aviation regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) late Saturday (India time) temporarily grounded as many as 171 planes for safety checks. A few foreign airlines having the 737 MAX-9 aircraft in their fleets also grounded these planes for inspections.
All aviation regulators globally and airlines operating the 737 MAX-9 planes, and even other variants of the 737 MAX family of aircraft, would be closely monitoring the inspections happening in the US. Given that the FAA is the world’s pre-eminent aviation regulator, many regulators and airlines in other countries typically follow its actions on safety-related actions and directives to airlines and aircraft manufacturers.
The aircraft involved in flight 1282 was brand new, delivered to Alaska Airlines on October 31, 2023. The part of the aircraft involved in the incident is called a plug door—a specific panel of the fuselage reserved for an optional emergency exit door near the rear of the aircraft. According to aviation safety experts, it could be a case of structural failure.
The extra door is usually installed in aircraft usually by low-cost carriers as they typically pack their planes with extra seat rows, which in turn require additional paths for emergency evacuation. In aircraft with a relatively lower number of seats, typically in the case of full-service carriers, such optional doors could be permanently plugged.
Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX family of aircraft has had a troubled past on safety-related issues, and the Alaska Airlines incident has just dealt another blow to its reputation, which Boeing was trying to repair over the past few years.
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