Regulators have called for investigations after an Alaska Airlines plane lost a door-replacement panel during a domestic US flight, before landing safely with a hole in its side.

On 6 January, regulators in the US and elsewhere grounded Boeing 737 MAX 9s for safety reasons after an eight-week-old Alaska Airlines plane lost a door-replacement panel during a domestic US flight, before landing safely with a hole in its side.

It has since been reported that aerospace supplier Spirit AeroSystems manufactured and installed the fuselage part on the aircraft which suffered a blowout. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has launched an investigation ordering immediate inspections of 737 Max 9s worldwide.

The 737 MAX 9 is Boeing's largest single-aisle aircraft and there are 215 in service globally, according to aviation consultancy Cirium. Most are operated from the USA (mainly by United and Alaska Airlines) with others operated by airlines based out of Panama, Mexico, Turkey and Iceland.

The situation is a blow to Boeing which has had a torrid time in recent years owing to problems with its 737. It continues to feel the effects of a 20-month grounding of 737 Max aircraft following crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The issue was extremely damaging for Boeing, the airlines and the sector. By the time of the MAX’s (conditional) recertification by the FAA in November 2020, Boeing's net orders for the 737 MAX were down by more than 1,000 aircraft, with 448 orders cancelled and 782 orders removed from the backlog.  The total estimated direct costs of the MAX groundings were US$20Bn and indirect costs over US$60Bn. Just last month, Boeing agreed to pay US$200M to resolve charges of misleading investors about the deadly crashes. 

After the grounding, Boeing faced a series of obstacles in its effort to certify its 737 Max 7 and Max 10 models for passenger air travel which was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The models faced strict new testing requirements after the US Congress passed the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act to improve previous certification oversights.

Importantly, the knock on effects on the supply chain were considerable. Project Blue estimates that over 600 separate firms supplied parts to the 737 MAX. All lost orders and revenue.  There was also a significant impact on critical materials producers and traders selling metal into the aerospace supply chain for new aircraft and for the maintenance of existing fleets.  The aerospace sector is a key consumer of a range of critical materials including aluminium, titanium, nickel, cobalt, chromium, tantalum, tin, rhenium, molybdenum, hafnium, tungsten and scandium.

It is too early to understand the impact of this latest Boeing set back on metals markets – but it could be significant and represent a blow to a sector which is still in the process of recovering from the last Boeing setback and the damaging effects that the pandemic had on global aviation.