Boeing’s 737 Max 9 Grounding Could Cause Travel Headaches for Weeks

The sudden grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max 9 leaves airlines struggling with hundreds of daily flight cancellations and a very uncertain time frame for when safety regulators will deem the airplane safe to return to service.

If you’re a United or Alaska traveler with an upcoming domestic flight over the next few weeks, right now is a great time to check your itinerary to see if any portion of the trip was scheduled on a Max 9.

Alaska Airlines is canceling its 737-9 Max flights through Saturday, causing as many as 150 cancellations per day, but industry experts see it as unlikely the planes will be cleared for flight by Sunday. It remains unclear how quickly the Federal Aviation Administration will approve guidelines for how to inspect the airplanes’ door plugs and for airlines to complete the inspections.

“My guess is we’re talking weeks here,” said George Ferguson, senior aerospace analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “Once they finally agree on a  process here, an inspection regime, in short order you’ll have a bunch of airplanes re-released into fleets."

Boeing 737 Max 'Quality Escapes'

Moreover, beyond two crashes that killed 346 people, Boeing’s 737 Max family has a history of what the company terms “quality escapes” — manufacturing defects and other problems — which have made the FAA monitor the Max program closely. That history could cause the agency to proceed slowly on the Max 9 inspections.

After the fatal 737 Max 8 crashes, the company and carriers continually pushed back their predictions of when the jets would be cleared for flight. In all, the FAA maintained its grounding for nearly 21 months before clearing the jets, with flights resuming in December 2020.

Since that issue with the flight controls, Boeing and its fuselage subcontractor, Spirit AeroSystems, have been forced to inspect and perform rework over manufacturing errors on hundreds of Max jets that were already completed. Two of the four 737 Max variants, the smallest and largest versions, await FAA certification before they can be delivered and the 737-9 incident could further delay those airplanes’ commercial entry.

“We hope this action provides guests with a little more certainty, and we are working around the clock to re-accommodate impacted guests on other flights,” Alaska said in a statement. Alaska did not respond to a request for comment on whether it’s targeting Sunday to resume flying some of its 737-9s.

Who Flies the 737 Max 9s?

In the U.S., only Alaska and United — the largest operator of the variant, with 79 of them — use the Max 9. Airlines have generally sought smaller and larger versions of Boeing’s top-selling 737, with the Max 9 flying at only 11 airlines, with 215 planes, to date. 

Not all of the Max 9s are equipped with the suspect door plugs that failed and blew off an Alaska 737 Max 9 on Jan. 5 on a flight from Portland, Ore. to Ontario, Calif. Max 9 airlines that don’t use the plugs include Icelandair, Flydubai and leisure carrier Corendon Dutch.

There are limited options for addressing what airlines hope will be a short-term grounding, which means that canceled 737-9 flights will be prevalent if the issue isn’t resolved soon. For the industry, January and February are among the slowest months for air travel demand.

Grounding Could Last Weeks

If the grounding persists for weeks, some airlines may decide to defer optional maintenance or other work on some of their aircraft, such as Wi-Fi installation, which can remove an aircraft from service for days. For example, the Alaska Max 9 that suffered the door plug failure was in Oklahoma City and not flying for 10 days to have a contractor install Intelsat's high-speed 2KU satellite system.

The FAA made it clear on Tuesday that its decisions on the Max 9 will be dictated by safety and not speed, and Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has stressed the same approach as appropriate given the severity of the depressurization mishap.

With one of the world’s largest fleets, United has been swapping in other jets for Max 9 flights as much as it can. The airline said it was able to avoid more than 100 cancellations — out of nearly 900 total — from Saturday to Tuesday with aircraft swaps. United is waiving fare differences for affected flights through Saturday, Jan. 13, allowing people to rebook for departures through Jan. 21.

Provided Boeing or the airlines don't find more problems, Ferguson said a lot of the fleet should be back in service in about a month.

How Many Flights Are On 737 Max 9s?

United has 6% of its schedule — more than 23,000 flights — scheduled on the 737-9s in the first quarter, according to Cirium data. Alaska, the second-largest Max 9 airline, planned to use the Max 9 for more than 17% of its first quarter schedule, or 16,196 flights.

Alaska says it’s canceled more than 700 flights since the grounding, affecting 108,500 passengers. The carrier has a similar travel policy for customers who want to change their flights through Jan. 20.

Panama’s Copa Airlines has parked its 21 Max 9 jets and said it “deeply regrets the flight cancellations and delays resulting from this situation, which is beyond the company’s control.” The carrier said its “whole team is working tirelessly to mitigate these disruptions to the best of their ability.”

Aeromexico, which counts Delta Air Lines as an owner and joint-venture partner, grounded 19 Max 9 jets and has told customers it expects to return them to operation “in the upcoming days” once it completes inspections of the door plugs. “Although the origin of this situation was beyond Aeromexico's control, we apologize for any inconvenience caused,” the airline said.

Boeing delivered its first aircraft of 2024 on Tuesday, a 737 Max 8200, to Ryanair, according to Deutsche Bank Research. The high-density variant of the Max 8 holds 197 seats and is not affected by the mandatory inspections of the 737-9.