The trouble seems to never end for Boeing.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday ordered inspections of Boeing 787 aircraft following a midair dive by a LATAM Airlines plane in March in which more than 50 of its 263 passengers were injured.
The FAA had received a report saying that the dive happened when the captain’s seat moved, causing the autopilot to disconnect. The plane rapidly descended until the first officer took control.
Since then, the FAA has received four additional reports of similar issues, the most recent in June, according to numerous media reports.
The FAA’s inspection will affect 158 airplanes registered in the United States and 737 airplanes globally, the agency said in the statement, according to Reuters. It requires airlines to inspect the captain’s and first officer’s seats on 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 models within 30 days to check for missing or cracked rocker switch caps or damaged switch covers.
On March 11, the Chilean multinational airline LATAM’s flight LA800 experienced a “sudden midair drop” about an hour before landing during its journey from Sydney to Santiago, Chile, with a stop in Auckland, New Zealand.
During the plane’s sudden descent, passengers were hurt as some were knocked into the cabin ceiling. A passenger said a pilot had told him he had lost control of the plane when “my gauges just kind of went blank on me”, CNN reported in March.
“The plane, unannounced, just dropped. I mean it dropped unlike anything I’ve ever experienced on any kind of minor turbulence, and people were thrown out of their seats, hit the top of the roof of the plane, thrown down the aisles,” passenger Brian Jokat told the BBC in March.
“My neighbor who was in the seat two over from me, there was a gap in between us, as soon as I woke, I looked, and he was on the ceiling, and I thought I was dreaming,” he said.
Boeing’s manufacturing reputation took another hit on Tuesday when it halted the launch of its 777X aircraft after the company found problems between the engine and the plane’s wings during a test flight.
In the first week of 2024, a Boeing 737 MAX 9 passenger jet lost a rear door plug in midflight, leading to rapid decompression and forcing an emergency landing.
In February, a United 737 MAX 8 reported its rudder pedals stuck during landing.
In March, a Boeing 777-200 lost a tire shortly after takeoff, and there was a fuel leak on a United 777-300.
In April, the FAA investigated Boeing after the company admitted that it may have missed some inspections of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
