Three weeks following a mid-flight panel blowout and emergency landing that triggered extensive inspections of the aircraft, Alaska Airlines progressively restarted flights with its Boeing 737 MAX 9 fleet on Friday, the company said.
Flight 1146 was the inaugural flight, departing Seattle for San Diego at 2:20 pm and arriving in California at 6:14 pm, ninety minutes later.
The flight comes after the Federal Aviation Administration declared on Wednesday that the MAX 9 would be cleared to resume service under a repair and inspection program.
Alaska Airlines stated that it anticipates having all 65 of its MAX 9 aircraft inspected by the end of next week, enabling it to resume its regular schedule.
“Each of our 737-9 MAX will return to service only after the rigorous inspections are completed and each plane is deemed airworthy according to FAA requirements,” the company said.
“The individual inspections are expected to take up to 12 hours per aircraft.”
The FAA grounded 171 MAX 9 planes with a similar configuration to the one in the January 5 incident, in which a door plug blew out mid-flight.
Inspectors have stated that although there were no major injuries in the incident, it could have been disastrous.
In January, 3,000 Alaska Airlines flights were canceled as a result of the grounding. The business stated on Thursday that it anticipates the grounding will cost it $150 million.
The maiden flight of one of United Airlines’ aircraft is slated for Sunday; however, the airline does not rule out an earlier resumption to service. United Airlines possesses the largest fleet of Boeing models affected by the grounding order. This information was released on Thursday.
One of the investigators from the US Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is in charge of investigating the events leading up to the January 5 catastrophe, said AFP on Friday that the investigator was scheduled to return to Boeing’s Renton facility in Washington state that day.
According to the agency, the investigation team will create a timeline starting with the production phases and ending with the in-flight mishap.
Next week, a report on the probe is anticipated.
