Safety inspection reveals 'many' loose bolts on Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9s after door flew off mid-flight

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9. National Transportation Safety Board

• A safety inspection of Alaska Airline’s Boeing 737 Max 9 planes found “many” loose bolts.
• The inspection came after an in-flight emergency in which a door plug came loose and window blew out.
• The company’s CEO told NBC News he was “angry” at the findings. 

A safety inspection of Alaska Airline’s Boeing 737 Max 9 planes revealed “many” loose bolts were found on the commercial airline’s fleet.

The inspection was prompted by an in-flight emergency earlier this month, in which a door plug came loose, and a window blew out, causing Alaska Airlines flight 1282, heading from Portland to Ontario, California, to make an emergency landing and the airline to ground its fleet of 65 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes.

“I’m more than frustrated and angry that this happened to Alaska Airlines,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told Business Insider in a statement. “It happened to our guests and our people. My demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality program in-house.”

The CEO’s comments were first reported by NBC News.

The CEO also said that the company would be sending its “audit people to audit their quality control systems” and oversee Boeing’s production line.

Boeing declined to comment, referring BI to Alaska Airlines.

The Alaska CEO’s statements come after inspections of the Boeing 737 Max 9 planes following the January 6 incident. United Airlines also previously announced that it had found loose bolts that appear to “relate to installation issues in the door plug.”

The door plug on Boeing 737 Max 9 planes — optionally installed in some 737 Max 9 planes based on seating capacity — is installed with four stop bolts, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident. Earlier this month, the agency told reporters that the door plug fitted into the Alaska Airlines plane involved in the incident was found “fractured.”

This indicated to the agency that the door plug had disengaged, but the agency is investigating whether the bolts were there in the first place or if something happened that resulted in the bolts failing.

On Monday, the FAA announced that it had found door plug issues with other Boeing models beyond the 737 Max planes and urged airline carriers to conduct inspections on the Boeing 737 900ER, Forbes reported.

Because of the issues Boeing is facing with its planes, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC that he is considering moving away from the plane for future orders. The carrier had ordered 150 Max 10s — the largest version of the narrowbody jet — per CNBC.

“The Max 9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for us,” Kirby said. “We’re gonna build an alternative plan that just doesn’t have the Max 10 in it.”