United Airlines finds loose bolts in Boeing 737 Max 9

United Airlines said Monday that it had found loose bolts in panels to its Boeing 737 Max 9 jets that are similar to the part of an Alaska Airlines plane that blew out during a flight Friday, adding to growing safety concerns about the Max 9.

The disclosure followed reports that Alaska Airlines had been warned three times about problems with cabin pressure on its plane. Those warnings were significant enough that the airline decided the plane could no longer be used on flights to Hawaii.

United found the loose bolts in the panels, known as plugs in the industry, after starting to take out seats and sidewall liners to inspect the part this weekend, the airline said Monday. The plugs are placed where an emergency exit door would be if a jet had more seats.

A door plug suddenly flew off the Alaska Airlines plane Friday during a drop in cabin pressure about 10 minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, subjecting passengers to howling wind and forcing pilots to quickly return to the airport. The door plug, phones, toys and other personal items all streamed out of the hole in the side of the plane and fell across the city.

Airlines have canceled hundreds of flights as they prepare to inspect nearly 200 aircraft that will be grounded until regulators and company officials decide they are safe. Alaska Airlines used 65 Max 9 planes, about 20 per cent of its fleet, and United used 79, more than any other airline and about 8 per cent of its fleet, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Some passengers' travel plans could be disrupted for days.

The Federal Aviation Administration sent instructions to the airlines Monday on how to carry out the inspections, although Alaska and United said they were waiting on additional approval from the FAA to begin.

Officials led by the National Transportation Safety Board are focusing on, among other things, the installation and inspection of the plug.

"I think investigators are going to be focused on the manufacturing process of this particular airplane," said Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator for the NTSB and the FAA "How was this door plug installed or who installed it?"

The door was initially installed by Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the body for the 737 Max and other aircraft. Investigators said they were looking into whether work had been carried out on or near the door since the plane entered service in November.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, said investigators had a great deal of work to do, including inspecting the plug, which was recovered from a backyard near Portland. The board will also examine a plug that remained intact on the other side of the plane, interview flight crews and passengers, review maintenance records and repair logs, and conduct laboratory analyses of parts from the plane.

Investigators may also look into whether the installation of wireless internet equipment on the plane by a contractor, AAR, between Nov. 27 and Dec. 7 played any part in the pressurization problems, which emerged after that work was complete. In a statement, AAR said Monday that it "did not perform any work on or near any midcabin exit door plug of that specific aircraft."

While no serious injuries were reported, the accident could have been far more catastrophic, especially if the plane had been at a higher altitude, experts said. Homendy said Sunday night that the passengers had included three babies and four unaccompanied children between the ages of 5 and 17.

Homendy said in a brief interview Monday that her team was reviewing the plane's flight data recorder to try to determine if the pressurization warning light can be linked to the door plug. The plane has several backup systems in case one of the pressurization systems fails.

"There may have been something wrong with either the light or that one other unit, but there's redundancies in the system," Homendy said.

Kathleen Bangs, an aviation expert and a former airline pilot, said she believed that the investigation would reveal a failure of the door plug because of the condition of the plane. Typically, explosive decompression incidents happen on older planes that have metal corrosion and fatigue, Bangs said. In this case, she said, the plane was almost new, which indicates that there was most likely an issue with the door plug.

Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said a blowout at a cruising altitude of more than 30,000 feet could have been disastrous. "We could have been looking at a situation where more of the structure could have come off and would have been looking at a situation where passengers who weren't strapped in properly would have been blown out because the forces would have been so tremendous," he said.

Pressurization starts to affect most commercial planes around 8,000 feet, said Brickhouse, who previously investigated aviation accidents for the safety board. Not properly controlling the air entering and leaving the cabin can lead to altitude sickness, or hypoxia, among passengers and the crew.

Hypoxia, a condition that develops when the brain is deprived of oxygen, can happen on planes without appropriate pressurization when they begin flying above 10,000 feet or suffer rapid decompression, the FAA says. This is why flight attendants tell passengers to use drop-down masks in the event of rapid decompression, Brickhouse said.

In a statement, the FAA said the required inspections would concentrate on the plugs, door components and fasteners.

"Our teams have been working diligently -- with thorough FAA review -- to provide comprehensive, technical instructions to operators for the required inspections," Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing's commercial plane unit, and Mike Delaney, the chief aerospace safety officer, said in a message to employees of that unit Monday.

Other airlines with Max 9 planes are outside the United States, such as Copa Airlines of Panama, Turkish Airlines and Icelandair. The European Union's aviation safety agency announced Monday that the Max 9 jets operating in Europe were not grounded because they had a different configuration.

The FAA previously said it would take four to eight hours to inspect each plane. Inspecting the nearly 200 Max 9 planes in the United States, according to the aviation agency, could take a few days.

Aviation regulators and Boeing said the inspections were unique to the Max 9 and not other versions of the Max jet. The Max 9, along with the more popular Max 8, was grounded for nearly two years after two crashes of the Max 8 in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people.

Federal authorities investigating the incident are also looking into what set off pressurization warnings on the damaged plane during three recent flights. Alaska Airlines workers reset the system, and the plane was put back into service, though the airline restricted it from being used on flights to destinations such as Hawaii, Homendy said. She added that it was not yet clear if the warnings were related to the accident on Friday.

In a statement, Alaska said it could not answer many outstanding questions about the plane and what had led to the blowout without approval from the safety board. The airline said it had asked the NTSB to share more information and would do so if allowed. In such investigations, parties are typically restricted in what they can share publicly.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun planned to host a companywide safety meeting Tuesday to discuss the company's response to the episode and reaffirm its commitment to safety. Boeing is still working to secure approval of the smaller Max 7 and larger Max 10.

Boeing shares closed down about 8 per cent on Monday, and shares of Spirit AeroSystems closed down 11 per cent.