US FAA says first 40 inspections of Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes complete
By David Shepardson and Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Wednesday that inspections of an initial group of 40 Boeing (NYSE:BA) 737 MAX 9 jets had been completed, a key hurdle to eventually ungrounding the model after a mid-air cabin panel blowout on Jan. 5.
The FAA had said last week that 40 of 171 grounded planes needed to be re-inspected before the agency would review the results and determine if it is safe to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying following the incident on an eight-week old Alaska Airlines jet.
The FAA said on Wednesday it would «thoroughly review the data» and was convening a Corrective Action Review Board before deciding if the planes could resume flights. The agency put no timetable on a decision.
Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two U.S. carriers that use the aircraft and completed the inspections, have had to cancel thousands of flights this month. Both airlines said on Wednesday they would cancel all MAX 9 flights through Friday.
The incident has shaken confidence in Boeing's planes nearly five years after a pair of crashes killed 346 people and sparked questions about the company's production processes.
The heads of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems (NYSE:SPR), which made the panel, met with Spirit employees in Kansas on Wednesday, while regulators answered questions from U.S. senators in a closed-door briefing in Washington.
Boeing shares have lost roughly 20% of their value since the start of the year.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA briefed senators on the Commerce Committee for more than an hour on the investigation into why the MAX 9 cabin panel — a door plug for an unused emergency exit on those
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