The downward spiral continues for Boeing, the American aircraft manufacturer repeatedly questioned for the safety of its aircraft. Last Friday, one of its planes literally lost a door in mid-flight. We came close to disaster again at the end of the week, the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 finally managed to land without further damage. Since then, several companies have made worrying discoveries.
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We came very close to disaster again at the end of the week, the Boeing 737 Max model 9 of the Alaska Airlines company finally managed to land without further damage, but the incident prompted all companies in possession of similar aircraft to conduct rigorous inspections.
United Airlines grounded all of its 79 Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes and it did well since it discovered loose bolts on condemned doors.
The American Civil Aviation Agency has since banned more than 170 planes of this model from taking off pending the results of the checks.
Monday evening January 8, after losing more than 8% on Wall Street, Boeing assured to be in close contact with all the operators of its aircraft to evaluate and remedy each new discovery.
It is therefore a new black series for Boeing, the 737 Max 8, the previous model had already been singled out after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia a few months apart. It was in 2018 and 2019 and these two accidents caused a total of 346 deaths.
At the time, all 737 Max aircraft had been grounded for more than 20 months.
This time, more than a thousand flights had to be canceled at this stage.
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If the economic and financial consequences for the American manufacturer in the short term are rather limited, those in the long term are more uncertain, estimates Didier Bréchemier, senior partner in charge of transport within the Roland Berger firm.
“ The planes will be grounded, there will be technical checks, there will be engineering offices which will provide technical solutions for the airlines, then checks carried out by civil aviation, which will check that the measures which have been taken make it possible to cover the defect which has been seen. The bill for the air transport system will be as long and as expensive as time lasts », Estimates Didier Bréchemier.
The bill for the air transport system will be as long and as costly as time lasts. So, there are a certain number of additional technical costs linked to the correction and a certain number of additional operational costs linked to the fact that the planes which should have been available are no longer available. Then, who pays what? There, we are in commercial discussions between the manufacturer and the airlines. The commercial consequences are linked to the image of the reliability of this aircraft. At a time when each of the airlines wants to re-order new planes, when I compare the two planes, the 737 and the Airbus A320, the airlines will ask themselves: am I not taking a technical risk, therefore economic ? This is a hypothesis which it is still difficult to know what it will be.
Didier Bréchemier on the setbacks of Boeing and economic consequences
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