This is yet another blow for Boeing. The pilot seats on hundreds of the American airline’s 787 planes will have to be inspected, following an incident in March on a flight of the Chilean airline Latam during which the plane suddenly lost altitude, injuring around fifty passengers, the American regulator announced on Monday, August 19.
The new incident came after a series of malfunctions on Boeing planes that raised doubts about the American aircraft manufacturer’s quality controls. Passengers whose seat belts were not fastened were propelled to the ceiling after the plane suddenly lost altitude. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, operated by Chilean airline Latam, was flying from Sydney, Australia, to Auckland, New Zealand.
“Uncontrolled movements” of the pilots’ seats
The US aviation regulator (FAA) requested the inspections after a report of “uncontrolled forward movement of the captain’s seat that resulted in a rapid descent,” according to a statement. Some 158 US-registered aircraft are affected by the airworthiness directive, and 737s worldwide, the FAA said.
Since the incident, four other instances of “uncontrolled horizontal movement” of pilot or co-pilot seats have been reported by Boeing to the FAA, the FAA said. In three of those cases, the adjustment levers on the seat were too “loose.”
“Unintentional and prolonged seat movement” can result in “unintentional and abrupt flight control manipulation, which could cause the aircraft to descend rapidly and seriously injure passengers and flight crew,” the FAA said in its directive. Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Malfunctions… even in space
This incident is part of a series of bad events for Boeing, between the crashes of two 737 MAX 8 models in 2018 and 2019 resulting in a total of 346 deaths, major failures in the production line revealed by several whistleblowers, and a series of accidents in recent months, notably embodied by this Alaska Airlines flight where a door was torn off in mid-flight.
Even in space, the American company is facing difficulties: two astronauts who left with Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft in early June for an eight-day mission to the International Space Station are forced to remain on the ISS, due to problems detected in their vehicle’s propulsion system. Boeing’s new boss since August 8, Kelly Ortberg, told his employees that there was “a lot” to do to restore confidence in the aircraft manufacturer. He couldn’t have been more right, given the increasing number of challenges.