An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane sits at a gate at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on January 6, 2024 in Seattle, Washington. Alaska Airlines grounded its 737 MAX 9 planes after part of a fuselage blew off during a flight from Portland Oregon to Ontario, California. Photo: AFP

Boeing's mid-flight blowout in the US is leading more airlines to ground planes for inspection. The impact on Chinese mainland airlines, which don't operate any Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes, will be limited but could affect Chinese consumers' confidence in Boeing's MAX series planes, Chinese experts said.

US plane manufacturer Boeing sustained a new blow for its top-selling 737 MAX aircraft, when a rear left part of the fuselage of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was blown out on Friday night, leaving a hole resembling the opening for a door.

On Saturday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a temporary grounding of certain planes for safety checks. Several airlines including United Airlines said that they had temporarily suspended service on all 737 MAX 9 aircraft to run inspections required by the FAA.

Data from information provider VariFlight sent to the Global Times on Monday showed that there is no airline operating the model among domestic carriers. 

Domestic airlines have 95 Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes in their fleets, all of which had resumed service as of mid-December 2023. The fleet utilization rate reached 7.6 hours per day in December, another flight industry information provider Fly Master told the Global Times on Monday. 

Hong Kong-based Greater Bay Airlines in March 2023 announced an order for 15 737-9 airplanes. The agreement included a commitment for at least five 787 Dreamliners to support its mid- to long-term plans to launch international long-haul service.

In an announcement sent to the Global Times on Monday, the carrier said that deliveries of 15 737-9 aircraft it ordered would not start until the end of this year. 

According to available information, the part that detached from the fuselage was completely different from the emergency exit door design of the aircraft that we ordered, which means that the area reserved for an emergency exit was not used for the provisioning of such an exit on the Alaska Airlines aircraft, the carrier said. 

Confidence in the MAX series in China is still recovering and the incident may affect that, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Monday.

But the impact shouldn't be large because there are no 737 MAX 9 aircraft in service with domestic carriers, Wang added.  

Liu Qing, president of Boeing China, said on the company's official Weibo account on December 29 that all 737 MAX series in China had returned to service, and the next step was to make deliveries. 

There is no need to worry much about related domestic models, although China has 737 MAX series planes in service, Qi Qi, another market watcher, told the Global Times. The incident won't affect the operations of Chinese airlines, he added.  

At least 215 737 MAX 9 jets are in service worldwide, according data from aviation analytics firm Cirium shared with the Global Times. 

Boeing said in a statement on Saturday that it supported the temporary grounding. "Safety is our top priority," the US plane maker said. "We agree with and fully support the FAA's decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane."

Problems in the supply chain might affect the standardization of the manufacturing, assembling and subsequent installation processes of the door, said Wang. If the problem is found in more planes, it may have a serious and lasting impact on Boeing, he added.