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Alaska holds Boeing accountable, wants to be made whole for $150M in losses

Old_JoeOld_Joe
in Off-Topic
Following are edited excerpts from a current report in The Seattle Times:

Alaska Airlines executives said Thursday they will push Boeing to improve its quality control and expect the jetmaker to reimburse the airline for at least $150 million in losses from the grounding of its 737 MAX 9 fleet after the blowout of a door-sized fuselage panel on Flight 1282 earlier this month.

“It’s not acceptable what happened. We’re gonna hold them accountable. And we’re going to raise the bar on quality on Boeing,” said Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci. “We’re gonna hold Boeing’s feet to the fire to make sure that we get good airplanes out of that factory.”

With the Federal Aviation Administration having approved on Wednesday the required inspection procedures to get the MAX 9s back in the air, the end of the immediate crisis for the airline is in sight. Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Harrison said all 65 of Alaska’s MAX 9s should be flying again by the end of next week.

Boeing production of the MAX, expected to slow from the imposition of multiple new internal and external inspections, was further constrained Wednesday when the FAA told Boeing it cannot raise MAX production rates as planned until quality control is assured.

Alaska Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett said Boeing was previously expected to deliver to Alaska another 16 MAX 9s and seven MAX 8s this year. “Our suspicion is many of those will get delayed. But we don’t know for how long,” he said. “If we don’t get them, we’ve got some work to do to make sure we maximize the results we we can get with the current fleet.”

Comments

  • BaluBalu
    Alaska said they found many loose bolts as they inspected their fleet. I think United also said the same. So, the plane designs are not issue but a process failure? If so, it is a culture issue at BA and should not that apply to all their planes?

    May be they should spin off the commercial plane business and let a consortium of Airlines own that spun company.
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