Boeing has issued a warning over potential electrical issues, concerning an unspecified number of Boeing 737 Max airplanes.
The American aircraft manufacturer says it is recommending to 16 customers of the aircraft type to temporarily remove affected 737 Max from operations in order to “address” the manufacturing issue. Boeing states it is “working closely with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on this production issue“. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) later issued a short statement, confirming that it will “ensure the issue is addressed“. The authority was notified by Boeing about the situation on Thursday evening.
It was not specified who those 16 customers are and how many 737 Max airplanes are affected by this issue. Boeing did not provide many technical details on the potential problem, but says precautions should be taken to “verify” that a “sufficient ground path exists for a component of the electrical power system“.
Southwest has immediately removed 30 Boeing 737 Max aircraft from service. American Airlines and United Airlines have grounded 17 and 16 aircraft respectively. The FAA recommends passengers to contact their airline about possible flight delays or cancellations.
This appears to be a new problem, unrelated to previous issues with the so-called ‘MCAS’ control system of the 737 Max family, that led to two fatal crashes and a resulting international grounding of the type from March 2019 to November 2020.
Jakob Wert is an aviation journalist from Germany. He built up the website IFN.news and is the Editor-In-Chief of International Flight Network.
