The accident occurred at 8.15am local time on Sunday (2.15pm GMT), when the plane, model 737-800, had to return to Denver International Airport, 25 minutes after takeoff. On board the plane, which was headed to Houston, there were 135 passengers and six crew members, who were not injured.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and delay, but our priority is the utmost safety for our customers and employees. Our maintenance teams are checking the aircraft,” the airline said in a statement on Sunday.
Sunday’s crash adds to the list of problems at Boeing, the world’s second-largest maker of commercial planes. In early January 2024, a panel covering the space for an emergency door on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max-9 came loose shortly after the plane took off. The crash, which resulted in no injuries, sparked a series of new investigations into Boeing’s operations.
The FAA found dozens of quality control problems at both Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, while another National Transportation Safety Board (NTSA) report revealed that the panel that fell off the Alaska Airlines plane had not been installed correctly and did not have four fasteners.
Boeing’s crisis began on October 29, 2018, when Indonesian Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers.
On March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed under similar circumstances, killing all 157 people on board. These two incidents prompted dozens of countries around the world to ban flights of the 737 family planes.
