A panel blowout during an Alaska Air flight last week has resulted in the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounding Boeing 737-900 Max aircraft to carry out safety inspections.
OAG, the data platform for the global travel industry, has assessed flights scheduled for this week (commencing Jan 8) to identify the airlines most likely to be impacted by the grounding of Boeing 737-900 Max aircraft in the US.
A total of 4 324 flights were scheduled using the affected aircraft this week, with United Airlines and Alaska Air due to operate two thirds of these.
From a less than 1% cancellation rate on January 5, Alaska were suddenly cancelling around 15% of all planned services on Saturday, January 6, while for United, with their larger and more diverse fleet, the proportional impact has not been quite so significant, and their cancellation rate was 4.27% on January 6.
Icelandair was also significantly affected, as was Panama-based carrier Copa Airlines, which had 77 flights scheduled and Aeromexico, with a further 64 planned for American destinations.
Nine airlines currently operate the affected aircraft variant.
Lion Air and Air Company Scat operate the aircraft with an additional emergency exit rather than with the “window plug” variant affected by this issue.
This difference in operating configurations eases the issue for these two airlines, although it is likely that they are both undertaking precautionary checks on their aircraft.
