As Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 landed safely at Portland International Airport on Friday night, the relief was palpable.

The plane had been flying into the landing strip with a massive hole in the side of the fuselage after an emergency exit blew out 16,000 feet in the air. No one was killed or badly hurt in the incident but passengers were forced to quickly put on oxygen masks, while there were reports a child's shirt was sucked out of the plane.

All eyes are now on planemaker Boeing, whose 737 Max 9 was responsible for the chaos. A turbulent few months lie ahead.

Its iconic 737 is one of the most successful ever made, next to the Airbus A320, yet it has been engulfed in one of the worst scandals in the industry's history and is under scrutiny for production issues.

Two crashes in 2018 and 2019, attributed to faulty cockpit software, resulted in the deaths of 346 passengers and grounded the jets for nearly two years. The Alaska Airlines flight could also have been far worse if the jet had been flying at its standard 38,000 feet cruising height.

Even leaving out the disasters, a string of production glitches have hit the planemaker's delivery targets throughout this year and placed the 737 Max under further scrutiny from shareholders amid an already struggling supply chain.

The latest snafu impacted nearly threequarters of its bestselling fleet, according to the company's CFO Brian West, and forced the company to cut its annual delivery forecast in October, despite holding firm on its cash flow targets.

Federal investigators have launched a probe into how the Alaska Airlines incident happened, with airlines in Turkey and Panama grounding their planes for inspection alongside those in US territory.

For UK passengers, any disruption has so far been averted and will likely be minimal. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has said there were no 737 MAX 9 jets registered in the UK Heathrow, the primary hub for transatlantic travel from the UK, has also said there has been no impact on flights from the airport. Boeing said in a statement: "Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our passengers."

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper