After a Latam Airlines flight suddenly lost altitude between Sidney and Auckland last week, sending passengers flying through the cabin and injuring 50 people, Boeing has issued a warning to airlines to check pilot seats.
Citing anonymous US industry officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that a flight attendant accidentally touched a switch on the back of the pilot’s chair while serving the meals. The chair then plunged and pushed the pilot into the controls, triggering the nosedive.
Operated on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, “Flight LA800, operating the Sydney-Auckland route today, had a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement”, the airline said in a statement after the incident. At the time, a passenger told RNZ that, after landing, the pilot came out into the cabin and said he had briefly lost his instrumentation.
Although Boeing did not say it was the seat mechanism that caused the incident, it advises airlines to check the switches during maintenance as a “precautionary measure”. The switches are not meant to be accessible during flying and the aircraft manufacturer has also issued instructions on how to cut power to the motors that move the seats.
United Airlines, which just experienced another incident with a Boeing aircraft on Friday, and American Airlines have the most Dreamliners in their fleet, with 71 and 59 aircraft of this family respectively. While American has said checking the seats would have no impact on its operations, United has not made any statements yet.
When the Latam flight lost altitude, passengers without seatbelts were simply sent flying through the cabin by the sudden loss of altitude. Some people have described the feeling like being “at the top of a rollercoaster” while others said that seeing their fellow passengers with their backs against the ceiling was like a scene out of The Exorcist. “I thought I was dreaming. I opened my eyes and he was on the roof of the plane on his back, looking down on me. It was like The Exorcist”, Brian Jokat told RNZ.
Since January, Boeing has been in sight of regulators as a never-ending series of accidents started at the beginning of 2024. On 5 January, a plug-in door blew out mid-air on a Boeing 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight. The FAA subsequently grounded the aircraft and launched an investigation into the incident. In the follow-up investigation, it has been revealed that Alaska Airlines pilots had flagged depressurisation problems on previous flights operated on the same plane, which had been ignored. More worryingly, the FAA has found loose bolts and even misdrilled holes in some aircraft’s fuselage. In the last update, the FAA gave Boeing 90 days to “must develop a comprehensive action plan to address its systemic quality-control issues to meet FAA’s non-negotiable safety standards.”
Meanwhile other Boeing models have also been facing problems. The windshield of a 777 cracked on 28 February and earlier this year, the nose wheel of a 757 just fell off and rolled down the runway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Yet another wheel fell off a 777-200 on 7 March, damaging several cars in San Francisco and, on 4 March, the engine of a 737 burst into flames only minutes after take-off.