Latest Update: Final inspections of our 737-9 MAX fleet begin to safely return the aircraft to service

5 p.m. Pacific, Jan. 24

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday, Jan. 24, approved a thorough inspection and maintenance process for the 737-9 MAX aircraft. Alaska Airlines is ready to perform these detailed inspections of our planes.

Each of our aircraft will only return to service once the rigorous inspections are completed and each aircraft is deemed airworthy according to the FAA requirements. We have 65 737-9 MAX in our fleet. The inspections are expected to take up to 12 hours for each plane.

Following these inspections by our skilled Alaska Maintenance technicians, we expect to bring our first few planes back into scheduled commercial service on Friday, Jan. 26.

At the request of the FAA, our Maintenance technicians completed preliminary inspections on 20 of our 737-9 MAX aircraft two weeks ago. The data we collected was provided to the FAA for further analysis. Those findings informed the FAA’s final orders for thorough inspections of the door plug on each of our 737-9 MAX aircraft. We are now ready to implement those final orders.

The first of our 737-9 MAX will resume flying on Friday, Jan. 26, with more planes added every day as inspections are completed and each aircraft is deemed airworthy. We expect inspections on all our 737-9 MAX to be completed over the next week.

We greatly appreciate the FAA’s diligence and commitment to safety to get the 737-9 MAX safely back in the air.