Boeing, which was recently criticized for an accident in which part of the fuselage was torn off during a passenger flight, once again received world attention due to problems with its aircraft. Since defects in aircraft are discovered frequently, it seemed like they could have been quietly resolved and moved on, but this was the plane that the U.S. Secretary of State would be flying.
According to Bloomberg News and CNN, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland, left Zurich on the 17th (local time) on a modified Boeing 737 (US Air Force plane). He was scheduled to return home but was informed that the aircraft appeared to be unsafe. Secretary Blinken and his party completed boarding but had to disembark after receiving notification that ‘an oxygen leak was detected, but repairs could not be completed.’
In the end, Secretary Blinken returned home using a smaller aircraft procured from Brussels, Belgium, and his staff and reporters accompanying him on his European business trip took other commercial flights. Previously, on the 5th, an accident occurred on a Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines where a ‘door plug’, which acts as a wall blocking an emergency exit hole that is not normally used, fell off during flight.
As a result of this incident, U.S. aviation regulators banned the operation of about 170 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft indefinitely, and Boeing decided to strengthen quality control for the model.