On Sunday, a Boeing plane’s windshield cracked upon landing in Portland, Oregon. On Monday, a different Boeing plane—this one bound for Japan—slunk back to its gate in San Francisco after encountering “a mechanical problem.”
Seemingly the nth mishaps to befall the aviation giant since a Boeing plane shed a door midair in early January, these latest problems armed the press with fodder for another round of negative headlines, even as the two airlines involved—Alaska and United—tried to reassure the public that these incidents were not cause for alarm, and weren’t Boeing’s fault.
“Cracked windshields frequently occur across all models of airplane from all manufacturers,” an Alaska spokesperson told Fox Business, adding that this particular model—the Boeing 737-800—has a windshield that is five layers thick, and claiming minor cracks in the outermost pane “do not create a safety-of-flight issue.”
Yet, how much of Boeing’s bad 2024 is because it cut corners manufacturing planes (what the U.S. government is investigating in a criminal inquiry into its handling of the 787 Max and Dreamliner models) and how much is that the media is rushing to cover every flight’s unexpected warning light or under-inflated wheel?
Even those not defending Boeing have started to ask if we’re in the frequency illusion phase—the phenomenon where now that we know something exists, we start noticing it everywhere. Some see a flashback to the media’s obsession last year with writing about train derailments (which are surprisingly common at about three per day), after a huge Ohio train wreck created a toxic, fiery spill that the press covered like it was America’s Chernobyl.
Boeing’s incidents this week come directly on the heels of last week’s, in which the 787 Max’s alleged flaws took more of a backseat to new problems with other plane models:
- A Boeing 777 en route to San Francisco did a U-turn back to Sydney after reporting a hydraulic leak.
- A 737-800 departed San Francisco, but then landed in Oregon sans a large metal side panel.
And the previous week:
- A 737-900 departing Houston for Florida stayed airborne for just a few minutes because it accidentally sucked some plastic Bubble Wrap into one of the engines, causing a fire.
- A 777 headed from San Francisco to Japan emergency-landed in L.A. after losing a tire in midair, crushing cars in the airport parking lot; while the crew of another flight, L.A.-bound from Dallas, would go on to report a “tire issue” of their own.
- A 737 Max 8 veered off the runway in Houston, forcing passengers to deplane using the air stairs.
That makes five hairy-sounding incidents over a two-week period. It also excludes similarly serious-sounding events logged on the FAA’s weekly aviation incidents list that would seem to suggest a parallel worrying trend:
- On March 8, an Airbus A320 heading from San Francisco to Mexico City made an emergency landing in L.A. after one of its three hydraulic systems malfunctioned.
- On March 9, an Airbus A320 departing Chicago turned around an hour later, after an oil warning light came on.
- On March 14, a different A320 sprung a separate hydraulic leak while flying to San Francisco from Dallas.
Because it’s rushed, reporting on Boeing hasn’t been entirely accurate, either. Outlets said the flight that landed in Oregon minus a panel had made “an emergency landing,” but it landed on time where it was supposed to—albeit missing a portion of plane it had departed with. Likewise, people might get confused when a Boeing tire that falls and destroys vehicles below leads to a nearly identical headline about a tire initially misreported to have fallen off, but that ultimately just had a low air-pressure reading and “taxied to the gate under its own power, and customers deplaned normally.”
Experts have noted that while gaffes like these are hardly acceptable, they don’t necessarily equate to “systemic problems.” Former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt told the New York Times on Monday that he views them as “things that happen occasionally, but often don’t get reported in media.” Kyra Dempsey, a blogger who operates Admiral Cloudberg, an aviation-accident site, added it does seem as though “so many incidents in such a short period,” but “such incidents happen frequently around the world, and they aren’t on the rise overall.”
Boeing’s safety image isn’t being helped by things like the ex factory quality manager who’d accused it of building planes with substandard parts was found dead last week before he could complete his testimony against Boeing or that beforehand, he allegedly warned a friend, “If anything happens to me it isn’t suicide.”
However, Boeing is an easy scapegoat, and it could be worth observing the other industry players. United has been the carrier behind many of Boeing’s incidents, and on Monday, its CEO emailed customers a note that struck a surprising mea culpa tone. “Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, our airline has experienced a number of incidents that are reminders of the importance of safety,” he said, before laying out measures they’re taking, \concluding: “I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus.”