What do we know about the Boeing plane issue?  

Welcome to Tuesday’s Early Edition from i.

“The masks dropped, and people are screaming,” one passenger recounted. “A toddler’s shirt flew off,” she added, phones were sucked out of the plane and into the night. “It was just so surreal.” The terrifying ordeal that faced passengers on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, bound for Ontario, California last week is the stuff of nightmares. Just six minutes into the flight and as the plane had reached 16,000 feet, a portion of the fuselage blew out, pulling insulation from the walls. The crew heard a bang as the aircraft’s cockpit door flew open, the force ripping a headset off a co-pilot. “Communication was a serious issue… It was described as chaos,” Chair of the US National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy said. “It must have been a terrifying event to experience”. While all those on board made a safe return to land, applauding as they did so, the incident is significant. Now it has deepened further, with the discovery of loose bolts on multiple 737 Max 9 aircraft – the same model used by the Alaska Airlines flight. What went wrong, and what does it mean? We’ll take a look, after the headlines.

Today’s news, and why it matters

 Downing Street remains confident of reaching a compromise with Conservative MPs threatening to rebel over laws to save Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered Rwanda deportation deal. i understands that No 10 believes the Prime Minister can plot a way through the apparently competing demands of right-wing MPs who want the Safety of Rwanda Bill to be tougher and One Nation Tories who have warned against it being made more hardline.

Parliament should act quickly to pass legislation quashing the convictions of all victims of the Post Office computer system scandal, according to senior legal experts. Rishi Sunak has repeated his pledge to those affected by the Horizon IT saga that the Government will “make this right”.

Frustrated parents of children whose operations have been cancelled due to NHS strikes have pleaded with the Government and junior doctors to end their bitter dispute over pay. On the last full day of their 144-hour walkout, medics in England have said they will not call more strikes “unless we have to”.

People are being advised to look out for the elderly and vulnerable as thousands are warned to turn off their gas and electricity during the current cold snap due to flood risks. A total of 133 flood warnings remained in place across England on Monday evening as Storm Henk continued to cause devastation within communities.

The IT giant at the centre of the Post Office Horizon scandal has just been awarded an extension to a multimillion Government contract for running England’s flood alerts system. Fujitsu, a Japanese tech firm, has a £19.5m deal with the Environment Agency to run England’s flood defence warnings system until September 2025.

4 questions over Boeing’s 737 Max 9 planes:

What went wrong? Investigators are still examining what might have caused the door panel in the middle of the plane’s fuselage to blow out, leaving a massive hole in the cabin wall. The discovery of the door plug, recovered by a Portland teacher named Bob on Sunday, is expected to help investigators with physical evidence of what went wrong. However there are no cockpit recordings of the incident because the recorder had already been overwritten. Unlike Europe, which requires planes to collect 25 hours of black box recordings, the US only requires aircraft to capture two hours, before the data is overwritten. There is now fresh pressure for that to change. Yesterday it was revealed that Alaska Airline pilots had recorded pressurisation warning lights on three earlier flights from 7 December, but it was unclear if there was a link with Friday’s events. The NTSB’s Jennifer Homendy they planned to look into it further, saying “we’ve requested documentation on all defects since delivery of the aircraft on October 31”.

What other concerns have been highlighted? Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft have faced serious accusations over safety since two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, killing hundreds of people. The entire fleet were grounded for two years, but the company has faced other problems with the aircraft in more recent years too. The revelation yesterday that loose bolts were found on United Airlines’ Max 9 aircraft has added to the latest safety fears. “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,” United said in a statement. “These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.” Alaska said it has not yet found any loose bolts because it has not yet started inspections. Today, Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun is holding a companywide webcast to talk about the incident with employees and senior leadership. “When serious accidents like this occur, it is critical for us to work transparently with our customers and regulators to understand and address the causes of the event, and to ensure they don’t happen again,” Mr Calhoun wrote in a message to employees on Sunday.

Which airlines use the Boeing 737 Max 9? There are no UK-registered planes affected, the Civil Aviation Authority has said, but it will require any 737 Max 9 operators entering British airspace to comply with the FAA directive to ground jets installed with the same panel. Alaska and United Airlines are the only two US passenger airlines which operate the aircraft, and they have cancelled hundreds of flights since the incident. There are 215 Max 9 aircraft in service around the world, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Outside of the US the airlines using them are Panama’s Copa Airlines, Aeromexico, Turkish airlines, Icelandair, flydubai, and SCAT Airlines in Kazakhstan. So far Copa and Turkish airlines have suspended their models from service. Ryanair has reassured its passengers that the airline uses Boeing 737 Max 8 series, not the 9. It said: “The issue which affected the Alaska aircraft does not apply to the Max 8 aircraft, which Ryanair operates or the Max 10’s which Ryanair have on order.”

What does it mean for passenger safety? Aviation analyst Alex Macheras told i the Alaska Airlines incident could have had “incredibly serious consequences for passengers”, had anyone been seated near the panel that was torn away, or not had their seatbelt tightly fastened. Mr Macheras said the situation was another setback for the company at a time when “passenger confidence in the Max is already fragile following a period when the aircraft became a household name amid two fatal crashes and a worldwide grounding”. He added: “To make matters worse for Boeing, the jet itself involved in the Alaska Airlines incident was factory fresh – less than three months old, which will add to the questions over the quality and safety culture at Boeing factories across the US, which Boeing insist has improved over recent years.” Air safety expert Anthony Brickhouse, from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said: “Whenever you have a rapid decompression such as this, it’s a major safety event. I can’t imagine what these passengers experienced. It would have been loud. The wind would be rushing through that cabin. It was a pretty violent, and definitely scary, situation.” He said it was lucky that the emergency occurred shortly after takeoff when passengers all had their seatbelts on. But, he told the Associated Press, that doesn’t mean passengers should feel scared to leave their seats once the pilot turns off the “fasten seatbelt” sign because it’s so unlikely for holes to open in the fuselages of airliners. Read more here.

Around the world

  leading Ukrainian defence analyst has called on his country to switch to “active defence” in the war with Russia – holding on to land it already has, while making precision strikes inside Russian territory. Mykola Bielieskov, of the Ukrainian security NGO Come Back Alive, says Kyiv should switch tactics after the 2023 offensive proved less effective than many had hoped for.

A victim of Jeffrey Epstein claimed sex tapes were taken of Prince Andrew, former US president Bill Clinton and billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson, newly released court documents have disclosed. Sarah Ransome, who gave a victim impact statement ahead of the sentencing of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell for sex-trafficking, claimed in emails written in 2016 that the three were filmed by the paedophile financier.

A private Moon mission that blasted into space on Monday is in jeopardy as a problem with the propulsion system is causing a “critical loss of propellant”. The Peregrine Mission One (PM1) – built by US space company Astrobotic and carrying a piece of technology developed by UK scientists – would be the first private probe to land on the lunar surface.

Bottled water has been found to contain hundreds of thousands of tiny particles of plastic that have not previously been counted, a study has found. US scientists discovered on average 240,000 small particles — known as nanoplastics — in every litre of bottled water they tested.

A proposal to hold a referendum on removing King Charles III as Australia’s head of state has been put on hold, the government has indicated. A minister told local media that such a vote is “not a priority” and there is “no timeline” for it.

 Watch out for…

 Labour, who today will table a vote demanding the Government publish documents relating to its Rwanda policy, including how much it will cost to send each asylum seeker to the east African nation. 

 Thoughts for the day

 Sunak’s sunlit uplands do not exist – not for me, you, or the Tories. It’s never been more important to join a union, says Andrew Fisher.

Late flood response is another symptom of ‘short-term Sunak’. The PM’s real difficulty is the lack of a plan for how he hits the UK’s climate targets, writes Paul Waugh.

Taylor Swift’s sexuality is none of our business. We love her, but we don’t actually know her, and she doesn’t actually owe us anything, explains Rebecca Reid.

 Culture Break

 Huw Stephens on his new 6 Music show: Streaming will never replace radio. Radio ‘reminds us why music plays such an important part in our lives,’ he writes.

The Big Read

 I survived slavery in modern Britain. In 2013, Mimi Jalmasco accepted a job as a domestic cleaner in Dubai, promising her $400 a month. The years that followed were hell as she was brought to London, she tells Eleanor Peake.

Sport

 JPR Williams will always be fondly remembered, not least as a true rugby legend. From broken cheekbones to an unmistakeable persona, rugby has lost a true legend of the sport, writes Hugh Godwin.

Something to brighten your day

 Paris has honoured David Bowie on what would have been his 77th birthday, by naming a street after the British music icon. A ceremony was held on Monday to mark the opening of Rue David Bowie in the city’s 13 arrondissement.