Boeing stocks drop sharply after Alaska Airlines incident

London: Shares of Boeing and one of its key suppliers dropped sharply on Monday as investors grew worried about possible damage to the businesses after a piece of fuselage on a Boeing 737 Max-9 blew off mid-flight, the media reported.

The Alaska Airlines flight, which had been travelling from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, on Friday, made an emergency landing after part of the wall of the aircraft detached itself, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane, CNN reported.

The cause of the incident has not been determined.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered all Boeing 737 Max-9 aircraft to be grounded until they can be carefully inspected.

The order applies to 171 planes around the world, and airlines in Turkey and Panama have also grounded flights, CNN reported.

Boeing shares dropped more than 8.5 per cent while shares of aerospace supplier Spirit AeroSystems fell by about 11.5 per cent.

The incident is the latest in a long string of problems for Boeing.

Since the grounding of the 737 Max in March 2019, following two crashes that killed 346 people, Boeing’s financial losses have mounted.

The company reported an annual loss for four straight years from 2019 to 2022, and logged a $2.2 billion net loss for the first nine months of last year.

Its full-year results for 2023 are due at the end of January, CNN reported.