A Boeing 737 MAX is sitting outside the hangar during a media tour of the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington.
Matt Mills McKnight | Reuters
An electrical problem that led to the decommissioning of dozens of Boeing 737 Max aircraft increased after engineers found similar grounding faults elsewhere in the cabin, industry sources said Friday.
Airlines took dozens of Max beams into service a week ago after Boeing warned of a production-related electrical grounding problem in a back-up power control unit in the cockpit of some recently built aircraft.
Since then, suspected grounding problems have been found at two other locations on the flight deck, the sources said.
This includes the storage rack where the control unit in question is stored and the instrument panel that looks after the pilots.
Boeing had no immediate comment on the bigger issue, which was first reported by Aviation Week.
Boeing shares closed up 1.2%.
The bug – which affects about a fifth of Max aircraft in the market – is the latest issue to hit Boeing’s best-selling model, but is not related to design issues that contributed to a 20-month global safety ban following of two fatal accidents. .
Boeing is expected to draft bulletins to advise airlines on how to solve grounding problems, or the electric roads designed to maintain safety in the event of a voltage.
U.S. regulators must first approve the bulletins.
Although most analysts believe the solution is expected to be relatively simple, there were no immediate details available on the timing of the repair bulletins needed to begin work on about 90 aircraft affected by the suspension.
The planner initially said that airlines could take hours or several days by plane, according to a notice Reuters saw when the partial suspension was announced.
The problem was traced back to a change in the material layer after production of the 737 Max resumed last year.
Nearly all of the aircraft affected were built before delivery of the Max resumed in December, shortly after U.S. regulators lifted the fleet ban caused by the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
Boeing said it plans to gradually increase production of the 737 Max from an unspecified current ‘low’ rate to a target of 31 aircraft per month by early 2022. According to industry sources, there are currently approx. manufactures four aircraft per month.
However, according to airline sources, Boeing has not delivered any Max jets since the electrical problem was identified last week.