The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Saturday ordered the “temporary grounding” of 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 airplanes after a section of fuselage separated from the side of an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. The agency issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive to airlines requiring that they inspect the planes, which it said in the grounding announcement “will take around four to eight hours per aircraft.”
The New York Times reported Friday that flight 1282 from Portland International Airport had made an emergency landing back at the same airport just 20 minutes later because of a “pressurization issue” that resulted in a wall of the plane blowing out. According to the Times, no one was in the...