Alaska Airlines extends Boeing 737 MAX 9 cancellations through Sunday

Alaska Airlines said on Thursday it will extend the cancellation of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 flights through Sunday as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues to review inspection data from an initial group of 40 planes.

The FAA had said last week that 40 of 171 grounded planes needed to be re-inspected before the agency would review the results and determine if it is safe to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying following the January 5 mid-air cabin blowout on an eight-week-old Alaska jet. On Wednesday, the inspections of the 40 Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets had been completed.

The FAA said it would "thoroughly review the data" and was convening a Corrective Action Review Board before deciding if the planes could resume flights. The agency put no timetable on a decision.

Alaska and United Airlines, the two U.S. carriers that use the aircraft and completed the inspections, have had to cancel thousands of flights this month.

The incident has shaken confidence in Boeing's planes nearly five years after a pair of crashes killed 346 people and sparked questions about the company's production processes.

The heads of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which made the panel, met with Spirit employees in Kansas on Wednesday, while regulators answered questions from U.S. senators in a closed-door briefing in Washington.

Boeing shares have lost roughly 20 percent of their value since the start of the year.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FAA briefed senators on the Commerce Committee for more than an hour on the investigation into why the MAX 9 cabin panel – a door plug for an unused emergency exit on those planes – blew out, leaving a gaping hole.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said on Friday that Boeing had experienced production problems for years and his agency planned an audit of the company's production starting with the MAX 9. "This has been going on for a while and whatever's happening isn't fixing the problem," Whitaker told Reuters.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the accident investigator still did not know what went wrong, but was casting a wide net for potential issues, and said it would be looking at numerous records related to the door plug.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun visited Spirit's production facilities in Wichita on Wednesday for an employee town hall alongside that company's CEO, Pat Shanahan. Speaking to about 270 factory workers, engineers and other staff, Shanahan said Spirit would "make changes and improvements" and "will restore confidence."

Calhoun said, according to Boeing: "We're going to get better, not because the two of us are talking, but because (of) the engineers at Boeing, the mechanics at Boeing, the inspectors at Boeing, the engineers at Spirit, the mechanics at Spirit, the inspectors at Spirit."

(With input from agencies)