aircraft being grounded,

$12 billion wiped from the stock price

and airlines reexamining their aircraft

to find yet more manufacturing faults.

This wasn't exactly the start to 2024 that Boeing wanted.

See, after spending years enduring the fallout

from the MAX crisis where two Boeing planes crashed

due to a flight control design flaw

killing hundreds of people,

the company was finally showing signs of a full recovery.

- They had normalized production levels,

they were getting some more respect on Wall Street.

- But then a door plug

from an Alaska Airlines Boeing aircraft,

which had only been delivered months before,

fell off in midair,

triggering yet another crisis for the company.

- What does Boeing look like in the next few years

if it has to deal with another crisis?

- [George] So can Boeing afford another setback?

While nobody was killed or seriously injured

in the Alaska Airlines accident-

- We coulda ended up with something so much more tragic

and we're really fortunate that that did not occur here.

- [George] The door plug,

which is a panel used to plug up the space

where an emergency exit would be,

fell off early in the flight.

- It was shortly after takeoff,

passengers were still in their seatbelt,

the plane was ascending

and there was no one seated

right next to the door plug that blew off.

- If somebody had been in that seat,

it's likely they probably would've died.

That's at least what we're told by the NTSB.

And that's really what's triggered this massive panic

and investigation into what actually happened.

- [George] One major question

in the accident investigator's probe

is whether this was a one-off accident

for the singular door plug,

or a manufacturing issue

that could affect many of Boeing's aircraft.

The door plugs are manufactured

by a company called Spirit Aerosystems,

which actually used to be part of Boeing

until the division was spun off in 2005.

Spirit has said it's working with Boeing

to determine what went wrong,

but a crucial piece of evidence,

the bolts that are supposed to hold the door plug in place,

remain missing,

- And we have not yet determined if they existed there.

- Figuring out what happened with the bolts

is a key piece of this.

- The accident led to the FAA grounding

around 170 MAX 9 aircraft

and ordering the inspection of the planes.

But it wasn't long before the reputational damage

to Boeing and the FAA began to spread further

than the MAX 9's door plugs.

See, when it comes to recommendations, inspections,

and safety checks for Boeing

and other American made aircraft,

airlines and regulators across the globe

typically follow the lead of the FAA.

However, around the same time

that both United Airlines and Alaska Airlines

announced they'd found loose bolts on their aircraft-

- What we saw was airlines saying, "You know what?

We're gonna check our aircraft, our Boeing MAX aircraft,

even though they're not the models

that the FAA has stipulated need to be checked."

- Despite having no MAX 9 aircraft,

South Korea, China, and India all ordered their airlines

to examine their fleet of MAX 8 aircraft,

though they found nothing.

And Indonesia ordered Lion Air

to inspect the doors on its MAX 9 aircraft.

- It's certainly a sign that Boeing doesn't have

full, full confidence of safety regulators

or its airline customers.

- That really speaks to this idea

that there may be a loss of faith, not just in Boeing,

but also in Boeing's oversight by the FAA.

- The FAA's administrator, Mike Whitaker, said

"The agency showed its global leadership on safety

by immediately grounding the MAX 9,"

and said, "Regulators would make sure the planes were safe

before they fly again."

That potential loss of faith

could impact the range of planes

that Boeing is able to offer in years to come.

And to understand why,

you need to go back to the MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019.

- An Indonesia passenger plane crashing into the sea

minutes after takeoff.

- [Reporter] Rescuers have located debris,

but they do not expect to find any survivors.

- The new Boeing 737 crashing,

just minutes after takeoff in Ethiopia.

- 157 people from more than 30 countries were killed.

- [George] The crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft

led to the grounding of hundreds of jets

for nearly two years.

The FAA began increasing its oversight

of Boeing's manufacturing

and the company had to pay billions

to compensate airlines due to the MAX grounding

and problems that emerged with other aircraft.

- It slowed everything down.

It took up resources, it took up time.

And so Boeing arguably wasn't able to focus

on developing the next new aircraft

in a way they could have been.

- [George] Fast forward to 2023,

and Boeing now has a far narrower selection of planes

than European rival Airbus,

who's offering ranges from the 100-seat A220,

all the way up to the massive A350-1000.

Airbus also has the A321NEO,

which can fly a greater number of passengers farther

than Boeing's 737 MAX 10,

a plane which still isn't certified

because of delays related to the MAX crisis.

And that's partly why Airbus, who overtook Boeing

as the world's largest plane maker in 2019,

was able to post record orders in 2023,

far outstripping Boeing's orders.

- And there's a question here.

Does this difference between the orders

speak to maybe the fact

that Boeing's management are distracted?

You know, they're focused on other things.

Where Airbus is able to go out there

and just focused on winning orders

and, you know, working with customers

and being able to deliver a more nuanced product lineup

that can really take away

some of the market share that Boeing has.

- So even though the plane landed safely,

could the Alaska Airlines incident disrupt the duopoly

between Boeing and Airbus in the long run?

Well, both Airbus and Boeing

have huge manufacturing backlogs.

So Airbus is unlikely to gain much of an advantage

in the short term.

- They're pretty much sold out for the next,

you know, eight to nine years.

If you wanna buy a big chunk of new orders from Airbus,

you're really looking at the early 2030s

before Airbus can even start delivering them.

- And handling the MAX crisis may have made Boeing better

at dealing with its current woes.

- We're seeing the company

already start to do things differently.

They've said that they will open their factories up

to airlines if the airlines wanna send crews in

to inspect the process.

- But how Boeing goes about restoring faith

in its products and its manufacturing

over the next few months

could dramatically reshape the company in the years to come.

- If they're able to come back very strongly,

confident in the fixes,

show that they have, you know,

not only addressed the underlying issues,

but manage to win back the confidence

of the global industry, maybe this is just a blip.

- But if there's a lack of faith in the company

and its products, we could see Boeing's orders

and its position in the market,

start to slip further in the long run.