Korean Air’s Boeing 737 MAX depressurizes; there are 13 injured

MADRID (EUROPA PRESS) -Thirteen passengers on a flight between South Korea and Taiwan were taken to hospital last Saturday after a depressurization problem on a Korean Air Boeing 737 MAX that forced the diversion back to the Korean Icheon airport.

The flight took off from Icheon at 4:45 p.m. bound for Taichung International Airport (Taiwan), but after a 50-minute journey it had to divert back due to a failure in the pressurization system, which regulates the internal pressure in an aircraft cabin.

According to data from Flightradar24, collected by the Tonhap news agency, the plane’s altitude dropped by 25,000 feet, or 7.6 kilometers, in about eight minutes. As a result, fifteen passengers suffered eardrum pain and hyperventilation during the descent and 13 of them were taken to hospital.

The flight eventually resumed on Sunday morning with a different aircraft approximately 19 hours after the initial departure time.

After what happened, a Korean Air spokesperson apologized for the inconvenience caused to the passengers of the flight, assuring that they will do “everything possible” to minimize the inconvenience caused by the delay, including the provision of accommodation.

The airline is currently investigating the incident: “We are cooperating fully with all relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

In the context of the manufacturer, this incident is a new failure in the safety of airplanes manufactured by Boeing, which precedes the one that occurred on January 5 when a plane had to make an emergency landing and after the detachment of a panel.

Recently, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun took responsibility for the January 5 incident, apologizing and thanking that there were no fatalities.

However, in his testimony presented before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the United States Senate, he claimed that the manufacturer has taken “immediate measures” to ensure that this accident did not occur again: “Importantly, we went further and exhaustively analyzed our quality and manufacturing systems.