After a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5 and caused the grounding of around 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, travel advisors were left scrambling to accommodate clients on affected flights.
But while the incident caused some short-term turbulence, most advisors said they didn't believe it would have a long-term chilling effect on consumer demand for air travel.
Following the incident, "my phone was just lighting up," said Andrea Thies of Sunshine Travel in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Thies handles inbound and outbound travel for several hockey teams, including the Anchorage Wolverines, who were headed home from Minneapolis that weekend.
Thies spent hours on the phone with Alaska Airlines. Space was tight with so many travelers on canceled flights being rebooked. Eventually, Alaska added an extra flight, and Thies got the Wolverines to Anchorage in time to hit the ice for their next game.
Peter Vlitas
Peter Vlitas, executive vice president of partner relations at Internova Travel Group, said the incident happened at a good time: While planes are largely full, they aren't packed, and Internova's affected clients were accommodated on different flights.
While the incident happened on a 737 Max 9 aircraft, he predicted some clients would request not flying on any Boeing 737s in the immediate future.
"If the customer does not want to fly on this plane, we will put them on another flight that has a different type of plane until this passes," he said.
Indeed, metasearch site Kayak said it saw a "noticeable difference" in usage of a filter that enables users to identify and/or exclude aircraft models, specifically 737s. Kayak responded by enabling users to filter Max 8 and Max 9 models.
Ralph Iantosca, owner of Iantosca Travel in Irving, Texas, said flyers generally don't know that there are different iterations of one aircraft type.
"Most clients really don't pay attention to the actual model, they just see 737 on the safety card or flight invoice," he said, adding that he explains to them the aircraft's different generations and versions.
Vlitas predicts there will be no long-ranging impact to air travel from the incident. He pointed to the two 737 Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that resulted in the death of 346 people. Those incidents didn't have long-lasting impact, he said.
Jay Ellenby
Jay Ellenby, president of Safe Harbors Travel Group in Bel Air, Md., said corporate travel was "business as usual" this week.
"On the corporate side, you pretty much have seasoned travelers," Ellenby said. "They're used to traveling. They're used to disruption."
Another highly publicized aviation incident occurred just days prior to the Alaska incident when a Japan Airlines jet struck another aircraft and caught fire at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. Everyone on the commercial flight was evacuated.
Thies said none of her clients have asked about that incident.
Vlitas praised the pilot, passengers and Japan Airlines for the disciplined evacuation.
"Flying is one of the safest modes of transportation in the world," he said. "The example of Japan is that the safety protocols work."