Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

I'm now at Heathrow Terminal 2, one of the busiest transport terminals, not just in the UK, but in Europe.

And it's also the place where you will see a Boeing 737 max 9.

And what I want to talk to you about today is how can these things still be flying?

Let me just give you the background of course last Friday.

Flight 1282 on Alaska Airlines took off from Portland, Oregon airport destination, Ontario, California.

It reached 16,000 feet above the height of the summit of Mont Blanc and a door plug, a panel on the side

of the fuselage popped out, which is inconvenient for everybody.

Thankfully, there were no casualties.

The pilots did a marvellous job in getting the aircraft down safely,

and from that point, Alaska Airlines grounded its 737 max-9s.

That's happened also to United and the european union air safety

authority has also said we don't want these problem planes arising so therefore how come if you were

here yesterday for instance you would have seen icelandair's Max 9 arriving nicely on time, leaving

nicely on time, and then since then it's actually flown to New York and back, obviously stopping

in Kevlovik along the way, the main international airport for Iceland. Well, I asked the Civil

Aviation Authority this, and they say that

the configuration of the Max 9 as used by Icelandair is not the same as the one involved in the

Alaska Airlines incident. A spokesperson said there are no UK registered 737 Max 9 aircraft, and therefore the impact on UK operated aircraft and consumers is minimal.

We've written to all the non-UK and foreign permit carriers to ask for confirmation that inspections have been undertaken before any operation into UK airspace.

So therefore, the only possible aircraft that you would see here are from Icelandair and from Turkish airlines,

although Turkish as far as I know has never flown the Max 9 to the UK.

...