Alaska Airlines (ALK) CEO Ben Minicucci revealed that inspections uncovered loose bolts on "many" of the carrier's Boeing (BA) 737 Max 9 aircraft, in an interview with NBC News. This follows a January safety incident where an exterior door plug detached from an Alaska jet mid-flight.

In response to the incident, Boeing initiated a "Quality Stand Down," in which the company's 737 teams will stop production in order to attend sessions and discussions focused on quality.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: All right, well, Alaska Airlines CEO is saying that, quote, "many" of Boeing's aircrafts have been found to have loose bolts after inspecting the fleet. Now this pertains to the 737 Max 9 here specifically. Now this is all coming following the incident at the start of the month, Boeing announcing that it will pause production of that 737 model and what they're calling a "Quality Stand Down."

So digging into this a little bit more-- and if we could bring up the price of Boeing's stock here, and how that has been under pressure since this news broke. What stands out to me, Brad, despite all of the concern here, despite what we're hearing from some of these airline CEOs is that when you take a look at analysts' reaction, they haven't budged much in terms of their expectations.

And Bloomberg put together some of this interesting stats here, saying that their average 12-month price target for this stock has dropped by just about 3%, right above $265 a share, which is about 50 bucks, 55 bucks higher than where we are trading today. So despite the fact that Boeing's reputation is taking a hit, it might be a bit tarnished, there's still reason to be optimistic, at least in the eyes of many of these analysts.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, the larger concern for some of the investors here who are tracking Boeing is whether or not this has an impact either on future orders for the Max line-- and notably, we've spoken with Delta about their order. That's set to begin in 2025.

And then, on the other side of that, whether or not you see a wavering in the commitment to execute on some of the options to take even more. And so that is usually part of it. You have the guaranteed figure that is announced, and then you have the figure that is an extra, kind of add-on bonus, an option for additive deliveries and purchases there.

So ultimately, within this, I think that's where investors are right to look across a lot of the investigations that are taking place, both internally within some of the airline operators, but also in Boeing. Boeing itself, this week, announced that they're going to have a day of quality control. Essentially, they're going to be instituting some classes that are taking place within the company here.

And so we'll see if that has a major delta on some of the maintenance, the operations, and even building out these aircrafts. But this is a company that just years ago was intertwined within its own culture of negligence that came to light as a result of the previous 737 Max issues that resulted in, unfortunately, two fatal crashes that took place.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, certainly, it has been a tumultuous couple of years here for the company, to say the least.