Regulators Push for Fixes to Embraer Jets

Air-safety regulators in the U.S. and overseas are joining forces to require fixes to potentially defective cargo doors and emergency escape slides on hundreds of popular Embraer regional jets.

The problems haven’t caused injuries or crashes of widely used Embraer 170 and 190 aircraft, which are built in Brazil, but regulators cite significant safety issues in mandating enhanced inspections, modifications or overhaul of suspect parts.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday proposed to mandate inspections and fixes to ensure that aft and forward cargo doors on the jets don’t open during flight, which the agency said “could result in reduced structural integrity” and possibly rapid decompression. The FAA said there had been reports of two planes being dispatched with open cargo doors, but without any cockpit warning alerting pilots about the problem. The proposal indicates more than 150 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines would be affected.

Also on Monday, European air-safety regulators embraced a Brazilian safety mandate targeting defective emergency evacuation slides installed in the forward doors of Embraer 190 models. The Brazilian directive, among other things, calls for repacking and modifying the slides, some of which failed to deploy properly in earlier ground checks. Such malfunctions could keep the doors from opening in an emergency.