N26226 is a 25 year old 737 NG. So this is much more likely a maintenance issue than a Boeing issue.

I am a private pilot and I follow aviation news for fun, even when it's not the current thing.

This minor stuff happens all the time and is being over-reported.

I am flying (back) on United next month... maybe I should change my flight :-/. This is something like the fourth incident in a very short time.

This is SFO again, seems more like a maintenance issue for the last few incidents

I honestly think that at this point, some of the reported things are things that happened all the time but since Boeing is under the microscope, the media, et al are going crazy on their reporting. There is an emergency landing, on average, about once a day even prior to all of this.

I'm not sure 'the media' is to blame here, this is some random tweet. The local news reporting from Oregon is pretty chill and does not seem to mention the plane being diverted which is claimed in the tweet.

https://www.rv-times.com/localstate/missing-panel-grounds-25...

No diversion because they didn't know until it landed, that the panel was missing. Tweet is blowing this out of proportion.

> There is an emergency landing, on average, about once a day

Is there a source for the statement? I can only find one that argues against https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33343/how-commo...

Your source is specific to Heathrow Airport which is a much smaller scale than the entire aviation system; and an "emergency landing" doesn't always mean a catastrophic failure.

"Emergency landings within a 20-week time period that come out to about one plus per day yes, I think they deserve further scrutiny and better explanation from the FAA," Tristani said.

https://abc7ny.com/archive/8441902/

To an extent. Mainstream news reporting has been pretty sober but you can see from the timeline of this Twitter account that it's all about sensationalism and catastrophizing to farm engagement.