Part of a Boeing 737 Max 9 was ripped off an Alaska Airlines plane as it made its way over Oregon toward California on Friday forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Portland, where the flight originated.
It’s still not clear why the incident occurred but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced it would be launching an investigation into the cause of the alarming episode.
Approximately 171 customers and six crew members were on board flight 1282 and several people sustained injuries from the blowout. All have now been medically cleared, the airline said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decided to ground all models of the aircraft until they undergo inspections, which will include both left and right cabin door exit plugs, door components and fasteners.
“Operators must also complete corrective action requirements based on findings from the inspections prior to bringing any aircraft back into service.” The inspections are expected to take approximately four to eight hours per plane. The decision is expected to impact 171 aircrafts worldwide.
How it happened
A door plug, a specific panel of the fuselage near the rear of the aircraft, blew out of the side of the plane seven minutes after the flight departed from Portland on Friday around 5pm and was only three miles or 16,000 feet up in the sky.
This photo released by the National Transportation Safety Board shows the door plug from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282— (National Transportation Safety Board)
Two seats next to the panel were torn off but had no passengers in them. Most of what’s known about what happened next has come from passengers and officials who have spoken out about the event.
One passenger, who described her experience on TikTok, said she felt the plane drop and worried that she wouldn’t survive. Videos posted to social media showed a large rectangular hole in the side of the panel as wide as a refrigerator.
As the flight crew tried to make sense of what had occurred they could be seen in the footage reassuring passengers. It’s not clear what caused the incident, but officials are investigating.
Three infants and four minors were on board the plane. The infants were being held in their caregivers’ laps, officials said, and were reported safe, though one child had their shirt ripped off.
History of the aircraft
Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the plane’s auto pressurization fail light illuminated during three previous flights, causing the airline to suspend operating the aircraft overseas to Hawaii.
Ms Homendy said the airline made the decision so that if the light turned on again, the plane could safely make its way to an airport. One of those flights happened in December 2023 and the other two took place this month.
An additional maintenance check of the plane was ordered but had not been completed by the time of Friday’s flight.
Still, Ms Homendy said it’s not clear that there’s a correlation between the lights that illuminated and the expulsion of the door plug. The agency plans to review documentation of all defects since Alaska Airline began operating the aircraft in October.
The same type of aircraft model has been the subject of previous controversy.
In October 2018, a faulty sensor activated an anti-stall system that caused a flight to crash after it departed from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 passengers and crew. That same year, an Ethiopian Airlines flight was lost with 157 people on board.
This image from video provided by Elizabeth Le shows passengers near the damage on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9, Flight 1282, which was forced to return to Portland International Airport— (Elizabeth Le)
Problems that emerged during incident
At the press conference, Ms Homendy said that communication became a critical issue after the blowout occurred. Flight attendants were not able to get information from the flight deck, she said, adding that the flight deck was also struggling to communicate.
She described the moments after the incident as “chaos” and “very loud” between the air and everything happening in the aeroplane’s cabin. Another issue that occurred was the loss of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which would’ve had recordings of the pilots on board responding to the emergency.
Ms Homendy said that data was lost because a circuit breaker was not pulled and the system automatically resets after two hours. She said the agency has conducted at least 10 investigations that involved overwritten CVRs.
The official said the agency has called on the FAA to increase the time the recordings need to be saved from two hours to 25 hours.
“Cockpit voice recorders aren’t just convenient for the NTSB to use in investigations or the FAA to use in investigations,” Ms Homendy said. “They are critical to helping us accurately pinpoint what was going on.
“And it’s key to safety.”
How is Alaska Airlines responding
As of 4pm ET on Friday, the airline decided to cancel all of its remaining flights for the day, totalling around 160 flights that impacted 23,000 people. In a written statement, the company said it expected the disruption to last until mid-week.
On Sunday, the airline cancelled 170 flights and issued 140 cancellations for Monday.
“We recognise that additional questions remain about the details surrounding Flight 1282 that we are unable to address at this time,” the statement read.
“Because this is an active investigation, we must receive permission from the NTSB to provide information about the aircraft and its prior maintenance. We will provide information as soon as the NTSB permits us to do so.”
Addressing the situation, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said, “I am personally committed to doing everything we can to conduct this review in a timely and transparent way.
“We are working with Boeing and regulators to understand what occurred tonight, and will share updates as more information is available,” he said.
“My heart goes out to those who were on this flight — I am so sorry for what you experienced. I am so grateful for the response of our pilots and flight attendants. We have teams on the ground in Portland assisting passengers and are working to support guests who are travelling in the days ahead.”
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-990ER flight 337 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida lands at Portland International Airport in Portland on 6 January— (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
How this will impact future travel
Soon after the incident occurred hundreds of flights were cancelled in order for the aeroplanes to undergo inspection. On Monday, United Airlines announced it had found loose bolts on multiple of its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. The company operates 79 of the aircraft.
The inspections are expected to be completed this week.
Experts say that long-term changes stemming from the Alaska Airlines incident are potential reforms at Boeing, the company that supplies the aircraft model.
“(Boeing) has to stop giving lip service to the idea that they put safety over profits because right now it looks like they put… speed to the marketplace over safety,” aviation trial attorney Robert Clifford told CNN, adding that the company will likely be responsible for paying airlines for lost revenue.
“They put the need to have a competitive advantage against Airbus over safety,” he said. Both Airbus and Boeing own more than 90 per cent of the commercial plane market share. Mr Clifford stated that the repercussions from the incident were minor because it happened 16,000 feet in the air.
“If something like this happened at 30,000 feet, everyone would perish,” he told the outlet.
