School teacher finds blown-out Alaska Airline plane door part
A SCHOOL teacher in Oregon has found part of an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 airplane door that blew out mid-flight, the United States transport safety authority said on Sunday, in a development that could help with the investigation.
The emergency, which saw no major injuries, prompted airlines and safety bodies around the world to ground some versions of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets pending inspections, with dozens of flights canceled.
The chief of the National Transportation Safety Board said a school teacher found the door panel in his backyard in the city of Portland, Oregon.
On Friday, Alaska Flight 1282 departed from Portland International Airport and was still gaining altitude when the cabin crew reported a “pressurization issue,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration, with the plane quickly returning to Portland.
Images posted on social media showed a gaping hole where the side panel had blown out, with emergency oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.
“I am excited to announce we have found the door plug,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a press briefing.
A door plug is a cover panel used to fill an unneeded emergency exit in planes with smaller seat configurations.
“He took a picture,” she said, referring to the school teacher who she named only as “Bob.”
“I can just see the outside of the door plug from the pictures, the white portions. We can’t see anything else but we’re going to go pick that up and make sure that we begin analyzing it.”
The FAA said it “is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight.”
It added that around 171 aircraft worldwide would be affected, with each inspection taking four to eight hours.
US-based Alaska and United Airlines fly the largest number of MAX 9 planes of any carrier and said on Sunday they had grounded their aircraft for inspection.
Other airlines with smaller MAX 9 fleets, including Turkish Airlines, said they did the same.
Boeing has so far delivered about 218 of the 737 MAX planes worldwide, the company said.
The plane manufacturer on Sunday said its chief executive Dave Calhoun has set an all-employee safety meeting for today at the firm’s factory in Washington state, and canceled a leadership summit.
“In light of the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight event, we are canceling the Summit to focus on our support to Alaska Airlines and the ongoing... (NTSB) investigation, and any of our airline customers experiencing impact to their fleets,” Calhoun said in a Boeing statement.
The NTSB said no one was occupying the two seats nearest the panel, but The Oregonian newspaper quoted passengers as saying a young boy seated in the row had his shirt ripped off by the sudden decompression, injuring him slightly.
According to Aviation Week magazine, airlines that choose MAX models with smaller seating configurations can have the door sealed up, making it look like a typical window from the inside. (AFP)