Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a Boeing 737 Max 9, took off from Portland International Airport in Oregon heading for Ontario on Friday, Jan. 5. Just six and a half minutes after takeoff, as the plane was at around 16,000 feet, the aircraft lost a door section of its fuselage, leaving a massive hole on the left side of the plane and decompressing the passenger cabin. (Related: FAKED: Thousands of jet engine parts with falsified safety certificates installed in commercial aircraft.)
Flight 1282 immediately turned around and made an emergency landing back in Portland. The 737 Max was in the air for just 20 minutes. Thankfully, all 171 passengers and six crew members were reported as safe, with only three of the passengers experiencing minor injuries, including a boy sitting in the same row as the hole who had his shirt blown off him and out of the plane.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in a statement that the company must acknowledge "our mistake."
"We're going to approach this, number one, [by] acknowledging our mistake," said Calhoun at an all-hands meeting at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, where 737 Max's are assembled. "We're going to approach it with 100 percent and complete transparency every step of the way."
737 Max is riddled with safety issues
Calhoun's response to the disaster differs starkly from how Boeing responded to crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving two 737 Max 8 jets, which killed a total of 346 people. The company spent months refusing to acknowledge blame, and a congressional report even cited a "culture of concealment" in Boeing that led to the fatal crashes.
Following the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) immediately grounded 171 Boeing Max 9 airplanes until the agency was convinced they could safely operate. The agency is currently waiting on Boeing to finalize a set of instructions for inspections and maintenance of the grounded 737 Max 9 jets. The company is reportedly interested in expediting the process.
"Every Boeing 737 Max 9 with a plug door will remain grounded until the FAA finds each can safely return to operation," said the FAA in a statement. "The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737 Max 9 to service.
Initial investigations are pointing the blame on Boeing's plug door. The manufacturer fits a plug to seal a door opening in its 737 Max's that is not used as a door by most airlines and by no other American carriers.
In 737 Max's that go to low-cost carriers like Ireland's Ryanair, which cram in additional seats that require an extra emergency exit, an emergency exit door is installed in the location of the hole in Flight 1282. Otherwise, the hole is sealed with a plug that is covered from the inside by a sidewall, so that to a passenger it looks like a normal window rather than a door opening.
Since investigations are still pending, there is no immediate explanation as to why the plug blew out. Photos and videos made by passengers and initially examined by airplane experts note that there are clean metal brackets where the plug would be latched, with no visible breaks, deformations or tears in the metal.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which have started preliminary inspections, have already reported concerns regarding the plug door.
"Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday [Jan. 6], we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug – for example, bolts that needed additional tightening," said United in a statement.
Initial reports from Alaska's technicians on Monday, Jan. 8, noted that they also found some "loose hardware" visible on some of the 737's in the relevant area where Flight 1282's plug door blew off.
Learn more about disasters and accidents in the United States at Disaster.news.
Watch this video captured by a passenger on the 737 featuring the massive hole on the side of the Boeing plane.
This video is from the Dissident 7 channel on Brighteon.com.
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