With a boom, the fuselage plug – which looks like the typical interior of a commercial jet – blew off the plane, ripping headrests off seats and sucking items out of the aircraft, including a boy’s shirt which was ripped clean off his body, according to passenger accounts and video.Īlaska Airlines flight makes emergency landing in Oregon after window appears to have blown out after takeoff. Of the 220 passenger seats on the aircraft, just under 50 seats were empty, including seats 26A and 26B.Ībruptly after take off, a panel of the plane’s main body called the fuselage “plug door,” including a window, popped off and was sent flying into the air at 16,000 feet, a passenger told CNN.
Among them were four unaccompanied minors. Then Friday, 171 passengers and six crew members boarded the Alaska Airlines flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Ontario, California, which took off at about 5:07 p.m, according to FlightAware. Missing part of Alaska Airlines plane is found in Portland, Oregon, NTSB says, as new details emerge about the aircraft National Transportation Safety Board officials retrieve the missing door plug from Alaska Airlines flight 1282, the Boeing 737 MAX 9 that experienced a rapid decompression on Friday over Portland, Oregon. “They flipped it, they reported it, it was tested by maintenance and then reset,” she explained. Then, again on January 4.Įach time, the flight crew flipped a switch to the system’s backup, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy later said, describing the move as “very normal.” Some 37 days after it joined the Alaska Airlines fleet, an auto pressurization “fail light” in the Boeing 737 Max 9 lit up. Indeed, nothing would foretell the terror this plane soon would hold in the sky above Portland, Oregon. Nothing would signal the nationwide grounding of similar aircraft the plane would trigger just a few days into the new year. Still, nothing any ordinary passenger could notice would distinguish Friday’s Flight 1282 to Southern California, from any other. It even would be restricted from traveling over the ocean – to Hawaii – in case such a warning appeared. A few of those flights would tip off airline officials to a possible problem with the aircraft’s pressurization, a federal official later would say. Over the next three months – before a terrifying midair blowout and emergency landing – it would fly more than 150 times. A Boeing 737 Max 9 earned its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, six days before it found its home with Alaska Airlines.