On Friday, an Alaska Airlines flight en route to Ontario, California, from Portland, Oregon, “experienced an incident” shortly after takeoff when the cabin became depressurized. The pilot successfully made an emergency landing, but several passengers were injured. The sudden loss in cabin pressure even ripped the clothes off a child.
Because it’s the iPhone Age, multiple passengers posted video on social media of the gaping hole in the fuselage that had created the ultimate window seat. You should definitely stay put with your seatbelt securely fastened when a chunk of the plane is missing. It’s also a good time to ask the flight attendant for coffee spiked with whiskey.
Alaska released this “thank you for remaining on hold”-style statement:
The safety of our guests and employees is always our primary priority, so while this type of occurrence is rare, our flight crew was trained and prepared to safely manage the situation.
The door plug that separated from the plane was found Sunday in a Portland schoolteacher’s backyard. Sauer, a physics teacher at the Catlin Gabel School, used the door as an object lesson in his astronomy class Monday.
He said that the 50-foot cedar trees in his yard had acted on the same scientific principle as an airbag, disrupting the door plug’s fall — in an act known in physics as impulse.
“Impulse is what you do to change the momentum of something,” Mr. Sauer said. “You can do it with a big force over a short time, or a smaller force over a longer time.”
“I’m excited to announce that we found the door plug,” the easily thrilled National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said during a news conference Sunday. “We’re going to go pick that up and make sure that we begin analyzing it.”
The NTSB had asked the public’s help in locating the door plug, and Oregonians were characteristically polite enough to oblige. Two cell phones that were sucked out of the plane along with the door plug were also found. One was in someone’s yard, and the other was on the side of the road, still in airplane mode and with a travel confirmation for the Alaska flight. The latter reportedly remained in good shape despite having fallen 16,000 feet. Presumably — hopefully — this wasn’t some kind of elaborate iPhone ad.
The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded certain Boeing 737 Max 9 planes last weekend, pending an inspection. This affects 171 planes so there’ve been significant flight cancellations as a result. This precaution, while perhaps inconvenient, is better than getting sucked out the window.
Alaska Airlines recorded that the plane’s auto-pressurization fail light — which is designed to signal failures in controlling cabin pressure — had illuminated on three flights in the weeks before Friday’s incident. Those reports, on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, prompted tests and a reset from maintenance.
Boeing grounded earlier models of the Max after a crash in 2018 and another in 2019. A total of 346 people were killed. There were reportedly design flaws with an automated system on the plane, which Boeing had not fully disclosed to the Federal Aviation Administration. That seems sketchy.
Those planes were cleared as safe to fly again in 2020 — not that many people were flying that year. Now, increased air travel in Joe Biden’s booming economy has put the pressure on Boeing to deliver airlines more 737s.
Just last month, Boeing requested a two-year exemption from FAA safety rules so it could work out the kinks while developing a future smaller model of the Max. That absolutely makes zero sense, and we hope that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg intervenes in a major way.
Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, represents the crews at American Airlines, who would rather planes not fall apart while they’re inside.
“We have a Max that continues to have engineering struggles with the other models and now we have … the grounding of the Max 9, which has structurally come apart,” Tajer said. “I don’t think you have to be a pilot to realize there’s a problem within Boeing on this airplane.”
Alaska Airlines had recorded the plane’s previously mentioned auto-pressurization fail light, which indicates failures in maintaining cabin pressure, on December 7, January 3 and 4. The NTSB’s Homendy said Sunday that this prompted tests and a “reset” but Alaska’s request for a more intensive look into the issue was somehow ignored.
“It’s certainly a concern, and it’s one that we want to dig into,” Homendy said — for real and not in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
The inspections so far of the Boeing 737 Max 9 planes have proven disturbing. United Airlines announced Monday that it had discovered loose bolts on the door plugs of several planes, and Alaska Airlines reported “loose hardware.” I prefer that bolts and hardware are securely fastened on aircraft.
Alaska Airlines said in a statement: “The safety of these aircraft is our priority and we will take the time and steps necessary to ensure their airworthiness, in close partnership with the FAA.”
However, it’s not clear that passenger and crew safety was a major priority for Boeing.
[Washington Post / New York Times]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.
Subscribe to his Substack.
CNN headline
“Boeing executives to convene all-hands safety meeting at its 737 Max factory after yet another crisis”
I assume they are referring to the safety of their stock portfolios
The creepy part is that since the phone fell 16000 feet the owners Alexa keeps sending her ads for skydiving lessons.