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The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the grounding of some Boeing airplanes for inspection on Saturday, after part of a Boeing 737-9 Max plane’s wall blew out in midair on a flight Friday and caused a dramatic emergency landing.

The Alaska Airlines flight, which was carrying 171 passengers and six crew members, landed safely, the airline said in a statement that only described what had happened as “an incident.” One flight attendant sustained minor injuries, according to the union that represents Alaska crews.

The FAA’s emergency order will require inspections of 171 Boeing 737-9 Max planes, expected to take four to eight hours per aircraft, before they can fly again. The text of the FAA order wasn’t immediately available, and it wasn’t clear which Max 9s it would apply to.

“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737-9 Max planes before they can return to flight,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. “Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.”

On the Friday flight, a paneled-over exit door appeared to have blown out partway down the plane, leaving a gaping hole beside a row of seats, according to experts and images captured by passengers. Some on board described pieces of debris flying around and frigid air rushing in as the pilots made an emergency landing.

“It was terrifying,” passenger Elizabeth Le, 20, a college student who was on a trip with friends, said in an interview.

Federal regulators have also announced plans to investigate the cause of the incident, which was not immediately clear.

For is part, Alaska Airlines grounded its 65 737-9 Max planes for inspections as a precaution, CEO Ben Minicucci✓ said in a statement late Friday, about a quarter of which had been inspected by midmorning Saturday.

No problems had been found in those checks, the airline said Saturday in an update, and inspected planes were returning to service. Some appeared to already be back in use: 10 passenger flights on 737-9 Maxes were in the air as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, according to Alaska’s flight status tracker. According to FlightAware.com, Alaska had canceled just over 100, or 13 percent, of scheduled flights by midday Saturday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday it is sending a team of experts to Portland to launch an investigation. Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on X he was briefed on the “terrifying incident.” The Federal Aviation Administration would work with the NTSB on the investigation, he noted.

Video from passengers showed part of the plane’s wall separated from the aircraft in midair. (Video: Elizabeth Le)

In a statement, Boeing said that it was aware of the incident and working to gather more information, with technical experts ready to help with the investigation.

The incident is likely to put Boeing and its widely used 737s under fresh scrutiny. The aircraft was grounded after two 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people, leading federal regulators to order Boeing to fix design flaws implicated in the crashes. The FAA eventually deemed the jets safe to fly again in 2020.

The incident is also a test for the FAA, which lawmakers have criticized for its handling of the 2018 and 2019 crashes and its process for reviewing the safety of the Max. The agency has attempted to strengthen its oversight of Boeing since those incidents.

The last year has brought a string of incidents that raised airline safety concerns. Multiple near-collisions on U.S. runways raised alarms and put safety under deeper scrutiny, including a safety review by the FAA. Rising passenger demand post-pandemic has collided with labor shortages, outdated technology and worker fatigue to pose safety risks, The Post has reported.

On Tuesday, a Japan Airlines passenger jet burst into flames on a Tokyo airport runway after colliding with a coast guard plane, killing five people.

Investigators at the FAA and NTSB were likely to move “very swiftly” to diagnose the “unusual failure” on the Portland flight, said Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Britain’s Cranfield University. ✓

“I would say that operators, the regulator and manufacturer will all be taking this event extremely seriously,” he said.

The flight was headed to Ontario, Calif., a Los Angeles-area airport. It took off from Portland around 5:06 p.m. Pacific time and reached 16,300 feet before descending, according to flight data published by the flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

Air traffic control recordings captured the frantic moments in which one of the plane’s pilots declared an emergency and requested an urgent return to Portland.

“We just depressurized; we’re declaring an emergency,” the Alaska pilot told air traffic controllers, according to recordings from LiveATC.net. “We need to descend down to 10,000.”

“There was a really loud bang … and then a whoosh noise and all the air masks dropped,” passenger Evan Smith told Fox12 Oregon after getting off the flight. “It was about as wide as a refrigerator” he added, describing the size of the hole.

Le also recalled an “extremely loud pop” as oxygen masks were deployed. Remnants of the wall were “flying everywhere,” and the wind was “extremely loud and cold,” she said.

“Everyone was shaken up but we all remained calm and buckled in our seats,” Le, a psychology student, added.

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Fellow passenger Kyle Rinker tweeted: “I was right across from it, it was scary as hell,” noting that the seat beside the hole had been empty. “It was so cold with all that air coming in.”

The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents crews at Alaska, said members on board had “described the decompression as explosive.”

The pilot requested assistance on the ground and in subsequent broadcasts calmly repeated back instructions as the plane made its way to the airport. It landed about 20 minutes after taking off, according to Flightradar24.

This is the door (in the red circle) that separated from the aircraft (image not the same registration, but same aircraft type).

Alaska’s 737-9 MAX seating configuration is not dense enough to require the mid-aft cabin exit, so the door is deactivated and standard sidewall… pic.twitter.com/nXUHSoymBY

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 6, 2024

The plane made a safe emergency landing, said Allison Ferre, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland, ✓ which oversees Portland International Airport. The FAA confirmed that the crew of Flight 1282 had “reported a pressurization issue.”

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The part of the plane that came off appeared to be a rear cabin exit door behind the wings, the location of which corresponded with the missing section visible in passengers’ photos and videos, according to experts who analyzed images and Flightradar24.

“It was a clean break that perfectly matched the outline of the mid-aft exit door,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator with the FAA and NTSB.

The door is required when a plane is carrying a certain number of passengers, but because the Alaska aircraft was designed to carry a smaller number of passengers, the door was not required to be activated. It would have been paneled over to look like a regular passenger seat with a window, Guzzetti said.

United Airlines also flies the 737-9 Max model, and other airlines use different 737 models. Alaska Airlines has 231 Boeing 737 planes in total, which are an average of 9.7 years old.

The aircraft that made the emergency landing Friday was delivered from Boeing on Oct. 31 last year. It entered service in the following month and has made 145 flights since then, according to Flightradar24.

Whether the incident signifies a larger issue — and trouble for Boeing and its 737 Max planes — remains to be seen, experts said.

It could be an isolated incident, said John Rose, chief risk and security officer at Altour, ✓ a travel management company, who said this type of problem is “extremely rare.” But if it’s a systemic manufacturing issue, then the incident could have “just exposed a failure.”

In Guzzetti’s assessment, that could be the case. Guzzetti said the incident could have been caused by a structural or mechanical issue, meaning it may be a manufacturing defect rather than a maintenance problem.

“Boeing has been plagued with a spate of manufacturing problems. Not just with the Max, but with the 787 as well,” he told The Post. “It certainly could point to some significant deficiencies in Boeing’s production process and production quality.”

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Le, the passenger, said she was put on the next Alaska Airlines flight to Ontario Friday night and had received a refund and “additional” compensation.

Even so, she remained wary of boarding another plane. “Not sure how we got through it,” she said, “but we did end up at our destination safely.”

Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/01/05/alaska-airlines-plane-emergency-landing-portland/