Alaska Airlines: Boeing grounds planes after horror midair scare as door found in US teacher’s yard

The missing piece of fuselage from a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft that caused a horror midar incident and planes to be grounded worldwide has been found. See Video

A school teacher in Oregon has found part of an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 door that blew out mid-flight, in a development that could help with the investigation.

The emergency 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 cancelled.

The chief of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said a school teacher found the door panel in his backyard in the city of Portland in the western US state of Oregon.

“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.”

Alaska Airlines grounded its 737 MAX 9 planes after part of a fuselage blew off during a flight from Portland Oregon to Ontario, California. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

However, the cockpit voice recorder data was overwritten, US authorities said, renewing calls for longer in-flight recordings.

NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said no data was available on the cockpit voice recorder because it was not retrieved within two hours - when recording restarts, erasing previous data.

On Friday, Alaska Flight 1282 departed from Portland International Airport and was still gaining altitude when the cabin crew reported a “pressurisation issue”, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 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.

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Girls’ trip turned into emergency landing trip… #alaska#alaskaair

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‘I DON’T WANT TO DIE’: HARROWING ACCOUNTS OF FLIGHT EMERGE

Harrowing accounts have emerged from passengers aboard the Alaska Airlines plane that lost its door plug mid-flight – including a woman who sent what she thought could be her final message to her parents, reading: “Please pray for me. I don’t want to die.”

Emma Vu was asleep in seat 18B aboard Flight 1282 when the Boeing 737-9 MAX suddenly dropped after part of its fuselage blew off at about 16,000 feet and left a gaping hole.

“The masks r down. I am so scared right now,” Vu wrote to her parents in texts she posted in a TikTok video, where she is seen wearing an oxygen mask during the ordeal.

Vu told CNN it was “very scary” and “very surreal.”

“I woke up to the plane just falling and I knew it was not just normal turbulence because the masks came down, and that’s when the panic definitely started to set it,” she recalled.

“You just think it’s never going to happen to you — and then it literally did happen to me.”

A young boy seated in the row near the panel that blew off mid-flight nearly got sucked out of the gaping hole in the fuselage.

The boy had his shirt ripped off by the sudden decompression, injuring him slightly, while passengers’ phones and belongings flew out of the hole. Several passengers experienced injuries requiring medical attention.

Evan Smith, one of the 177 passengers on board, said: “There was a really loud bang towards the left rear of the plane and a woosh noise – and all the air masks dropped.

“They said there was a kid in that row who had his shirt sucked off him and out of the plane and his mother was holding onto him to make sure he didn’t go with it.”

The US Federal Aviation Administration has ordered US airline operators to temporarily ground dozens of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft for inspections.

The US order affects 171 planes worldwide.

In Australia, a spokesperson for Civil Aviation Safety Authority said “there are currently no Boeing 737 Max 9s flown by any airlines in Australia”, while Boeing issued an international statement.

“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” said the statement.

“We agree with and fully support the FAA’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane. In addition, a Boeing technical team is supporting the NTSB’s investigation into last night’s event. We will remain in close contact with our regulator and customers.”

Part of the fuselage blew out mid-flight. Picture: KPTV

The FAA said it was requiring immediate inspections of Max 9 planes operated by US airlines or flown in the country by other carriers.

Alaska Airlines grounded its whole fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9 after the incident, but has returned some of its grounded planes to service.

The Boeing 737 Max has been called the “the most scrutinised transport aircraft in history” after a series of safety issues.

A spokesperson for Bonza said the airline, which flies the 737 Max 8, did not operate any of the Max 9 planes.

“Bonza doesn’t operate any of the 737 Max 9 aircraft that have been temporarily grounded for inspection,” the spokesperson said.

We have received assurance from Boeing that there is no impact to our fleet.”

Turkish Airlines said it would ground five Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets in its fleet for inspections following the scare.

“In light of the incident with the Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by Alaska Airlines, five Boeing 737 MAX 9 in the Turkish Airlines fleet have been recalled for checks as a security precaution,” the airline said in a statement.

They will be grounded “where they are to land”, it added.

Aeromexico and Panamanian carrier Copa Airlines also said they had grounded the planes affected by the FAA order, while Icelandair said none of its 737 MAX 9s had the plane configuration specified in the FAA grounding order.