Alaska Airlines: Warning light had shown on flight in days before blowout over Oregon

It is not clear if the pressurisation warnings were related to Friday's incident, which saw a plug door torn from the plane
FILE PHOTO: Passenger oxygen masks hang from the roof next to a missing window and a portion of a side wall of an Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, in Portland, Oregon
A hole in the side of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
Instagram/@strawberrvy via REUTE
Lydia Chantler-Hicks8 January 2024

An Alaska Airlines plane that suffered an in-flight blowout over Oregon had been barred from making certain journeys after a warning light came on in the days leading up to the incident.

The Boeing jetliner made a dramatic emergency landing after a plug door was torn from its fuselage, shortly after it left Portland, Oregon, on Friday en route to Ontario, California.

Pilots turned back and safely landed the depressurised plane, which had been carrying 171 passengers and six crew members.

A US official has now revealed that at the time of the incident, the plane had been restricted from making flights to Hawaii, after a warning light that could have indicated a pressurisation problem lit up on three different flights.

Alaska Airlines decided to restrict the aircraft from long flights over water so the plane "could return very quickly to an airport" if the warning light reappeared, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Ms Homendy cautioned that the pressurisation light could be unrelated to Friday's incident, in which a plug covering an unused exit door blew off the Boeing 737 Max 9 as it cruised about three miles over Oregon.

Passengers clung on as the blowout let a gaping hole in the side of the plane's fuselage, causing a suction effect that reportedly tore the shirt from a child's back.

A gaping hole where the fuselage plug had been, on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
AP

The warning light had come on during three previous flights: on December 7, January 3 and finally on January 4, the day before the door plug broke off.

Ms Homendy said she did not have all the details regarding the December 7 incident but specified the light came on during a flight on January 3, and on January 4 after the plane had landed.

Alaska Airlines said earlier in a response to questions about the warning lights that aircraft pressurisation system write-ups were typical in commercial aviation operations with large planes.

The airline said "in every case, the write up was fully evaluated and resolved per approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations."

The airline added it has an internal policy to restrict aircraft with multiple maintenance write-ups on some systems from long flights over water that was not required by the FAA.

The NTSB said the lost door plug was found on Sunday near Portland, Oregon, by a Portland school teacher named Bob who discovered it in his back garden and sent two photos to the safety board.

Investigators will examine the plug, which is 26 by 48 inches and weighs 63 pounds, for signs of how it broke free.

Ms Homendy said she was "very relieved" it had been found.

"Our structures team will want to look at everything on the door - all of the components on the door to see to look at witness marks, to look at any paint transfer, what shape the door was in when found," she said. "That can tell them a lot about what occurred."

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Saturday ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing MAX 9 jets installed with the same panel, which weighs about 60 pounds (27 kg) and covers an optional exit door mainly used by low-cost airlines.

The force from the loss of the plug door was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door during flight, said Ms Homendy, who said it must have been a "terrifying event" to experience.

AP

"They heard a bang," Ms Homendy said of the pilots, who were interviewed by investigators.

A quick reference laminated checklist flew out the door, while the first officer lost her headset, she said.

"Communication was a serious issue...It was described as chaos."

Ms Homendy said the cockpit voice recorder did not capture any data because it had been overwritten and again called on regulators to mandate retrofitting existing planes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data, up from the two hours required at present.

The FAA said on Sunday the affected fleet of Boeing MAX 9 planes, including those operators by other carriers including United Airlines, would remain grounded until the regulator was satisfied they were safe.

Alaska Airlines cancelled 170 flights on Sunday and a further 60 on Monday, and said travel disruptions from the grounding were expected to last through at least midweek.

United, which has grounded its 79 MAX 9s, canceled 230 flights on Sunday, or eight per cent of scheduled departures.

The accident has put Boeing back under scrutiny as it awaits certification of its smaller MAX 7 as well as the larger MAX 10, which is needed to compete with a key Airbus model.

In 2019, global authorities subjected all MAX planes to a wider grounding that lasted 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly designed cockpit software killed a total of 346 people.

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