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Alaska Airlines said in a statement that the flight had experienced “an incident” but that all 171 passengers and six crew members were safe. The airline plans to ground the 737-9 Max fleet for inspections as a precaution in light of “tonight’s event,” CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement late Friday.
“It was terrifying,” passenger Elizabeth Le, 20, a college student on a trip with friends, said in an interview, recalling an “extremely loud pop” as oxygen masks were deployed. Remnants of the wall were “flying everywhere,” and the wind gushing into the aircraft 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.
What caused the incident wasn’t immediately clear. The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday it is sending a team of experts to Portland to launch an investigation.
In a statement, Boeing said that it is 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 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 flight was headed to Ontario, Calif., a Los Angeles-area airport. 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.”
The pilot requested assistance on the ground, and in subsequent broadcasts calmly repeated back instructions as the plane made its way to the airport.
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.”
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.”
“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.
The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents crews at Alaska, said members on board had “described the decompression as explosive,” and that one flight attendant had sustained minor injuries.
Sara Nelson, the group’s president, said in a statement she supported the decision to ground the planes and that the union would monitor the process, calling the grounding “a prudent and necessary step toward ensuring the safety of all crew and passengers.”
In its statement, Alaska Airlines called the incident rare and said the flight crew on board was “trained and prepared to safely manage the situation. We are investigating what happened and will share more information as it becomes available.”
The plane took off from Portland about 5:06 p.m. Pacific time and had reached 16,300 feet before descending, according to flight data published by the flight-tracking website Flightradar24. The plane completed its emergency landing about 20 minutes after taking off, the website added.
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 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.
Alaska Airlines maintains 65 Boeing 737-9 Max models, among a total of 231 Boeing 737 planes with an average age of 9.7 years.
The 737-9 Max model includes a rear cabin exit door behind the wings, which is near the spot of the missing wall section visible on social media posts from the flight, according to Flightradar24. “The doors are not activated on Alaska Airlines aircraft and are permanently ‘plugged,’” it said.
The Boeing 737 Max was grounded worldwide on March 13, 2019, following the two crashes within five months of each other. The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ban 20 months later, indicating it was satisfied the planes were safe to fly again.
John Rose, chief risk and security officer at Altour, a travel management company, looked at an online photo of the apparent incident and described this type of failure as “extremely rare,” especially for a scheduled flight with commercial aircraft that undergo constant inspections. “I would say that’s probably as rare as a plane crash, if not even more rare than that,” he said.
The incident may not necessarily spell trouble for the 737 Max if this is an isolated failure, he added, describing it as “one of the most scrutinized aircraft in the world” because of its troubled history. “But if it’s something that is within the actual manufacture of this aircraft and this is just exposed a failure, then it’s a larger issue.”
Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Britain’s Cranfield University, said in an email that the investigations by the FAA and NTSB were likely to move “very swiftly” to identify “this unusual failure.”
“In terms of reassuring passengers, I would say that operators, the regulator and manufacturer will all be taking this event extremely seriously,” Braithwaite said.
“A cautious initial reaction may be more likely in this circumstance as the Max has had some difficulties. They may yet prove to be unconnected, but aviation has achieved excellent safety performance by being very conservative in its approach to risk,” he added.
Le, the passenger, said she was fortunate to have been put on the next Alaska Airlines flight to Ontario that night, and that she had received a refund for her flight and “additional” compensation.
Despite this, she remains wary of boarding another plane. “Not sure how we got through it, but we did end up at our destination safely,” she added.
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