The plane was five kilometers high and still climbing when the passengers heard the roar and felt the gust of icy wind. A piece of the metal membrane separating the 171 passengers and six crew members from the frigid middle troposphere had “unexpectedly left the plane,” as transportation officials clinically put it.
No serious injuries were reported aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon on Friday night with a door-shaped hole in its side and a cabin full of scared people
But transportation officials say the midair explosion could have been calamitous if it had occurred a little later in the flight, when the plane was at cruising altitude with passengers unbuckled and walking.
“We are very, very fortunate here that this did not end in something more tragic,” said Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents.
“I imagine this was a pretty scary event,” Homendy said. “We don’t often talk about psychological damage, but I’m sure that happened here.”
The plane was new, a Boeing 737 Max 9 that entered service late last year. Investigators will try to figure out what caused one of the so-called plug gates, described by some experts as “false gates,” to release into the air over Oregon.
With 178 seats, the plane does not need to have emergency exit doors in place, so builders installed sealed panels where doors would otherwise have been on either side.
Investigators are searching for the missing plug door, which is believed to have landed near the Cedar Hills neighborhood in Greater Portland. The NTSB asks anyone who finds it to contact police.
Alaska Airlines said Sunday that its 65 Max 9s were grounded and that it had canceled 170 flights on Sunday, affecting 25,000 passengers. On Saturday, United Airlines said it had grounded its 79 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for inspection and that 270 flights were canceled over the weekend as a result of the Friday night incident.
Flight 1282 left Portland International Airport shortly after 5 p.m. Friday and headed to Ontario International Airport in Southern California on a scheduled two-hour flight. It was traveling at about 440 mph, at an altitude of about 16,000 feet, and had been in the air for about 10 minutes.
Passengers then heard what some called a boom and others called a pop, as the fake door flew off, exposing the bare insulation around it. Some passengers screamed and rushed to put on the oxygen masks that had fallen off. A passenger told KTLA-Channel 5 that the explosion completely ripped off a teenager’s shirt.
The explosion ripped the headrests off some seats. There were seven empty seats on the plane, authorities said, and by a stroke of luck, the two closest to the hole (26A and 26B) were empty.
An audio recording between the pilot and an air traffic controller describes what happened next. The pilot calmly explained that the plane had depressurized and needed to return to Portland International.
“Now we are leveling 12,000 and turning left heading 340,” the pilot said. “We have zero information. “We would like to go down, if possible…”
“Did you declare an emergency?” the air traffic controller asked. “Or did you just need to return to…”
“Yes, we are emergency. We are depressurized. “We need to get back to… Our fuel is 18,900 pounds and we have 177 passengers on board.”
“Do you need time to burn off some fuel before landing?”
“Negative.”
“Are you ready to come closer now?”
The pilot said the plane was about 10 minutes away.
“Understood. Just let me know when you’re ready,” the air traffic controller said.
“We’ll let you know. Alaska 1282.”
“The only information we have is a depressurization problem. … The emergency plane will be the next to arrive,” said the air traffic controller. “They are in a two-mile final. And you can expect access to the track.”
Passengers cheered when the plane landed safely, about 13 minutes after the explosion.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
