The door stopper that blew off an Alaska Airlines plane during flight was found in the backyard

The National Transportation Safety Board says the plug covers an unused exit door It exploded minutes after an Alaska Airlines flight Friday night Have been found. The head of the agency said that this discovery could be vital in the investigation into the cause of the explosion that forced the Boeing 737 MAX 9 to return to Portland, Oregon, minutes after takeoff.

The FAA has grounded all Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft types in question until it is “convinced they are safe,” an FAA spokesperson said in a statement on Sunday.

At a news conference Sunday evening, National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the plug was found near Portland in the backyard of a teacher she identified only as Bob. “We're really glad Bob found this,” she said.

Reuters news agency says it had previously told journalists that the plane part was a “key component missing” to determine the cause of the accident.

Homendy told reporters that pilots reported that the same plane experienced three warnings from cockpit dashboard lights between December 12 and 2018. 7 and January 4. At least one accident occurred during the flight.

The plane was only weeks old and was delivered at the end of October. Alaska Airlines maintenance crews inspected and removed the light after each illumination.

The day before the explosion, the carrier had ordered the plane in question not to make any long flights over water so it could “return very quickly to the airport” if the warning light came on again, Homendy said. She stressed that the light may have nothing to do with Friday's incident. In addition, further maintenance work, a deeper dive into why the light was still on, was ordered, but nothing was done before Friday night's flight.

Homendy described the chaotic scene in the cockpit of the plane and outside immediately after the explosion.

She said the flight crew heard a popping sound and the cockpit “door” opened due to the pressure drop, so they immediately put on their masks, but communication in the cockpit and between crew members in the cabin and the cockpit was very difficult.

The force of the pressure drop caused the cockpit door to collide with the forward bathroom door, damaging the bathroom door, and it took the flight attendant three attempts to close the cockpit door again, Homendy said.

She noticed that the first officer had lost her headset and that the captain had removed part of her headset. The captain and first officer couldn't hear anything on the damaged headphones once they were recovered, so they used the overhead speaker to listen.

A quick checklist kept on hand by the cabin crew also went out the door, Homendy said, adding that it was incredibly loud and chaotic on board.

The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were sent to NTSB laboratories on Sunday to be read, but no data was available on the cockpit voice recorder because it was not retrieved two hours later, when the previous recording and data were replayed, Homendy said. It was cleared, according to the Reuters news agency, which adds that the NTSB was pushing to increase the cockpit audio recording requirement to 25 hours.

The FAA's Emergency Airworthiness Directive, which has grounded many Max 9s, affects about 171 aircraft worldwide. Such directives are issued “when an unsafe condition exists that requires immediate action by the owner/operator,” according to the agency.

“The FAA’s number one priority is keeping the public safe while flying,” an FAA spokesperson said.

What happened on the Alaska Airlines flight?

The flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, was minutes into its flight and reaching about 16,000 feet when the door plug blew, an NTSB official said during a news conference on Saturday. The Associated Press explained that the hole in the side of the plane opened as Boeing installed a plug to cover the emergency exit, which the airline does not use.

Homendy described the event as “an accident, not an accident.” She added that the plane was forced to return to Portland International Airport just minutes after take-off “after the mid-cabin door seal came out of the plane, which led to a rapid decompression.”

The two seats next to the part that was torn down were vacant, Homendy said. None of the 171 passengers or six crew members were seriously injured, Homendy said. The NTSB said Sunday that the plane suffered no structural damage.

Who is investigating the incident?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Boeing, Alaska Airlines, the Airline Pilots Association and the Association of Flight Attendants are all investigating, officials said.

The FBI is also assisting local law enforcement in identifying parts that exploded during the flight. A spokesman for the FBI's Portland office said the agency remained “on call.”

The NTSB has asked anyone with photos and videos to contact us via email: [email protected].

How are airlines and Boeing responding?

In the United States, only Alaska Airlines and United Airlines fly the Boeing 737 MAX 9.

Alaska Airlines said it has temporarily grounded its entire fleet of 737-9 MAX aircraft, pending inspections. The airline said on Saturday that it had canceled 160 flights, affecting nearly 23,000 passengers, and another 170 flights on Sunday, affecting about 25,000 passengers. “We expect additional significant cancellations during the first half of the week,” the airline said Sunday night.

“Service on United's Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft remains temporarily suspended while FAA-required inspections are conducted. We continue to work with the FAA to clarify the inspection process and requirements for returning all MAX 9 aircraft to service,” United said Sunday. . “We are working with customers to reaccommodate them on other flights, and in some cases we have been able to avoid cancellations by switching to other aircraft types.”

Airlines and regulators around the world have grounded some versions of the Boeing 737 MAX 9, including Turkish Airlines, AFP reported.

The company told AFP that Boeing has so far delivered about 218 737 MAX aircraft around the world.

A Boeing spokesperson said it fully supports “the FAA's decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 aircraft in the same configuration as the affected aircraft.”

Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun told employees Sunday that he would hold a “companywide safety-focused webcast” on Tuesday. He also canceled a leadership summit for Boeing vice presidents that was supposed to be held Monday and Tuesday “to focus on our support of Alaska Airlines, the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, and any of our airline customers experiencing the impact on their fleets.” Calhoun wrote.

Previous investigations into Boeing 737 aircraft

There are currently two versions of the Boeing 737 in service: the MAX 8 and MAX 9.

In 2018, A Lion Air On board a Boeing 737 Max 8 that crashed into the ocean. The following year, A Ethiopian Airlines The plane is of the same model It crashed shortly after take-off. More than 300 people died in the two accidents. And it was the planes Grounded In March 2019 Boeing 737 Max He was allowed to return to duty in late 2020.

in April, Boeing paused Production of the 737 MAX was halted due to a problem with parts of the plane.

Homendy said after Friday's incident that the NTSB did not suspect a general design problem with the plane.