Federal investigators investigating last week’s near-catastrophic explosion of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 fuselage panel are looking into the possibility that the hardware that should have kept it safe was never installed in the first place.
National Transportation Safety Board officials made the disclosure during a news conference Monday night, hours after United Airlines reported finding loose bolts and “installation problems” on several Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes following the emergency landing of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at Portland International Airport Friday afternoon.
Officials told reporters that a door plug was ripped from the plane minutes after it took off from PDX, causing cabin pressure to drop sharply and creating frighteningly “strong” and “windy” conditions that caused a young passenger sitting next to the missing door to reportedly lose his shirt because he was held by his mother.
The large panel that was flown from the plane was located where emergency exits would normally be on planes with more seats, and should have been secured with stop bolts and 12 connecting pins and pads, investigators said.
“Examination so far has shown that the door actually translated up, all 12 stops became disconnected, allowing it to blow out of the fuselage,” said NTSB aerospace engineer Clint Crookshanks.
The panel that boarded an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 last week may not have been erased, according to federal investigators. NTSB/Circulation via REUTERS A door plug was pulled from a plane minutes after it took off from Portland International Airport. NTSB HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“We found that the two guide rails on the plug were broken … we still haven’t recovered the four bolts … that prevent it from its vertical movement, and we haven’t determined whether it exists there,” Crookshanks continued.
Investigators are looking to see if the bolt “was there, or … if it came out during … a violent explosive decompression event,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy added.
The jet door plug that blew up the plane, followed by the passengers’ personal belongings, was found by a Portland science teacher in his backyard Sunday, a discovery that investigators hope will offer more clues when it arrives at the NTSB lab in Washington, DC.
According to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, investigators are looking into whether the bolt was installed or was blown during the flight. NTSB
The NTSB said the “very emotional” flight attendant was in counseling after the trauma of the fatal incident, which left no one seriously injured.
Crew members reported “significant crew communication challenges during the event,” officials explained.
“They don’t know what’s going on. They were certainly concerned, they said, about the four unaccompanied minors and their focus was on them and the three other children at the time,” Homendy said.
“Flight attendants mentioned that … communication was so poor that they felt they, they really needed guidance and information, and it was [a] quite a frightening event.”
The NTSB disclosure comes after United Airlines reported finding loose bolts and “installation issues” on several Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes. AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer
The plane’s captain and first officer also told investigators that the flight cockpit door was open during the incident and said they heard a bang and felt pressure changes in their ears.
Laminated flight checklists even blew into the cabin before a flight attendant could close the cockpit door, officials revealed.
“They had trouble communicating … they had trouble hearing each other, they had trouble hearing air traffic control and they had trouble communicating throughout the event,” Homendy said.
Homendy inspects a plane in Portland on January 7, 2024. NTSB/Distribution via REUTERS
Investigators have not linked the investigation to loose bolts found on several United Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets, saying it is focused only on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
The NTSB said it expects its investigation to take between a year and 18 months.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday grounded about 170 planes internationally for inspections following the spine-tingling snafu.
All Boeing MAX jets were grounded for two years after two crashes on Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines Indonesia in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people.
Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun has scheduled a company-wide safety meeting for Tuesday.
“While we have made progress in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes in recent years, situations like this are a reminder that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day,” Calhoun told his staff.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
