Damning NTSB report reveals reason door blew off Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid-flight after Boeing issued bizarre excuse
A federal investigation revealed that major errors by Boeing led to a door plug flying off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max mid flight, putting the lives of 175 passengers and crew at risk.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a flawed manufacturing process within Boeing and insufficient regulatory oversight caused the near catastrophic disaster.
‘An accident like this only happens when there are multiple system failures,’ NTSB chairman Jennifer Homendy said.
The NTSB has been investigating what went so wrong just six minutes into the January 2024 flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
The initial probe found four key bolts that were meant to hold the door plug in place were were missing from the aircraft.
It has since been established the door left Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington without those crucial bolts.
Just one of those bolts, if properly secured, would have held the door panel in place, and the other three were supposed to be used as an additional safety mechanism.
But without any, the panel had shifted slightly upward during earlier flights, but not enough for any crew members to notice a difference when they did their final safety inspections before takeoff.
The airline gave the bizarre excuse that a paperwork mishap led to the debacle.
Also, investigators noted that Boeing workers did not adequately document who had been tasked with working on the door plug.
There were no serious injuries from the terrifying air frame failure, but passengers belongings including cellphones flew out of the aircraft along with the pilot’s headset
An investigator examines the frame on a section of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
There were 24 technicians employed at Boeing working on doors at the Renton factory, according to investigators.
Just one of those technicians had experience opening a door plug in the past, and he was on vacation during its last service.
The Boeing mistake, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the Federal Aviation Administration, led to the terrifying malfunction, the NTSB found.
No fault was found with Alaska Airlines crew qualifications or preflight inspections.
The heroic actions of the crew of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 ensured everyone survived, Homendy found.
But Homendy said ‘the crew shouldn’t have had to be heroes, because this accident never should have happened.’
The blowout created a roaring air vacuum that sucked objects out of the cabin and scattered them on the ground below along with debris from the fuselage.
Seven passengers and one flight attendant sustained minor injuries, but no one was killed. Pilots were able to land the plane safely back at the airport.
The Alaska Airlines flight suffered a near-catastrophe as a plane door plug blew out at 16,000ft
First Officer Emily Wiprud was flying the plane and earlier said about six minutes into the flight there was a sudden loss of cabin pressure as the plane was approaching 16,000ft.
‘My body was forced forward and there was a loud bang as well. … The flight deck door was open. I saw tubes hanging from the cabin,’ she told CBS News.
At first, she did not know what was wrong but immediately worked alongside the captain to get the plane back down on the ground and return to Portland.
‘I didn’t know that there was a hole in the airplane until we landed. I knew something was catastrophically wrong,’ Wiprud said.
‘It was so incredibly loud, and I remember putting the oxygen mask on and trying to transmit to air traffic control and wondering ‘Why can’t I hear anything?”
The reason Wiprud couldn’t hear anything was because her headset had been sucked out of the plane following the explosive blowout together with various other objects including two passenger cellphones.
Wiprud then turned her focus to the 171 passengers and four flight attendants onboard the aircraft.
‘I opened the flight deck door and I saw calm, quiet, hundreds of eyes staring right back at me.’
Alaska Airlines First Officer Emily Wiprud has recounted the moment a door plug flew out of the plane she was piloting six minutes into Flight 1282 in January 2024
Four crucial bolts were missing from door plug that blew off Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane, according to the NTSB
The flight attendants reported that they were fine but that there were empty seats and some injuries.
Wiprud feared that some passengers may have been sucked out of the plane but thankfully that turned out not to be the case.
One teenager had his t-shirt ripped from his body during the sudden decompression.
When the plane finally landed, Wiprud, who has two young children herself, saw the boy’s mother searching for him.
‘She looked back and her son was gone. As a mother myself, I can’t even imagine that feeling,’ she said.
Luckily, the teen had switched to another seat after being in the same row where the panel had blown out.
The door panel which blew out is designed to fit into spaces on the aircraft when airlines don’t require doors there. The plug essentially transforms the door into a window.
Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems — the company that made and installed the door plug — are redesigning them with another backup system to keep the panels in place even if the bolts are missing, but that improvement isn’t likely to be certified by the FAA until 2026 at the soonest.
The door plug was later found in the yard of an Oregon teacher
The NTSB urged the companies and the regulator to make sure every 737 Max is retrofitted with those new panels.
Boeing has improved training and processes since the incident, according to the NTSB, but board officials said the company need to better identify manufacturing risks to make sure such flaws never sneak through again.
Homendy did single out Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, for improving safety since he took over last summer, though she said more needs to be done.
The NTSB recommended that Boeing continue improving its training and safety standards and make sure everyone knows when actions must be documented.
Board members also highlighted the need to ensure that everyone throughout the company understands its safety plan as well as executives do.
The board also urged the FAA to step up and make sure its audits and inspections address key areas based on past problems and systemic issues.
The agency was encouraged Tuesday to assess Boeing’s safety culture and reconsider its longstanding policy not to require children under 2 to travel in their own seats with proper restraints.
The FAA said in a statement that it ‘has fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues.
‘We are actively monitoring Boeing’s performance and meet weekly with the company to review its progress and any challenges it’s facing in implementing necessary changes.’
