Missing door ‘plug’ found after ‘terrifying’ mid-air blowout on Alaska Airlines flight

8 January 2024, 08:23

The missing part of the Alaska Airlines plane that blew off mid-flights has been located in a teacher’s garden.

A teacher, Bob, found the missing Boeing 737 Max 9 fuselage door plug in his garden in Portland, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

The plug is a key part of the investigation and officials had been searching for it since the incident on Friday where the door blew off the plane at 16,000 feet.

More than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft have been grounded and more than 200 Alaska Airlines flights have been cancelled.

It also emerged today that the plane involved in the blowout had pressurisation warnings in the days before the incident.

Pilots reported warning lights on three previous flights, according to Jennifer Homendy of the US National Transportation Safety Board.

The airline had prevented the jet from making long-haul flights over water.

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Less than an hour into the plane’s journey on Friday, the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario California was plunged into chaos when a section of the plane blew out mid air.

People’s phones were sucked out of the plane, passengers said.

Terrifying footage posted on social media showed passengers breathing with oxygen masks on board the plane.

One passenger screamed: “there’s a f*****g hole!” amid the chaos.

Boeing’s President David Calhoun will hold a meeting at the firm’s Washington HQ ‘focused on safety’.

“It is critical for us to work transparently with our customers and regulators to understand and address the causes of the event and to ensure they don’t happen again,” Calhoun said in an email.