SEATTLE — In the second news conference since a door plug to a Boeing 737 MAX 9 blew out on an Alaska Airlines plane midflight, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy described a chaotic and loud scene on the nearly full flight of 171 passengers including three babies and four unaccompanied minors.
On Sunday night, after the second day of investigating, Homendy said flight crew members described “a bang” during the explosive decompression, during which the door to the cockpit flew open.
The full capacity of the plane is 178 seats, she said, and the seats closest to the door plug in row 26 were unoccupied.
A panel plugging an unused door blew out at 16,000 feet, before the plane reached cruising altitude, according to early Federal Aviation Administration reports and flight data. A hole in the jet’s frame quickly decompressed air in the cabin, forcing the crew to turn the plane around and return to Portland International Airport.
Several passengers were injured but have since been medically cleared, Alaska Airlines said. Homendy said a flight attendant witnessed the first officer jolt forward and briefly lose her headset.
Investigators documented damage to paneling in several rows but did not find any structural damage to critical parts of the aircraft. Parts of the plane are being sent to NTSB’s lab for further analysis, in some cases to look for microscopic damage.
Homendy said the “auto pressurization fail light” illuminated three times in previous flights, once in December and then on Jan. 3 and 4, describing it as “very benign” and that nothing occurred afterward. Additional maintenance was ordered on the plane but it had not been completed by Friday’s flight, she said, though it is not clear to what degree the light was related to the missing door.
“We don’t know that there was any correlation of the two. It could be entirely separate,” Homendy said.
While the door plug has still not been located, Homendy said community members have found two cellphones: one in a yard and one on the side of the road. The NTSB has also requested that businesses and homeowners check their roofs for debris and their security cameras for any relevant footage around 5:11 p.m.
The agency is looking for help finding the missing door plug, which they believe could be around the Cedar Hills neighborhood and Barnes Road, near Interstate 217, west of Portland. Homendy said it is yellowish-green on one side and white on the other and weighs 63 pounds.
Meanwhile, the number of canceled flights to or from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport grew Sunday in the wake of the serious incident that led to a federally mandated grounding of most Boeing 737 MAX 9 models nationwide.
As of 2:30 p.m. Sunday, 96 flights were canceled, a spike from the 86 flights canceled throughout the day Saturday, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware. An additional 145 flights were delayed Sunday.
Alaska Airlines flights made up the vast majority of cancellations and delays at the airport.
Travel disruptions are expected to continue into the week, according to Alaska Airlines, which is inspecting its fleet of 65 Max 9s.
Thousands of flights nationwide have been delayed or canceled since the incident, according to FlightAware.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding and safety inspection of all MAX 9 aircraft operated in the country or by U.S. airlines. The inspections will affect about 171 Boeing planes with the same door plug that blew out Friday.
Alaska and United Airlines operate the most Boeing 737 MAX 9s in the U.S., although several airlines have canceled or delayed flights.
“We are very, very fortunate here that this didn’t end up in something more tragic,” Homendy said at a news conference on Saturday night, adding that the door could have blown off at cruising altitude, when passengers and flight attendants would have been walking around.
She said the investigation at this moment is focused on this specific plane, which was put into service on Nov. 11, not the entire fleet.
“We’ll look at the pressurization system, we’ll look at the door, the hinges,” Homendy said. “Do we suspect that there is an overall design problem with this plane based on previous accidents involving Boeing MAX? At this time, no.”
On Sunday, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun called a companywide meeting for Tuesday focusing on safety. He also canceled a leadership summit scheduled to take place on Monday and Tuesday, Boeing spokesperson Jessica Kowal said.
