US aviation authorities announced that the door of an Alaska Airlines plane that separated from the fuselage has been found shortly after take-off on Friday, which should help understand the cause of this extremely rare accident that led to the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes and the cancellation of… Dozens of flights. Trips around the world.
• Read also: Inspections on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 increase after takeoff
• Read also: Emergency landing: An Alaska Airlines plane window broke mid-flight
• Read also: Turkish Airlines grounded its Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft after the Alaska Airlines incident
“I am pleased to report that we have found the door panel,” Jennifer Homendy, head of the US transportation safety agency, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said in a press conference, which sent a team to investigate the reasons for this. the incident.
A teacher retrieved the sign from his backyard in Portland, Oregon. “He took a picture. In the pictures, I can only see the outside of the door panel, the white parts. We don't see anything else, but we'll look for it and start analyzing it,” the NTSB chief said.
On Friday, around 6:30 p.m. (02:30 GMT Saturday), shortly after an Alaska Airlines flight took off from Portland International Airport (northwest Oregon), a door opened and separated from the fuselage mid-flight, according to NTSB.
It's a blind door and hidden by a partition that only reveals a slot, called NTSB, which is the configuration Boeing offers to customers who request it. These models are “middle door blocked,” according to FAA guidance posted on its website.
The plane, which was carrying 171 passengers and 6 crew members, was at an altitude of about 5,000 metres. The plane quickly returned to Portland and the accident caused only minor injuries.
It was really brutal. One of the passengers on the plane, Kyle Rinker, testified to CNN: “Barely at altitude, the front of the window blew out.”
According to the NTSB, no one sat in the two seats adjacent to the section that flew away. But according to passengers cited by Portland daily The Oregonian, a teenager sitting in the row had his shirt ripped due to decompression, causing him minor injuries.
After this extremely rare malfunction, the FAA requested “immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft before they can resume flying,” which concerns 171 planes worldwide, it identified on X (formerly Twitter).
As a result, airlines and safety agencies around the world have grounded some Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft pending inspections, and dozens of flights have been cancelled.
Thus, United Airlines, which has the largest fleet of 737-9 aircraft in the world, announced to AFP that it would leave 46 planes on the ground, after 33 of them had already been inspected. Alaska Airlines explained on Saturday
Aeromexico, Copa Airlines – which operates 21 of these planes – and Turkish Airlines – which owns 5 – also announced that they had grounded their planes for checks.
On the other hand, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) noted that no operator in Europe is flying the 737 MAX 9 with the technical options in question.
“We are very, very fortunate that this did not end in a more tragic way,” the head of the NTSB told the press, while US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke of a “terrifying accident” on the X.
Boeing's CEO called a safety meeting on Tuesday at the manufacturer's factory located in Washington state (northwest).
This incident is a new episode in a dark series for the 737 Max, Boeing's flagship aircraft, which has witnessed a series of technical problems and two crashes in recent years: the last one caused the death of 346 people in October 2018 and March 2019, which led to the death of 346 people. Grounding the 737 MAX for 20 months and imposing changes to the in-flight control system.
Recently, Boeing was forced to slow down deliveries due to problems with the fuselage, especially with the plane's rear bulkhead.
At the end of December, the manufacturer had delivered more than 1,370 737 MAX examples, and its order book exceeded 4,000 units.
