The door of an Alaska Airlines plane that broke away from the fuselage shortly after takeoff on Friday has been found, US aviation authorities announced, which should help understand the cause of this very rare accident that led to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 and the cancellation of dozens of flights around the world.
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“I’m happy to announce that we have found the door panel,” Jennifer Homendy, president of the US transportation safety agency, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which sent a team to investigate, said at a press conference. on the reasons for the discovery. the accident.
A teacher recovered the sign in his backyard in Portland, Oregon. “He took a photo. In the photos I only see the outside of the door panel, the white parts. We don’t see anything else, but we’re going to go look for it and start analyzing it,” the NTSB chief said.
On Friday, around 6:30 pm (02:30 GMT Saturday), shortly after takeoff on an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland International Airport (northwestern Oregon), a door opened and came off the fuselage during the flight , according to the NTSB.
It is a door sealed and hidden by a partition that only reveals a porthole, the NTSB specified, a configuration offered by Boeing to customers who request it. These models have “the center door blocked,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directive published on its website.
The plane, which was carrying 171 passengers and 6 crew members, was then at an altitude of almost 5,000 m. The plane quickly returned to Portland and the crash caused only minor injuries.
“It was really brutal. As soon as we were at altitude, the front part of the window came off,” a passenger on the plane, Kyle Rinker, testified to the American channel CNN.
According to the NTSB, there was no one in the two seats next to the blown-away partition. But according to passengers quoted by Portland newspaper The Oregonian, a teenager sitting in row tore his shirt due to decompression, causing minor injuries.
After this very rare malfunction, the FAA “required an immediate inspection of some Boeing 737 MAX 9s before they can resume flight”, which affects 171 aircraft worldwide, it specified on X (ex -Twitter).
The FAA requires immediate inspections of some Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight.
Safety will continue to guide our decision making as we assist the @NTSBof the investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. – @FAA_Mike pic.twitter.com/YsuQimg2pq
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 6, 2024
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.
So United Airlines, which has the largest fleet of 737-9s in the world, announced to AFP that it would ground 46 planes, 33 of which had already been examined. Alaska Airlines clarified Saturday
The companies 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) has indicated that no operator in Europe uses the 737 MAX 9 with the technical options in question.
“We are very, very fortunate that this didn’t end more tragically,” the NTSB chairman told reporters, while US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke of a “terrifying accident” on X.
Boeing’s CEO called a safety meeting on Tuesday at the manufacturer’s plant located in Washington state (Northwest).
The crash is a new episode in a grim series for the 737 MAX, Boeing’s flagship plane, which has experienced a series of technical problems and two crashes in recent years: the latter caused 346 deaths in October 2018 and in March 2019, leading to the grounding of the 737 MAX for 20 months and the imposition of changes to the onboard control system.
More recently, Boeing had to slow deliveries due to problems with the fuselage, particularly the rear bulkhead of the plane.
By the end of December, the manufacturer had delivered more than 1,370 examples of the 737 MAX and its order backlog exceeded 4,000 units.
2024-01-08 11:10:37
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