All of Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft have been grounded due to a window that burst when the aircraft was flying from Portland, Oregon.
Following an emergency landing in the US state of Oregon on Friday, Alaska Airlines grounded its Boeing 737-9 aircraft. Passengers reported that a glass panel on the aircraft had blown off during takeoff. Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci issued a statement, saying, “We have decided to take the precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft following tonight’s event on Flight 1282.”
He stated, “Every aircraft will only be returned to service after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” estimating that the examinations would take a few days to complete. Around 5:00 p.m. on Friday (0100 GMT on Saturday), Flight 1282 took off from Portland International Airport and made a safe return “after the crew reported a pressurization issue,” the Federal Aviation Administration stated on X, the previous Twitter platform.
Pictures of an aircraft window panel that had been blasted out and emergency oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling were shared on social media. CNN spoke with passenger Kyle Rinker, who said that shortly after takeoff, a window broke.
“It was rather sudden. He informed the presenter, “Just got to altitude, and the wall/window just popped off. Didn’t notice it until the oxygen masks came off.” A loud explosion during the flight startled up Vi Nguyen, a fellow passenger, she told The New York Times. Nguyen said to the newspaper, “When I open my eyes, the oxygen mask is right in front of me.” “And I look to the left and the wall on the side of the plane is gone.”
“The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m going to die,'” she said. The FAA, Alaska Airlines, and the National Transportation Safety Board all declared that they were looking into the event. In a previous statement, the airline added, “The aircraft landed safely back at Portland International Airport with 171 guests and 6 crew members.”
“While this type of occurrence is rare, our flight crew was trained and prepared to safely manage the situation,” added the statement. According to the flight monitoring website FlightAware, the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft took off at 5:07 p.m. and traveled to Ontario, California. It returned to the Portland airport around 20 minutes later.
In October, the aircraft received certification as airworthy, as per the FAA Register website. Boeing stated on X that a technical team was available to assist in the probe and that further information was being gathered.
Minicucci stated that Alaska Airlines was “working with regulators and Boeing to understand what occurred” in his statement.
