A missing door plug that blew off an Alaska Airlines plane in mid-air on Friday has been recovered in the backyard of a Portland home, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Sunday.
Speaking at a press conference on Jan. 7, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the missing Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug was found in the backyard of a Portland schoolteacher who was only identified as Bob.
According to Ms. Homendy, the schoolteacher contacted the NTSB after discovering the missing part of the aircraft in his backyard and sent two photos of it. Ms. Homendy refused to disclose any details about the location.
“We’re going to go pick that up and make sure that we begin analyzing it,” she added.
Investigators had been looking for the plug that blew off the plane after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, on Friday, prompting the pilots to make an emergency landing.
The airplane, carrying 171 passengers and six crew members, safely returned to Portland International Airport and landed at approximately 5:30 p.m. local time on Friday, according to Alaska Airlines.
The airline said on Sunday that it was willing to conduct inspections of the mid exit door plugs on its 737-9 MAX fleet. Alaska Airlines has canceled hundreds of flights following the incident.
“While we await the airworthiness directive (AD) inspection criteria from the FAA and Boeing, our maintenance teams are prepared and ready to perform the required inspections of the mid exit door plugs on our 737-9 MAX fleet,” the airline stated.
NTSB Called for Public’s Help
The NTSB had earlier requested the public’s help in locating the missing plug, as the agency believed it could be a “key missing component” that would help determine the cause of the accident.“Our structures team will want to look at everything on the door—all of the components on the door to see to look at witness marks, to look at any paint transfer, what shape the door was in when found. That can tell them a lot about what occurred,” Ms. Homendy said.
She said the force from the loss of the plug door was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door during flight.
“They heard a bang,” Ms. Homendy said of the pilots, who were interviewed by investigators.
A quick reference laminated checklist flew out the door, while the first officer lost her headset, she said.
“Communication was a serious issue... It was described as chaos,” she added.
Ms. Homendy said the cockpit voice recorder did not capture any data because it had been overwritten and again called on regulators to mandate retrofitting existing planes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data, up from the two hours required at present.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the grounding of some Boeing Max 9s operated by U.S. airlines or flown into the country by foreign carriers until they are inspected. The emergency order affects about 171 planes worldwide.
The so-called door plug is installed on some jets with fewer seats instead of an emergency exit panel. The jets ordered grounded by the FAA all have those panels installed.
United Airlines, the world’s biggest operator of Max 9s, grounded its entire fleet of 79 Max 9s and is seeking to “clarify the inspection process and requirements for returning” them to service. United said it canceled 90 flights because of the grounding Saturday and about 180 Sunday.
