Alaska Airlines blowout: 170 planes grounded after dramatic mid-air incident on new aircraft stuns aviation experts

Published

2 years ago

January 7, 2024

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More than 170 Boeing planes worldwide have been temporarily grounded after a chunk of fuselage dramatically blew out of a brand-new passenger jet in mid-air.

US regulators say immediate inspections are needed after an Alaska Airlines plane suffered a cabin emergency shortly after take-off on Friday.

Photos showed a gaping hole in the side of the Boeing 737-9 MAX – and although the jet landed safely with more than 170 passengers and six crew in Oregon, phones and a boy’s shirt were sucked out of the plane.

Investigators are now hunting for the fuselage that blew off, and believe it is in a small suburb of Portland called Cedar Hills. Anyone who finds it is being urged to contact the police.

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that “we are very lucky” that the accident wasn’t far worse.

She revealed no one was sat in the seats immediately next to the fuselage – and because the plane had not reached cruising altitude, passengers and crew were not moving around the cabin.

Warning “there is a lot of work to do”, she stressed: “We have the safest aviation system in the world. It is incredibly safe. We are the global gold standard for safety around the world, but we have to maintain that standard.”

Ms Homendy said no serious injuries have been reported, but added it would have been a “pretty terrifying event” that affected passengers psychologically.

Alaska and United Airlines, which both have 737-9 MAXs in their fleets, have made dozens of cancellations and say it could be days until grounded planes return to service. Five aircraft belonging to Turkish Airlines are also being examined as a precaution.

It takes up to eight hours to inspect each aircraft, and the Federal Aviation Administration has warned more action may be taken.

While no 737 MAX-9 planes are registered in the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority has asked all foreign airlines to perform inspections before flying into British airspace.

The Alaska Airlines aircraft involved in Friday’s incident had entered service just eight weeks earlier – and the fuselage that blew off covered a space reserved for an extra evacuation door.

While Boeing has welcomed the temporary groundings, it’s another blow for a company still trying to recover from two high-profile crashes that left its reputation in tatters.

Incident leaves experts stunned

Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety, said he was stunned that a piece of fuselage would fly off a new aircraft.

And while panels have come off planes before, he couldn’t recall an incident that left passengers “looking at the lights of the city”.

He added: “I can’t imagine what these passengers experienced. The wind would be rushing through that cabin.

“It was probably a pretty violent situation, and definitely a scary situation.”

Mr Brickhouse said it was a powerful reminder that passengers should stay buckled in throughout a flight.

And David Learmount, consulting editor at Flightglobal, told Sky News: “If there were people near it who were not wearing the seatbelts, they would have disappeared.”

‘I am so sorry for what you experienced’

Passengers on board Flight 1282 – which was travelling from Portland in Oregon to Ontario in California – have been describing their ordeal.

“You heard a big loud bang to the left rear. A whooshing sound and all the oxygen masks deployed instantly and everyone got those on,” Evan Smith told local media.

Another passenger called Elizabeth told KGW that the incident happened about 20 minutes after take-off, in the sky three miles above Oregon.

“I looked to my left, and there’s just this huge gaping hole, on the left side where the window is,” she said – describing the sound of the wind as incredibly loud.

Elizabeth said passengers and crew were calm and everybody had their seatbelt on – and a recording showed the pilot also remained composed throughout.

She was heard asking air traffic controllers for permission to descend to 10,000ft after the cabin depressurised, an altitude where healthy people can breathe without additional oxygen.

The pilot subsequently declared an emergency and said that the plane needed to return to Portland.

Alaska Airlines chief executive Ben Minicucci said: “My heart goes out to those who were on this flight – I am so sorry for what you experienced.”

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

11 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.