Teacher finds missing door plug from Alaska Airlines flight that had mid-air blowout in his garden

The missing door plug that was torn off from an Alaska Airlines flight while in the air has been found by a school teacher – named only as Bob – in his garden.

Pilots were forced to perform an emergency landing on Friday after a hole was ripped into the side of the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane flying 171 passengers from Portland in Oregon, to Ontario in California.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says the door plug – where the hole was made – has now been recovered by a school teacher from Cedar Hills in Portland.

The part is a “key missing component”, according to NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy, in determining why the accident occurred.

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The incident happened after pilots reported pressurisation warning lights on three earlier flights of the same jet model – one in December and two in January.

There were also four unaccompanied minors on the flight, Ms Homendy said, with “heroic” flight attendants ensuring they had their oxygen masks on.

She also described a harrowing picture of the incident, with the 27kg panel blowing off the side of the aircraft and causing rapid depressurisation inside the plane, which had not reached cruising altitude.

The force of the decompression led to the cockpit door being blown open while the flight crew could not communicate with the pilots.

“They heard a bang,” Ms Homendy said of the flight crew, adding a quick-reference laminated checklist was sucked out of the hole, while the first officer lost her headset.

“Communication was a serious issue… it was described as chaos.”

Missing voice recorder data

To compound communication issues, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had no data as it was not retrieved within two hours, when recording restarts and previous data is erased.

“It’s a very chaotic event, the circuit breaker for the CVR was not pulled, the maintenance team went out to get it, but it was right at about the two-hour mark,” Ms Homendy said.

“If that communication is not recorded, that is unfortunately a loss for us… that information is key not just for our investigation but for improving aviation safety.”

In response to the mid-air incident, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes to run inspections, which has caused cancellations to pile up for passengers.

Alaska Airlines said it cancelled 170 flights on Sunday and a further 60 on Monday, with more expected this week and other airlines also affected.

Three previous warnings

Alaska Airlines pilots had reported pressurisation warning lights on 7 December last year and on 3 and 4 January.

Ms Homendy said it was not clear if there is any connection between those incidents and the rapid depressurisation incident on Friday.

After those warnings, the airline had nonetheless chosen to restrict the aircraft from making long flights over water to Hawaii in case it needed to turn back to an airport, she added.

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Responding to the reports on the warning lights, Alaska Airlines said aircraft pressurisation system write-ups are typical in commercial aviation operations with large planes.

“In every case, the write up was fully evaluated and resolved per approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations,” the airline said.

Ms Homendy had previously said it was “very lucky” the accident wasn’t far worse.

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

No one was injured, and the plane landed safely back in Portland.