FAA Grounds Boeing Planes After Terrifying Midair Incident

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) moved to ground specific Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes on Saturday after a frightening incident on the West Coast Friday night.

A panel and a window apparently flew off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at roughly 16,000 feet. This triggered a “pressurization issue” on the flight headed from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.

The stricken aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing back at Portland International Airport. There were no significant injuries reported in the mishap, though there were some minor abrasions.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker released a statement on the grounding of roughly 171 planes worldwide. “The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight.”

Whitaker added, “The Emergency Airworthiness Directive will require inspections of the planes that are expected to take four to eight hours each.”

One passenger on the American Airlines flight, Kyle Rinker, told CNN that just after takeoff part of the side of the plane simply flew off. “It was really abrupt. Just got to altitude, and the window/wall just popped off and didn’t notice it until [the] oxygen masks came off.” 

Meanwhile, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy incredibly asserted that what transpired on the flight was “an accident, not an incident.” 

Saying she would not speculate on its cause, Homendy noted that the flight was forced to turn back after a “mid-cabin door plug…departed the airplane, resulting in rapid decompression.” Departed the airplane?

The NTSB head acknowledged that it was “very, very fortunate this didn’t end up in something more tragic.” Homendy said that the agency doesn’t usually address “psychological injury, but I’m sure that occurred here.” 

There were no passengers in the two seats next to the door that “departed the airplane.”

Homendy added that it was advantageous that the plane was still climbing rather than cruising at the expected 30,000 feet of altitude it was intended to reach.

She said that at that level, “everybody’s up and walking, folks don’t have seatbelts on. They’re going to restrooms. The flight attendants are providing service to passengers. We could have ended up with something so much more tragic.”

Flight 1282 had 171 passengers, two pilots and four flight attendants.