CNN
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Federal officials investigating a horrific mid-flight explosion in a section of an Alaska Airlines plane say they have made a discovery. Lost items that fell from the plane – A key element in the investigation into what happened during the plane’s “explosive decompression.”
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a press conference Sunday night that Bob, a Portland school teacher, found a refrigerator-sized Boeing 737 MAX 9 fuselage door plug in his yard and contacted the National Transportation Safety Board. Stated.
The plug door is missing since an Alaska Airlines plane was blown away on Friday, leaving a large hole in the side of the plane as it flew at 16,000 feet shortly after taking off from Portland. The harrowing ordeal saw headrests ripped off and items sucked out of the plane. Nationwide expansion Certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft have been grounded and numerous flights have been cancelled.
“It must have been a horrible thing to go through,” Homendy said Sunday, looking at the chaotic aftermath inside the plane, where several rows were damaged.
As the investigation enters its second day, NTSB officials will continue to closely examine the plane’s interior and begin recovery and recovery plans. Mr. Homendy said to check the door plug, which has come loose.
Homendy said the effort is complicated by the loss of critical cockpit audio recordings due to device settings.
Homendy said Alaska Airlines is restricting planes from flying over the ocean to Hawaii to allow planes to “return to the airport very quickly” if a warning light on the plane goes out. It is said that he was doing so.
Homendy said the decision was made after the plane’s auto-pressurization warning light came on three times in the last month, and it was unclear whether there was a correlation between the warning light and Friday’s accident. It pointed out.
The abnormal signals occurred on Dec. 7 and Jan. 3 and 4, in the days leading up to the explosion, she said. Homendy said the flight crew had turned on system backup each time, a move she said was “very normal.”
“They turned it over, reported it, got it tested by maintenance, and then it was reset.”
“They ordered additional maintenance to check the lighting that was not completed previously (airframe blowout). We will look into that further and since the aircraft delivery on October 31st, We requested documentation of all deficiencies,” she said.
CNN has asked Alaska Airlines for comment on the plane’s flight restrictions and warning lights.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 involved in Friday’s incident had been in service for two years. Approximately 3 months It has flown about 150 times since October 2023, according to FlightAware and FAA records.
National Transportation Safety Board
The NTSB has released images of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
Interviews with flight crew members and an examination of the damage left in the cabin reveal the loud “noisy” sound as the plug door was torn apart, causing an incredibly powerful decompression that sent flight attendants rushing inside the plane. The scene on board the plane was revealed to be violent and chaotic. The NTSB director said the problem was with the children on the plane.
After the “explosive incident,” flight attendants scrambled to make sure the four unaccompanied minors on the plane were wearing oxygen masks and lap belts, Homendy said. He praised them as “heroic.”
However, she added that “communication was a serious issue” between pilots and flight attendants, making it difficult to share information quickly.
“I would like to emphasize that the actions of the flight crew were truly incredible,” she said.
The impact of the incident caused damage to interior panels, trim and plastic around the windows, but all of this was “non-fatal” to the aircraft’s structure, Homendy said.
Homendy said the damage was not just to the row next to the hole, but to several rows of planes.
She previously said the two seats next to the door plugs, 26A and 26B, were empty when the explosion occurred, but their headrests had been torn off. The back of 26A is completely gone.
There was no structural damage to the aircraft or fuselage, she noted.
Alaska Airlines said it is working with Boeing to understand what happened on Flight 1282..
Homendy said the cockpit’s voice recorder, which records sounds such as the engine and the pilot’s voice, was “completely overwritten.” Currently, devices are only required to hold two hours of audio at a time.
“There was nothing on the cockpit voice recorder,” she said, noting that a maintenance team went to retrieve the recorder around two hours before the equipment began a new recording cycle.
Audio recorded by the recorder is “critical” to helping investigators understand what happened during the incident, Homendy said. Without this, there would be no record of communications between pilots and flight attendants as the crisis unfolded.
“Unfortunately, if that communication isn’t recorded, it’s a loss for the (NTSB), a loss for the FAA, and a loss for safety, because that information not only improves our investigations, but improves aviation safety. “This is the key,” Homendy said.
but, FAA proposes new rules The rules require new aircraft to have cockpit audio recordings extended to 25 hours, but do not require retrofitting older aircraft, Homendy noted. The NTSB director called on the FAA and Congress to require 25 hours of recording on all aircraft.
“I can’t stress enough how important that is for safety,” she says.
CNN has reached out to the airline for comment on the erasure of cockpit audio.
National Transportation Safety Board
The NTSB shared images of an Alaska Airlines plane investigating a blown out plug door.
Homendy said two cellphones believed to have been thrown from the plane were found in a garden and on the side of the road and have been handed over to investigators and could be used as evidence.
“In fact, cell phones are helping us identify some of the things that happened after a tragedy…but they’re also helping us tell us, ‘Are we looking in the right place?’ ” the agency chief said minutes before learning the door stopper had been discovered.
Sean Bates told CNN he found his cell phone on the side of a road in Oregon and turned it over to the NTSB, which was already on the scene investigating the accident.
Bates said the cellphone was not security-locked and that photos on the phone showed two emailed Alaska Airlines baggage receipts.
NTSB spokeswoman Jennifer Gabris told CNN that the agency took custody of the phone on Sunday and later turned it over to Alaska Airlines.
CNN’s Gregory Wallace, Joe Sutton, Mike Valerio and Anna Maja Rappard contributed to this report.