air emergency was registered this Friday USA The plane, carrying 177 people (including six crew members), had the fuselage panels separated, including the windows.
According to several eyewitness accounts cited by local media, when the aircraft reached altitude, a window burst and the cabin depressurised, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.
The plane was in the air for only 35 minutes and all the passengers landed safely.
However, the episode prompted US authorities to order a detailed investigation to establish why the incident occurred.
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Who are they investigating and what do they learn about the incident?
In this incident, A Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Maxwhich had taken off from Portland on the west coast of the country and was heading to Ontario Airport in California.
According to the FlightAware website, the Boeing 737 Max 9 Took off at 5:07pm (local time), headed for Ontario and returned to the airport. Portland After about twenty minutes.
I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was an oxygen mask in front of me.
“Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport on Friday, January 5 around 5pm local time, after the crew reported a pressurization problem,” the airline said in a statement.
For this reason, the airline, Alaska Airlines, decided to temporarily ground it “as a precautionary measure”. 65 Boeing Max-9 aircraftwhich will “fly only after completing thorough maintenance and safety checks.”
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport around 5 p.m., when the crew reported a pressurization problem.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) ordered some “temporary grounding” this Saturday. Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by US Airlines.
Through a statement, the FAA reported that a Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) that operators will need to inspect aircraft before operating new flights.
“Required investigations will last between four and eight hours per aircraft,” said the federal agency, which estimated 171 affected aircraft worldwide.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB, in English) is investigating what happened and several teams have been dispatched to the area to determine the cause of the incident with no injuries reported.
Boeing has delivered some 218 737 MAX 9 aircraft worldwide to date, the company told AFP.
“Safety is our highest priority and we regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Boeing said in a statement.
Other airlines are affected
The truth is that Alaska Airlines is not the only airline that has this type of aircraft.
United Airlines, which has the world’s largest fleet of 737 MAX 9s, indicated that it had grounded 46 planes and that 33 had been inspected.
Meanwhile, Aeromexico grounded all of its aircraft of that model, and Copa Airlines announced that it grounded 21 aircraft.
when Turkish Airlines announced on Sunday that it has grounded five aircraft in its fleet.
A passenger’s story
In pictures published on social networks, they showed a window and an oxygen mask hanging from the ceiling of the device.
Kyle Rinker, a passenger on the flight affected by the incident, told CNN that the window was shattered shortly after takeoff.
Another passenger, Vi Nguyen, said The New York Times Who woke up with a bang.
“I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was an oxygen mask in front of me,” Nguyen told the American newspaper. “I looked to the left and the side panel of the plane was gone,” he explained.
Number of air events in context
Boeing’s 737 MAX planes were grounded worldwide following the ban after two MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346.
However, it should be noted that air accidents are rare. The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which publishes accident and incident statistics every year, reported just five fatal accidents and 43 other accidents in 2022.
In the year 2023, During the first half of the year, there was only one fatal accident (ie where all the crew died).
“The fatal accident rate across all sectors was at 0.16 per million flights in 2022, an improvement from 0.27 per million flights across all sectors in 2021 and the five-year average of 0.20,” recalls Iata.
In that sense, the organization asserts that a person, on average, “would have to fly every day for 25,214 years to suffer a fatal accident.”
International Editorial
*With AFP and Efe