an air emergency was registered this Friday in USA after a plane carrying 177 people (including six crew members) had a fuselage panel, including a window, detached.
According to the accounts of several witnesses cited by local media, when the aircraft gained altitude, one of the windows exploded and the cabin lost pressure, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.The plane was only in the air for 35 minutes and all passengers arrived safely on the ground.
However, the episode prompted US authorities to order a detailed inspection to establish why this incident happened.
Who are they investigating and what is known about the incident?
The incident involved a Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Maxwhich took off from Portland, on the west coast of the country, and was heading to the Ontario airport, in California.
According to the FlightAware website, the Boeing 737 Max 9 took off at 5:07 pm (local time), heading to Ontario, and returned to the airport in portland about twenty minutes later.
I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the oxygen mask right in front of me.
“Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport around 5 p.m. local time on Friday, January 5, after the crew reported a pressurization issue,” the airline said in a statement.
For this reason, the airline, Alaska Airlines, decided “as a “precautionary measure” to temporarily ground its 65 Boeing MAX-9 aircraftwhich will fly “only after completing full maintenance and safety inspections.”
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport around 5 p.m., after the crew reported a pressurization issue.
Meanwhile, the US federal aviation agency (FAA) ordered this Saturday the “temporary immobilization” of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 operated by US airlines.
Through a statement, the FAA reported that a Emergency Airworthiness Directive (EAD) that will require operators to inspect aircraft before conducting new flights.
“The required inspections will last between four and eight hours per aircraft,” said the federal agency, which estimated 171 affected aircraft worldwide.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB, in English) is investigating what happened and has moved several teams to the area to determine the causes of an incident that did not cause any injuries.
Boeing has delivered some 218 737 MAX 9 aircraft worldwide to date, the company told AFP.
“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Boeing said in a statement.
Plane lost part of its fuselage in mid-flight, although it was able to land safely at the Portland airport.
Other airlines affected
The truth is that Alaska Airlines has not been 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 grounded 46 planes and that 33 have already been checked.
Meanwhile, Aeroméxico grounded all of its aircraft of that model and Copa Airlines announced that it immobilized 21 aircraft.
While Turkish Airlines announced on Sunday that it had grounded five aircraft in its fleet.
The passengers' story
In images published on social networks they showed a window detached and oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling of the device.
Kyle Rinker, a passenger on the flight affected by the incident, told CNN that the window exploded just after takeoff.
Another passenger, Vi Nguyen, told The New York Times who woke up with a bang.
“I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the oxygen mask right in front of me,” Nguyen told the American newspaper. “I looked to the left and the side panel of the plane was gone,” she explained.
The numbers of air incidents, in context
Boeing's 737 MAX planes were grounded worldwide following a ban following two MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that left 346 dead.
However, it should be noted that air accidents are rare. The International Air Transport Association (Iata), which publishes accident and incident figures every year, recorded only 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 (i.e. where all the crew died).
“The fatal accident rate stood at 0.16 per million flights in all sectors in 2022, an improvement compared to 0.27 per million flights in all sectors in 2021 and 0.20 on a five-year average,” remembers Iata.
In that sense, the organization assures that a person would have to, on average, “have to fly every day for 25,214 years to suffer a fatal accident.”
INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
*With AFP and Efe
#happened #incident #Alaska #Airlines #plane #United #States
