A horrifying series of videos shared Friday showed the moment a window panel off an Alaska Airlines flight, and it turns out there were already concerns over the aircraft before takeoff.
Footage shared on social media showed the cabin interior of an Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 after one of the side window panels blew off, forcing an emergency landing with 177 souls on board, including six crewmembers. Several passengers were injured during the incident, and required medical attention after the flight made an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon, the airline wrote in a press release Sunday.
The airline decided to temporarily ground its 65 Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft following the incident, canceling around 170 flights globally, awaiting inspection. But it turns out there was a significant concern over the aircraft’s safety well before the incident occurred, the New York Post reported.
“Alaska Airlines” “Boeing” & “737 MAX”:
Because this plane had to make an emergency landing after part of the aircraft blew out mid-flight. Several items were sucked out from the plane when it depressurized, even a child’s clothes.
pic.twitter.com/rZjlz8JKy3— Why is it Trending? (@whyistrend) January 6, 2024
The crisis was caused by a torn-off door plug that was subsequently found in a teacher’s backyard in Portland on Sunday, but no one knows what prompted the plug to break in the first place.
The aircraft was not being used for flights to Hawaii because a warning light already indicated there were pressurization problems on three different trips before the one where the door panel blew off. Alaska Airlines had apparently restricted longer flights over water so it “could return very quickly to an airport” if the warning light went off, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said.
The US National Transportation Safety Board said the ‘key missing component’ from the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet involved in an Alaska Airlines emergency landing had been recovered from the backyard of a suburban home https://t.co/fLcDHDpted pic.twitter.com/H1xYen6oPD
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 8, 2024
Homendy tried to say there’s no known connection between the pressurization light and the near-devastating disaster, which honestly doesn’t make me feel any better. It actually makes me feel like everything I thought I know about air travel is a lie, and we’ve all been winging it with our lives … literally. (RELATED: More Than 300 People Somehow Survive A Major Airplane Fire After Suspected Midair Crash)
Passengers aboard this flight seemingly had no idea the aircraft already had issues. People in positions of power were comfortable letting almost 200 people, including their own employees, take off in this aircraft, knowing it wasn’t working properly — even if just in a small way.
Alaska Airlines did not immediately return emails from the Daily Caller asking why the aircraft was allowed to take off with a known problem with the pressurization, and who allowed this to happen with 170 souls aboard.