JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Federal officials are continuing their investigation into a horrifying emergency where an Alaska Airlines aircraft lost part of its fuselage minutes after takeoff. A local retired airline pilot acknowledged the big safety questions about Boeing’s latest aircraft.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 is a relatively new aircraft with a list of safety concerns since its debut seven years ago.
“I woke up to the plane just falling, and I knew it was not just normal turbulence because the masks came down and that’s when the panic definitely started to set in,” Emma Vu, a passenger on the flight said.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the large panel and window came off seven minutes into the flight over Oregon at an altitude of about 16,000 feet.
A school teacher found the 60-pound panel in Portland, giving investigators another piece to the puzzle.
Captain Randy Mahoney, a local retired commercial airline pilot, talked about what possibly went wrong with the aircraft.
“It could be a failure of metal fasteners, for example, that sometimes manufacturers change fasteners and there may be a defect in a fastener that certainly could be. It could be an installation error at the factories,” Mahoney said.
He also said that the aircraft is still incredibly safe and that the NTSB should do more than just ground the planes. On Monday, as federal officials investigate, Alaska Airlines and others grounded about 160 flights on 737 Max 9s.
“I think it’s very reasonable to inspect the aircraft that have the plug installed,” Mahoney said.
Aviation expert Ed Booth said if the aircraft was at a higher altitude, there would be worse damage.
“If this had happened at the typical cruising altitude of 36,000 to 41,000 feet, there could have been an entirely different outcome. The decompression would have generated a tremendous amount of force that would have possibly damaged the airframe and rendered the airplane uncontrollable,” Booth said. “This type of event has happened from time to time and commercial aviation, the most famous example involves the DC 10 in the 1970s that had a defective cargo door latching system.”
Booth said a man was sucked out of the aircraft during that incident, and his body was never recovered.
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Mahoney said he would recommend his family and friends fly on the 737 Max 9s.
“We have the safest air transportation operation in the world and actually, it’s much safer to travel by air transcontinental than it is to drive between downtown Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra,” Mahoney said.
But Boeing has had a recent history of problems with the 737 Max fleet.
In 2018, there was a deadly crash in Indonesia. Another deadly crash happened in Ethiopia in 2019.
In December 2023, Boeing asked airlines to check for loose bolts on Max planes. The planes being grounded caused Boeing stocks to drop about 7% on Wall Street.
Mahoney said he is confident that the NTSB will develop a good analysis so that it doesn’t happen again.