US safety board probing Alaska Airlines flight's emergency landing after social media posts show plane's window blown out mid air

Jan 06: The National Transportation Safety Board said late Friday it was investigating after an@bricaul Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 made an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Portland.

Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which had been bound for Ontario, California, experienced an incident soon after departure and landed safely back at Portland at 5:26 p.m. Pacific Time with 174 passengers and six crew, about 20 minutes after takeoff, according to the airline and Flightradar24 data.

The new MAX 9 was delivered in late October to Alaska and certified in early November, according to FAA data.

"While this type of occurrence is rare, our flight crew was trained and prepared to safely manage the situation," Alaska said in a statement. "We are investigating what happened and will share more information as it becomes available."

Also Read: https://www.thehawk.in/posts/us:-alaska-airlines-flight-makes-emergency-landing-in-oregon's-portland 

Boeing said in a statement that it was looking into the emergency landing.

“We are aware of the incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282," the company said in a statement. "We are working to gather more information and are in contact with our airline customer. A Boeing technical team stands ready to support the investigation.”

Social media posts showed a window and portion of a side wall missing on the airplane, and oxygen masks deployed. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately comment. "Whenever you have a rapid decompression such as this, it's a major safety event," said Anthony Brickhouse, an air safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "I can't imagine what these passengers experienced. It would have been loud. The wind would be rushing through that cabin. It was a probably pretty violent situation and definitely a scary situation."

The incident shows the importance of passengers' keeping their seatbelts buckled while seated in an airplane, even if the fasten seatbelt light is off, Brickhouse said, noting that the oxygen mask system appeared to have functioned properly.

"This is a very, very serious situation and it could have been a lot worse," he said. "If someone had been sitting in that seat, and they weren't buckled in, it would have been a different situation."

—Reuters