US grounds some Boeing MAX planes after side door explosion

A piece of fuselage ripped off the left side of the plane as it took off from Oregon to California on Friday, forcing the pilots to turn back and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew members aboard. The plane was only eight weeks old.

I use some boeing 737 max 9 planes after the crash of fig 1 — Oxygen masks are lowered after the side door was lost on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Friday. Photo: Kyle Rinker

“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft before they can return to flight,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. Investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board are expected to arrive at the scene on Saturday afternoon.

Social media posts showed oxygen masks deployed. Part of the fuselage reserved for a side door was missing, leaving a door-shaped gap.

Emma Vu, a passenger on the Alaska flight, told CNN she woke up to see the plane "dropping altitude and I knew it wasn't just normal turbulence because the masks came down and that's when the panic definitely started to set in."

Flight 1282 was just over 16,000 feet (4,800 meters) when the explosion occurred, according to FlightRadar24. “We want to land,” the pilot told air traffic control, according to a recording posted on liveatc.net.

“We are declaring an emergency. We need to drop to 10,000 feet,” the pilot added, referring to the altitude reserved for such emergencies. Below this altitude, healthy people can breathe without supplemental oxygen.

“I can’t imagine what those passengers went through,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “The wind would have been blowing through that cabin. It would have been a pretty chaotic situation and certainly a scary situation.”

I use some boeing 737 max 9 planes after the crash of fig 2 — The Boeing 737 MAX is a single-aisle narrow-body jet airliner from Boeing, which officially entered service in 2016. Photo: Wiki

The FAA said its inspection order covers 171 MAX 9 planes but did not say how many planes need new inspections or what the exact inspection requirements are. The MAX 9s account for about 220 of the 1,400 MAX planes delivered to date.

Several foreign regulators, including China, have sought details about the incident, a person familiar with the matter said. The MAX was grounded worldwide for 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia due to poor cockpit software.

However, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are the only U.S. carriers flying the MAX 9, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Both canceled dozens of flights on Saturday.

Alaska Airlines said earlier it had voluntarily grounded its fleet of 65 Boeing MAX 9 aircraft for inspections. United Airlines said it had suspended service on about 45 MAX 9s for inspections and would cancel 60 flights on Saturday.

Bui Huy (Reuters, Bloomberg)

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