Testimony examined Independent Ahead of a two-day hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) into the explosion of a door on an Alaska Airlines Boeing plane while it was in mid-air, testimony from unnamed flight attendants has revealed heartbreaking details from the dramatic incident.
Interviews with crew members on the flight paint a chaotic picture of the immediate aftermath when a door panel ripped open the Boeing 737 Max 9 at 16,000 feet about 20 minutes after takeoff from Portland, OR. Officers were certain passengers had been sucked out of the hole, and some were unsure whether the pilots were in danger.
“I said there was a hole in the back of the plane and I'm sure we lost passengers. [sic]A flight attendant with 20 years of flying experience said when she saw the hole and the five empty seats:
Another flight attendant tried to contact ground control but couldn't get through to anyone. “I think I blurted out, 'I think we've got a deficit and we may have lost passengers,'” she recalled. “And then I felt like I'd lost contact. I tried calling back, I tried talking loudly into the phone, [but] I couldn't hear anything.”
“Probably the scariest thing was I didn't have full communication with my flight deck,” they continued, “and at first I didn't know if decompression was happening in the front, if we had pilots, and I didn't have full communication with the back.”
Both employees described to investigators the damage to the aircraft and injuries to passengers. One young man was reported to have a red face and neck after his shirt was ripped off in the explosion. One of the chairs near the blasted door was “completely stripped of its leather cover, fabric padding, upholstery and headrest tray by the force of the decompression.”
The second flight attendant said, “I knew we would be OK” when the pilots announced they were landing the plane.
The NTSB’s initial investigation found that the door was secured with zero hold-down bolts, when there should have been four. The incident was the first of several frightening midair incidents for Boeing aircraft this year and sent the manufacturer into a reputational tailspin.
At a hearing that began Tuesday, the NTSB is examining the 737's manufacturing and inspections and oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration. Once it concludes, the panel plans to offer a series of recommendations to prevent future disasters like the one that struck Alaska Airlines in January.