Big scare for passengers. An Alaska Airlines plane flying from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, was forced to make an emergency landing Friday evening after losing an emergency exit door mid-flight.
This Boeing, which carried almost 180 people, took off from Portland at 4:40 p.m. local time, according to Flightradar. It reached an altitude of 16,000 feet before turning around and making an emergency landing at its starting point less than an hour later. No injuries were reported.
“The door opened mid-flight.”
The pictures that several passengers published on social networks are impressive. Part of the aircraft's fuselage is missing from the left wing, leaving a gaping hole where an emergency exit door used to be. The adjacent seat appears to be damaged. All oxygen masks in the cabin were used as in an emergency.
According to testimony from The Oregonian newspaper, the window seat was unoccupied. The passenger next to him in the middle of the row would have had his T-shirt ripped off by the sudden decompression in the cabin. “The door opened in the middle of the flight,” describes another passenger on his X account. “I was right next to it, it was super scary,” he adds.
A young passenger said she heard “a very big bang” twenty minutes after takeoff. Then “it was like there was a pounding in my ears, like it was on a plane, but ten times louder. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
“You could feel the plane moving”
According to several witness statements, the passengers remained calm during the return journey. “Due to the different cabin pressure, you could feel the plane moving a little,” one of them told the American newspaper.
What happened ? The airline, Alaska Airlines, only confirmed this. “We are investigating what happened,” it added.
In October 2023, a pilot from the same company, who was off duty but sitting in a jump seat in the cockpit of a commercial flight, was charged with attempted murder after attempting to shut down the plane's engines while in full flight.