The missing door stopper and two cellphones belonging to passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight that cracked the boarding door at 16,000 feet over Oregon on Friday have been found.
One of the cellphones, an iPhone, was found by video game designer Sean Bates, who said he picked it up while out for a walk. In a series of posts on
Bates added that when he contacted the National Transportation and Safety Bureau, he was told it was the second such phone found. In a subsequent post, Bates showed that the charger plug was still in the phone, suggesting it had been ripped out.
The door stopper was later recovered in the backyard of a suburban Portland home. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said she was “very relieved” it had been found.
The shutter ripped off the left side of the Alaska Airlines plane Friday after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, depressurizing the plane and forcing the pilots to turn back with all 171 passengers and six crew members on board to land safely.
Alaska Flight 1282 took off from Portland shortly after 5 p.m. local time on Friday when, at 16,000 feet, a window shattered and ripped off a child's shirt
Video game designer Sean Bates assumed the phone had been dropped by a jogger when he found it on the side of the road in rural Washington State because there was no scratch on it
Sean Bates, here with NTSB investigators, said he was told his find was the second cellphone from the flight, which was found by a member of the public
A photo shows the blown window. It is offered as a door on the plane. Alaska decided against this option, even though the frame of the future door was completely torn out by the hull damage
In a TikTok video, Bates said he saw a notification from the NTSB asking residents in the area to be on the lookout for anything that may have fallen from the Alaska Airlines flight.
He said he noticed the phone while walking but initially assumed it had been dropped by a jogger.
“It was still pretty clean, no scratches, it was under a bush.”
Bates added that the screen was unlocked and that upon takeoff there was a baggage confirmation email indicating the baggage was from the flight.
Homedy had previously told reporters that the plane part was a “critical missing component” in determining why the accident occurred.
“Our structural team will want to look at everything on the door – all the components on the door to see if there are any witness marks, to check for any paint transfers, to see what shape the door was in when it was found.” “That can tell them a lot about what happened,” she said.
The force caused by the loss of the shutter was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door during the flight, said Homendy, who said it must have been a “terrifying event.”
“They heard a bang,” Homendy said of the pilots being interviewed by investigators.
A laminated reference checklist flew out the door while the first officer lost her headset, she said. “Communication was a serious problem…It was described as chaos.”
Homendy said the cockpit voice recorder did not capture data because it had been overwritten, and reiterated calls for regulators to require existing aircraft to be retrofitted with recorders that record 25 hours of data, rather than the currently required two hours.
Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board said the explosion at 16,000 feet was an “accident, not an incident.”
A passenger who filmed the drama said she woke up from a nap thinking the plane had hit turbulence – only to discover a large hole in the fuselage
Homendy said the auto-pressurization warning light came on on the same Alaska Airlines plane on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, but it was unclear whether those incidents were related to the accident.
After the warnings, Alaska Airlines decided to exclude the plane from long overwater flights to Hawaii so that it could quickly return to an airport if necessary, Homendy said.
Homendy said the auto-pressurization warning light came on on the same Alaska Airlines plane on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, but it was unclear whether those incidents were related to the accident.
The airline said: “In each case, the complaint was fully evaluated and resolved in accordance with approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations.”
Alaska Airlines added that it has an internal policy barring planes with multiple maintenance on some systems from long flights over water, which was not required by the FAA.
The FAA said Sunday that the affected fleet of Boeing MAX 9 planes, including those operated by other airlines such as United Airlines (UAL.O), would remain grounded until regulators were satisfied they were safe.
The FAA initially said Saturday that the required inspections would take four to eight hours, leading many in the industry to believe the planes could be returned to service very quickly.
But the criteria for the checks have yet to be agreed between the FAA and Boeing, meaning the airlines have not yet received detailed instructions, people familiar with the matter said.
The FAA must approve Boeing's inspection criteria before inspections can be completed and aircraft can resume flights. Alaska Airlines said late Sunday that it still had not received instructions from Boeing.
Alaska Airlines canceled 170 flights on Sunday and another 60 flights on Monday and said travel disruptions due to the flight ban were expected to last at least until midweek. United, which grounded its 79 MAX 9s, canceled 230 flights on Sunday, or 8% of scheduled departures.
The accident has put Boeing in renewed focus as the company awaits certification of its smaller MAX 7 as well as the larger MAX 10, which is needed to compete with a key model from Airbus (AIR.PA).
In 2019, global authorities imposed a sweeping grounding of all MAX planes that lasted 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly developed cockpit software killed a total of 346 people.