On January 5th, 2024, Alaska Airlines sent flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California. This specific flight was carrying 171 passengers as well as six crew members. However, around 10 minutes into the flight, the passengers are interrupted by a loud banging noise. Upon a massive gust of wind in the plane, they soon realized the door plug had flown off, leaving the night sky in its place.
The aircraft involved in the accident was a Boeing 737 MAX 9. This specific craft has optional rear mid-cabin emergency exits on each side. Aircrats with dense seating, such as MAX 9s by Lion Air or Dutch Airlines, require these emergency doors, while less dense seating configurations, such as Alaska Airlines and United, do not require these doors and are replaced with plugs. These plugs look like ordinary windows, only with a small indented outline.
While climbing to a height of 16,000 feet, the door plug mentioned earlier separated from the plane’s frame, decompressing the interior. The oxygen masks fell, and chaos broke out. Luckily, no one was in seat 26A, the one directly next to the plug, yet a teenage boy sitting in row 25 had been ripped from his seat. His shirt ripped and had blown out of the place; his mother claimed to have to hold him down so as not to let him fly out. As well as the cabin experiencing a shock, the cockpit door was presumed to fly open, and the headphones of each pilot were pulled off. This door was supposed to open in an emergency, but none of the crew members knew this.
At 5:06 pm, the plane left the Portland International Airport on runway 28L. The whole ordeal took around 30 minutes when the pilots made an emergency landing on the same runway, landing at 5:26 pm.
These are the exact times, PST, January 5th 2024.
- 5:06:47 PM – Aircraft departed Portland International Airport (PDX) from runway 28L
- 5:12:33 PM – While passing 14,830 feet (4,520 m), recorded cabin pressure dropped from 14.09 to 11.64 psi (97.1 to 80.3 kPa); “cabin altitude >10,000 feet warning” activated, indicating that the cabin was unpressurized at an altitude greater than 10,000 feet (3,048 m) above sea level; pressurization or supplemental oxygen becomes necessary above that altitude
- 5:12:34 PM – Master caution activated; cabin pressure continues to drop, recorded at 9.08 psi (62.6 kPa)
- 5:12:52 PM – Master caution deactivated
- 5:13:41 PM – The aircraft reached a maximum altitude of 16,320 feet (4,974 m) and began to descend
- 5:13:56 PM – Autopilot selected altitude changed from 23,000 to 10,000 feet (7,010 to 3,048 m)
- 5:14:35 PM – Master caution activated again for three seconds
- 5:16:56 PM – Aircraft begins a left turn, heading north back to PDX
- 5:17:00 PM – Aircraft descended below 10,000 feet (3,048 m)
- 5:18:05 PM – While passing 9,050 feet (2,758 m), “cabin altitude >10,000 feet warning” deactivated; cabin pressure recorded at 10.48 psi (72.3 kPa)
- 5:26:46 PM – Aircraft landed back on runway 28L at PDX
On January 7th, the plug was found in the backyard of a home in Cedar Hills, along with two phones from the flight that had been discovered. One was an iPhone still powered on and in airplane mode. Four days later, six passengers filed a lawsuit citing their injuries mentally and physically. The cancelations of Alaskan Airlines flights followed this lawsuit.
TikTok posts, Instagram reels, and stories flew in from everywhere, posting their experiences on the flight and the backlash this had on their lives. There were so many posts from this incident that the National Transportation Safety Board began investigating the plane and found loose bolt reports during maintenance inspections.
