A child got his shirt sucked out of a plane mid-flight during a horrifying ordeal. A section of an Alaska Airlines aircraft scheduled to fly from Oregon to Southern California blew out a few minutes after departure with 174 passengers and six crewmembers aboard.
Flight 1282 “experienced an incident” shortly after it departed from Portland International Airport on Friday afternoon, the airline said in a statement.
Passengers described the terrifying chaos sparked by the gaping hole that appeared on the aircraft, which violently sucked out some of their belongings and mobile phones.
A child had to be held down in his seat by his mother, a passenger who spoke to KPTV claimed, while another sitting close to the detached section lost a piece of clothing he was wearing.
Unbelievable pictures of the damaged aircraft show the missing section of the fuselage, through which an adult could easily fall through, located right next to a row of seats. The snap also shows oxygen masks were deployed after the incident.
The crew and passengers were brought back to safety by the pilots through an emergency landing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the flight had returned to the Portland airport from which it had left less than half an hour prior following “a pressurisation issue” reported by the crew.
Air travel tracking site FlightAware suggested the Alaska Airlines plane had taken off from Portland at 5.07 pm and landed back there at 5.27 pm.
The aircraft was identified by the website as a Boeing 737 MAX 9. It was meant to land at the Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. Despite the horrific experience, nobody was left injured, Alaska Airlines said.
The airline said in a statement: “The safety of our guests and employees is always our primary priority, so while this type of occurrence is rare, our flight crew was trained and prepared to safely manage the situation.”
Boeing said in a statement that it was aware of the incident. The company said: “We are working to gather more information and are in contact with our airline customer.”
It’s not clear how or when the panel became separated from the passenger jet. The National Transportation Safety Board, FAA and Alaska Airlines are all conducting a probe into the incident, with Boeing’s technical team standing ready to support them.
