US aviation authorities have found the door plug of an airplane panel that blew open mid-air minutes after take-off on January 6. The part could help with the investigations into the cause of the accident that led to the FAA grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX planes worldwide. The door plugs detached from the side of the plane as it flew over a suburban neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, and fell over a wooded area. The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday that a local school teacher named Bob contacted them after finding the part in his backyard.
Bob sent NTSB two photos showing the door plug in his yard. The agency had asked the public to watch for the piece, which it hoped would be a key to investigating what caused the incident. The part was located in a wooded patch west of downtown Portland called Cedar Hills, where a large apartment complex and a light rail train station are located. Residents were scouring the area for the missing part earlier Sunday, maneuvering their bicycles through dense overgrowth.
The gaping hole opened up where Boeing fits a plug to cover an emergency exit that the airline doesn’t use, a standard feature on the 737 MAX jets. The flight from Portland to Ontario, California, was only a few minutes into its journey when it reached 16,000 feet, and the door blew off. The resulting decompression blew out the window in the side of the fuselage and left oxygen masks deployed throughout the cabin. The 174 passengers and six crew members survived without serious injuries.
Luckily, the incident occurred before the plane had reached cruising altitude when passengers typically start unbuckling and walking around the cabin, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a Saturday night press conference. Also, the two seats next to where the door plug detached were empty, Homendy said. She added that headrests from those seats were gone, and clothes were strewn about the area.
One passenger, Evan Smith, told KATU he heard “a big loud bang to the left rear and then a whooshing sound, and all the oxygen masks deployed instantly, and everyone got those on.” Smith said a boy sitting in the row where the window blew out was sucked out of his seat, and his shirt was sucked off and out of the plane.
NTSB investigators have already begun collecting the flight data of the plane in question and will examine it when it arrives at its destination. The agency will likely issue a preliminary report within five days of the incident. Then, it’ll be a few months before the NTSB releases its final report on what caused the accident.
