‘I’m sure we’ve lost passengers’: Alaska Airlines flight attendants detail terrifying panel blowout incident

The Alaska Airlines flight attendants, who were on Flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, on January 5 when a door panel flew off the aircraft mid-flight, recently shared details of their experience, Fox Business reported.

The National Transportation Safety Board held a hearing on Tuesday about the terrifying incident involving the Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane that was carrying 171 passengers and six crew members.

‘Safety culture needs a lot of work.’

The aircraft ultimately landed safely at Portland International Airport; however, the incident remains under investigation. Eight passengers reported minor injuries.

Interviews conducted with the flight attendants onboard the aircraft that day were shared at Tuesday’s hearing.

According to officials, one attendant thought that some passengers had been sucked out of the airplane after she saw the door panel was missing and noticed five empty seats around it.

The attendant testified, “I said there is a hole in the plane, in the back of the plane, and I’m sure we’ve lost passengers.”

Additionally, the employee expressed concern about an unaccompanied child who was on the aircraft.

“All I could think of was that he was sitting there, and he was too small to reach the mask and was probably really scared,” the flight attendant said.

Another flight attendant on the plane told officials, “I think I was able to (blurt) out, ‘I think we have a hole, and we might’ve lost passengers.’ And then it seemed like I just lost contact. I tried calling back, tried speaking loudly into the phone. I couldn’t hear anything.”

“Probably the scariest thing was I didn’t have exact communication with my flight deck, and at first I didn’t know if the decompression was in the front, if we have pilots, and not being able to fully communicate with the back,” the second flight attendant remarked.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy stated Tuesday that neither the board nor Boeing has been able to determine who was responsible for previously removing the door plug on the jet to perform maintenance work before it was reinstalled and delivered to Alaska Airlines.

According to Homendy, the board has not been able to speak with the door plug team manager, who may have been one of the individuals responsible for inspecting the panel before it was delivered to Alaska Airlines with all four bolts missing.

“The safety culture needs a lot of work (at Boeing),” Homendy said. “It is not there from the evidence itself, from what you see in the interviews. There’s not a lot of trust, there’s a lot of distrust within the workforce.”

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