A passenger jet whose door panel fell off mid-flight, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing, was due to be serviced the day of the accident, the airline has said.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, with 177 people on board, returned to Portland, Oregon, where it had left from, after a door plug blew out at around 16,000 feet at just after 5pm, local time, on 5 January.
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The airline confirmed to Sky’s US partner, NBC News, on Tuesday, that the plane was due to be serviced later that night.
Engineers and technicians had become concerned about a light indicating problems with the plane’s pressurisation system, the New York Times said on Tuesday, adding the aircraft was kept in use only with some restrictions.
The newspaper reports staff were so worried about the mounting evidence of a problem that they wanted the plane to come out of service the next evening (the day of the incident) for maintenance work, quoting interviews and documents.
Alaska Airlines told the newspaper that the warnings were not serious enough for it to ground the plane immediately.
All 171 of the 737 MAX 9 planes operated by US airlines were grounded by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the following day.
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Alaska Airlines said it had found more “loose hardware” on some of its MAX 9 fleet.
Last month, the head of Boeing’s 737 Max programme was sacked.
Seven passengers and a member of the flight crew suffered minor injuries after a rapid decompression on board, causing the oxygen masks to be deployed.
Read more:
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Pressurisation warnings ‘on earlier flights’
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found no bolts were installed on the door plug, a panel that seals where a door would be and makes it part of the fuselage.
The NTSB said on Tuesday it will hold an investigative hearing into the incident in August.
The door plug was later found in the back garden of a residence in the Oregon area, NBC said.
