The father and sister of Sigrid Wright, executive director of Santa Barbara’s Community Environmental Council, happened to be passengers on the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 this weekend, when the door plug blew off the plane’s fuselage located just a few rows behind them. “There was a loud explosive noise and a sudden drop in cabin pressure and the oxygen masks came down,” Wright posted on Facebook.
“Amazingly, no one was hurt though some people had shoes, phones, and even more clothing pulled off by the force, and Dad and Kirsten turned a deep beet red.”
The pilots managed to land the plane — a Boeing 737-9 Max headed from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California — safely. Because the mandatory seatbelt instructions were still in place — the plane had taken off only 10 minutes before — and no one was sitting in the row where the blowout occurred, no passengers got sucked out along with the heavy door plug and multiple cell phones.
Subsequent news reports have revealed that Alaska Airlines had been notified multiple times that there were problems with the bolts keeping the door plug intact, but nothing was done. Details of the mechanical sequence of events remain lost because the plane’s black box records of that time sequence wound up mysteriously erased.
Pilots and crew reportedly responded to the emergency with exemplary efficiency and passengers reportedly were so calm as to be almost eerie given the circumstances. Wright herself received text messages from her sister 10-15 minutes after liftoff that there were problems.
