(Files) An Alaska airlines plane seen at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on January 11, 2023. (Photo by Daniel Slim / AFP)
A key piece of the Alaska Airlines plane that suffered a serious blowout on the evening of Jan. 5 has been found, according to US federal air safety investigators, aiding their probe into the plane’s "explosive” rapid decompression.
"I am excited to announce we have found the door plug,” National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said at a second press briefing in Portland, Oregon on Sunday night in the US.
The door plug was found in the backyard of a Portland-based school teacher.
But the NTSB hasn’t been able to recover some other key evidence. The jet’s cockpit voice recorder - which has a two hour recording time - was overridden and that important data has been lost, Homendy told reporters at an earlier press briefing Sunday.
On the evening of Jan. 5, a door-shaped panel ripped out as an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 climbed out of Portland. Regulators reacted swiftly, grounding 171 of the variant less than 24 hours after the incident, including the entire fleet of 737 Max 9s in the US. Airlines like Alaska Air, United Airlines Holding Inc., and Aeromexico grounded all aircraft subsequently.
