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The chairman of the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was “very, very fortunate” that a tragedy did not materialise after a cabin panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 on Jan 5, which forced the aircraft to make an emergency landing. NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said the two seats next to the portion of fuselage that blew out were unoccupied. “We are very, very fortunate here that this didn’t end up in something more tragic,” she added. Parts of the seat next to the fuselage, including the head rest, were missing. Investigators will look at maintenance records, the pressurisation system and the door components, she said. “We’ll go where the investigation takes us,” she said, asking for the public’s help in recovering the missing door plug, which is believed to be in a suburb west of Portland. A piece of fuselage tore off the left side of the jet as it climbed following takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, forcing pilots to turn back and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board. The FAA on Jan 6 ordered certain Max 9 aircraft grounded temporarily for inspections before returning to flight.<br/>

For all the negative attention that Alaska Airlines has received, grounding its 737 Max 9 jets may have little more impact to the carrier’s operations than a bad winter storm. Alaska had canceled 163 flights as of Sunday afternoon, or 21% of its total schedule, according to the tracking website FlightAware.com. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered Boeing Co.’s 737 Max 9 jets to be grounded for inspection after a fuselage section on a brand new Alaska Airlines jet blew out during flight. The carrier expects flights to be affected through at least midweek. “I’d look at it as a really bad winter storm for operational impact,” said Savanthi Syth, a Raymond James analyst. By comparison, Delta canceled about 20% of its flights for three days during a December 2022 winter storm, Syth said. The effect will be somewhat muted by a lull in travel following the winter holidays, Syth said. “We’re heading into a kind of fairly quiet period of travel, and usually business travel doesn’t start back up until mid-January,” she said. The FAA said Sunday that the Max 9 will remain grounded until the agency is satisfied that the jets are safe. Alaska Air Group Inc. said in an emailed statement that the incident won’t affect its pending $1.9b acquisition of Hawaiian Holdings Inc.<br/>

The National Transportation Safety Board appealed to the public to help locate the missing door that suffered a blowout on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 as the agency began the process of finding out what went wrong. “We’ve now determined based on our definition of substantial damage that this is an accident, not an incident,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Saturday night press briefing in Portland, Oregon. “We are very fortunate this didn’t end up in something more tragic.” The plane was carrying 171 passengers and six crew from Portland to Ontario, California on Jan. 5 when the crew reported a pressurization issue. What followed was a rear left part of the fuselage blowing out, leaving the hole resembling the opening for a door. The aircraft returned to Portland about 20 minutes after takeoff, having reached an altitude of about 16,000 feet (4,800 meters). On the Max 9, Boeing includes a cabin exit door located just behind the wings, but before the rear exit door. This is activated in dense seating layouts to meet evacuation requirements. The doors are not activated on Alaska Air aircraft and are permanently “plugged.” No one was seated in the immediate two seats — 26 A and B — nearest the plugged door, Homendy said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also helping local law enforcement track down the door. Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the plane will be sent to a laboratory Sunday for analysis, the NTSB said. Homendy said the NTSB investigation will include a look at the FAA’s oversight of Boeing Co. and the manufacturer’s process for planemaking on the affected aircraft type. She stressed everything would be studied at the early stages, and nothing would be excluded until it could hone in on the causes of interest.<br/>

US aviation investigators were on the ground in Oregon on Sunday trying to figure out what caused a door panel to blow out of a brand new Boeing passenger jet just minutes after takeoff, forcing pilots to make an emergency landing with a hole “the size of a refrigerator” in the side of the plane. The American jet maker was facing fresh scrutiny as regulators temporarily grounded the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft after a section of a plugged exit door on an Alaska Airlines flight detached 16,000ft (4,877 meters) above Portland, Oregon, on Friday with 171 passengers and six crew on board. The weeks-old plane had been modified, requiring fewer emergency exits because it had fewer seats. But investigators – who solicited the public’s help tracking down the Alaska Airlines plane door, which remained missing Sunday – said that initial findings do not suggest a widespread flaw with the Boeing Max 9 aircraft. “We’ll look at the pressurization system, we’ll look at the door, the hinges,” Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said at a news conference. “Do we suspect that there is an overall design problem with this plane based on previous accidents involving Boeing Max? At this time, no.” On Sunday, thousands of passengers, mostly in the US, faced flight cancellations that are expected to continue into next week as airlines called in inspectors to comply with a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) order. The 737 Max 9 is now Boeing’s largest single-aisle aircraft with a seating capacity of up to 220. But most airlines have chosen fewer seats, which means the jet’s optional extra door is plugged – or covered. It was a section of the covered “extra” door in the fuselage – the main body of the plane which includes the cabin, cockpit and cargo compartments – which blew-out midair.<br/>

A dangerous mid-air breach in the fuselage of a 737 Max is just the latest production lapse at Boeing, raising questions about whether the manufacturer can deliver a quality product as it strives to build planes at a faster rate. The incident, though it resulted in no serious injuries, was alarming enough for US aviation regulators to ground about 171 jets, pending inspection.  Boeing said it supported the decision and that safety remained its “top priority”. Executives of the plane maker were in close contact with affected airlines over the weekend. The company will be keen to reassure customers and investors that the problem is contained. Boeing’s shares have risen more than 18% over the past 12 months and closed on Friday just shy of $250.   While the plane maker is in better shape than it was four years ago when Dave Calhoun took the helm as chief executive, its recent history has been littered with production problems. Last month, Boeing asked airlines to check for loose bolts on the system controlling the Max’s rudder, while misdrilled holes and improper fittings were found on some jets earlier in 2023. Boeing was dogged by supply chain shortages in 2022, and beginning in 2020 a series of issues on the 787 led to 20 months of delivery delays. It has even stumbled on its flagship programme to build the US president’s new Air Force One. Problems that seem insignificant separately appear more troubling in the aggregate, analysts say — particularly in the shadow of the devastating design flaw that triggered two deadly plane crashes and led to a worldwide grounding of the 737 Max in 2019. Although the investigation into the Alaska Airlines’ incident has only just begun, long-term industry watchers say it has raised more questions about the quality of Boeing’s manufacturing.  “This sort of failure should not happen on any aeroplane but for it to happen on a three month-old aircraft is unacceptable,” said Nick Cunningham, analyst at Agency Partners. “This adds to the impression that Boeing has forgotten how to build aircraft,” Cunningham added.<br/>

A man accused of punching a flight attendant later kicked a police officer in the groin and spit on officers who were removing him from the plane in Texas, according to a newly released report by an FBI agent. Keith Edward Fagiana faces charges of interfering with a flight crew and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He is scheduled to make his first federal court appearance Monday in Amarillo, Texas. Fagiana was a passenger on an American Airlines flight Wednesday from Fort Worth, Texas, to Bozeman, Montana. Pilots landed the plane in Amarillo instead. The FBI agent’s account was in unsealed court documents Friday. A flight attendant told the FBI that another passenger complained that Fagiana was violently kicking their seat. The flight attendant said when he asked Fagiana to stop, the man swore at him, punched him in the stomach, then stood up and hit him three more times. The attendant and other passengers subdued the man and put flex cuffs on him until the plane landed in Amarillo. An FBI agent said in an affidavit that while officers were putting steel cuffs on Fagiana, he spit at officers and kicked one. They put a “spitting mask” on his face. The agent wrote that Fagiana said he didn’t remember anything about the flight but “admitted he had drunk some ‘Captain Morgans’” — a brand of rum — at bars before the flight. It was not clear whether Fagiana has a lawyer; court records Friday did not list one. Video taken by another passenger captured the confrontation with the flight attendant. “Stop, stop, stop. What the (expletive) are you doing?” the flight attendant yelled at a man hitting him. Airlines reported more than 2,000 incidents of unruly passengers to the Federal Aviation Administration. That is down from a peak of nearly 6,000 in 2021, when far fewer people were traveling because of the pandemic.<br/>

Transport safety officials searched for a voice recorder from the severely burned fuselage of a Japan Airlines plane, seeking crucial information on what caused a collision with a small coast guard plane on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. On Saturday, heavy machinery worked for a second day to remove debris of the burned Airbus A350 for storage in a hangar to allow the runway to reopen. Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito said officials were aiming to reopen the runway Monday. Wreckage of the Japan Coast Guard plane had been cleared. Saito said the airport’s traffic control operation would create a new position for monitoring aircraft movement on runways beginning Saturday. There has been speculation traffic controllers might not have paid attention to the coast guard plane’s presence on the runway when they gave the JAL plane permission to land. Six experts from the Japan Transport Safety Board on Friday walked through the mangled debris of the Airbus A350-900 that was lying on the runway searching for the voice data recorder. JTSB experts have so far secured both the flight and voice data recorders from the coast guard’s Bombardier Dash-8 and a flight data recorder from the JAL plane to find out what happened in the last few minutes before Tuesday’s fatal collision. New details have also emerged from media footage at Haneda airport. NHK television reported footage from its monitoring camera set up at the Haneda airport showed that the coast guard plane moved onto the runway and stopped there for about 40 seconds before the collision.<br/>

Instructions issued by air traffic control were heard by the co-pilot of a Japan Coast Guard plane as well as its captain ahead of a deadly collision with a passenger jet at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, sources at the coast guard told Nikkei on Saturday. That raises the possibility that both officers misinterpreted the directions before entering the runway where the Japan Airlines plane was to land. The Japan Transport Safety Board, part of the nation's transport ministry, has started interviewing air traffic controllers and has also retrieved the voice recorder from the JAL airliner. Five of the six crew members of the coast guard craft, including the co-pilot, were killed in the accident on Tuesday. For safe takeoffs and landings, both the captain and co-pilot listen to air traffic control instructions at the same time, according to coast guard officials. They check each other's understanding of directions and if there is any suspicion the captain has misunderstood, the co-pilot asks the captain to request that instructions be repeated. The captain has said that he was "given permission to enter the runway" ahead of the collision. Both captain and co-pilot listening to instructions from air traffic control is part of a set of procedures known as crew resource management, or CRM, which seeks to make the best use of available personnel to assure safe and efficient operations. CRM has accelerated in aviation since two passenger airplanes collided on a runway in Spain's Canary Islands in 1977, killing 583 people. It was found that one of the causes of that accident was the engineer in the cockpit hesitating to give his opinion to the captain. The JTSB believes CRM did not work ahead of Tuesday's accident and will look into the issue.<br/>

Air traffic controllers at Tokyo's Haneda Airport did not notice the Japan Coast Guard aircraft entering the runway before Tuesday's deadly plane collision even though a warning system was in working order, Nikkei has learned. Haneda's air traffic controllers have acknowledged that the coast guard cargo plane's entry into the runway escaped their notice, a source close to the investigation said. It is believed the aircraft idled on the runway for approximately 40 seconds before the crash with a Japan Airlines passenger plane, which was landing. Air traffic control had instructed the coast guard plane to taxi to a holding point short of the runway, communication records released by the government Wednesday show. The coast guard aircraft acknowledged and confirmed the instruction by reciting back the directive. There was no communication between the air traffic control and the coast guard craft after the confirmation. Air traffic controllers are not required to visually confirm the movements of an aircraft after giving instructions, according to Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Each runway and taxiway has one air traffic controller assigned to it, with another controller overseeing the situation. The team also has a monitoring system that warns if a plane has entered a runway at the same time another aircraft is preparing to land. The visual support system flags the risk by blinking an indicator on the monitor screen, but the equipment does not provide an audible alert. The runway monitoring system was working properly at the time of the accident, but the air traffic controllers apparently failed to notice the blinking indicator, according to a source close to the transport ministry. Japan plans to adopt a response as soon as Tuesday after the three-day weekend, Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito said Friday. As a first step, extra staff will be assigned to air traffic control teams starting Saturday to keep constant watch on the runway monitoring system.<br/>

Cathay Pacific is reducing its schedule on average by 12 flights a day through to the end of February in an effort to avoid disruptions over the peak lunar new year travel period, the company said on Sunday. “We have taken measures to ensure Cathay Pacific’s flights will operate normally for the coming Chinese New Year travel peak,” CEO Ronald Lam said in an emailed statement. The Hong Kong carrier is preemptively adjusting its flight operations after canceling several dozen flights over Christmas and New Year due to a shortage of pilots. The airline said it is consolidating flights, focusing on routes with multiple daily flights.<br/>