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The Alaska Airlines plane that lost a piece of its fuselage in midair on Friday was not being used in long flights over water because a pressurization warning light had gone off during three recent flights, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday. Jennifer Homendy, the board’s chairwoman, said it was too soon to say whether the issue had played a role in the Friday incident, which led to the grounding of 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in the United States. “It is certainly a concern and it’s one that we want to dig into,” Homendy said at a news conference. She said Alaska Airlines maintenance workers had been instructed to determine why the warning light had repeatedly gone off, but the work was not done before the flight on Friday. Instead, Homendy said, workers reset the system and the plane was put back into service, though the airline restricted it from being used on flights to destinations like Hawaii. She said the safety board was trying to get more information about what had happened during the three flights when the light went off, all of which had taken place since Dec. 7. The Friday incident on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, bound for Ontario, Calif., occurred at an altitude of 16,000 feet and forced the pilots to return to Portland International Airport soon after takeoff. None of the 171 passengers and six crew members aboard were seriously hurt, but they were exposed to howling winds from the hole in the fuselage as pilots made the emergency landing. The authorities have focused their attention on a mid-cabin door plug, part of the piece of fuselage that was torn from the plane. Homendy said on Sunday that investigators had recovered the door plug from the backyard of a Portland home. Door plugs are used to fill emergency exits that are not needed because the plane is configured with fewer than the maximum possible number of seats. Homendy also said that there was no information on the plane’s cockpit voice recorder because the device begins re-recording after two hours, erasing the previous data, and it was not retrieved in time.<br/>

The Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 jet that suffered a mid-air structural failure on Jan. 5 spent 10 days in Oklahoma City in the previous weeks to receive a Wi-Fi installation at a partner’s base. The Boeing aircraft, with the tail number N704AL, flew into Oklahoma City on Nov. 27, according to tracking website Flightaware.com, and returned to Seattle on Dec. 7. That’s also the day when the National Transportation Safety Board says the aircraft first displayed a pressurization warning light. Images of aircraft from Nov. 22 showed the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet without the typical dome antenna used for on-board Wi-Fi service. Photos after the accident reveal a dome just above the walled-off emergency exit opening from which the plug fell out at 16,000 feet, leading to a temporary grounding of much of the 737 Max 9 fleet. Investigators are trying to determine what prompted a large panel to eject from a practically new aircraft, leaving passengers exposed to a gaping hole during flight. Investors have zeroed in on Boeing’s possible role and that of Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., which makes the fuselage for the 737 jet, sending the shares of both companies tumbling. AAR Corp., an Alaska Air’s maintenance partner, said in a statement that it “did not perform any work on or near any mid-cabin exit door plug of that specific aircraft.” The company confirmed that it was contracted by the airline to perform a Wi-Fi modification on the jet, carried out from Nov. 27 to Dec. 7. Alaska Air Group Inc., the carrier’s parent company, declined to comment until it obtains necessary NTSB permission to provide information about the aircraft and prior maintenance. Bob Mann, head of consultancy RW Mann & Co., said that fitting a Wi-Fi dome would probably mean taking off one or two panels adjacent to the spot on the crown of the fuselage where the antenna is mounted and the wiring is fed through. “They wouldn’t have to take that door plug out,” Mann said.<br/>

Bob Sauer went into his backyard in suburban Portland, Ore., on Sunday night, flashlight in hand, to check if any pieces of the Alaska Airlines plane that had lost a part of its fuselage in midair had landed nearby. A neighbor had urged Sauer to check his property in Cedar Hills, Ore., saying she had heard that a cellphone that had fallen from the plane had been found in the neighborhood. Sauer quickly caught sight of a white metal object leaning against the branch of a cedar tree. “My heart started beating a little faster,” he said in an interview on Monday, “and I thought there’s no way.” But it was true: Sauer, a physics teacher at the Catlin Gabel School, a nearby private school, had found the mid-cabin door plug, which had been torn from the plane mid-flight on Friday, in his yard. He called the National Transportation Safety Board, which arrived at his house on Monday morning, interviewed him for about 30 minutes and then hauled away the critical piece of evidence from his yard, he said. The board, he said, gave him a medallion emblazoned with an eagle to thank him for his efforts. Door plugs are used to fill emergency exits that are not needed on planes that are configured with fewer than the maximum possible number of seats. The board said in a statement on Monday that investigators were “currently examining the door plug” and planned to send it to an agency laboratory in Washington, D.C., for further examination. The board shared photos on social media that showed the door plug in a thicket of branches and then being inspected on the ground by agents.<br/>

Passenger service workers at American Airlines Group Inc. approved a five-year contract, the latest in a series of labor deals between unions and airlines. The agreement covers about 15,000 employees, including those who work at ticket counters and gates, airport lounge staff and reservation agents, the airline and its union said in separate statements Monday. It provides average initial wage increases of 20% and also includes benefits such as enhanced 401K employer contributions and increased profit sharing, according to the statement from the Teamsters. The contract follows an agreement last year American made with pilots and as it’s in collective bargaining talks with flight attendants. The company and other major US carriers are facing rising cost pressures from labor deals.<br/>

The lead-up to the Haneda Airport runway collision is coming under scrutiny in the government's investigation, with a focus on the two minutes after the last communication between the smaller plane and air traffic control. The final exchange between the airport's control tower and the coast guard plane on Jan. 2 came at 5:45 p.m., according to a transcript released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. "Good evening, No. 1, taxi to holding point C5," an air traffic controller told the coast guard plane. "Taxi to holding point C5 JA722A No. 1, thank you," a flight crew member had responded, repeating the instruction. JA722A was the coast guard aircraft's number. But footage from the airport showed the coast guard plane moving beyond the holding point and onto the runway, where it stopped for around 40 seconds. Around 5:47 p.m., it was struck by a landing Japan Airlines plane. Both aircraft burst into flames, and five of the coast guard plane's six crew members were killed. The Japan Transport Safety Board has since begun questioning air traffic controllers and others to identify the cause of the accident. One key question is why the coast guard plane went onto the runway, despite not being instructed to do so. One possibility is that its flight crew misinterpreted the instructions. The captain, the coast guard plane's sole survivor, has said they were "given permission to enter the runway." Multiple experts believe that the coast guard plane may have rushed to take off after being called "No. 1." The term typically refers to the plane next in line to take off. While it does not indicate permission to go onto the runway, the flight crew may have done so in the mistaken belief that the coast guard plane was next.<br/>

Miscommunication between air traffic control and a coast guard plane may have led to the fatal crash on Jan. 2 at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, citing unidentified sources. The control tower told the coast guard plane that it was “number one,” which may been taken as a sign that it could enter the runway, rather than the order of departure, according to the newspaper. Details continue to emerge as the transport ministry investigates what led to the incident, and whether it could have prevented. Flight and voice recording devices recovered from the crash site late last week could untangle seemingly contradictory pieces of evidence, namely the coast guard captain’s claim that he was given permission to enter the runway despite an official transcript that may suggest otherwise. Flights operations resumed Monday at Haneda’s Runway C, where, a week earlier, a landing passenger jet crashed into a parked coast guard plane. All 379 passengers and crew aboard Japan Airlines’ Airbus SE A350-900 were evacuated Tuesday evening within minutes of impact, although 14 were injured and 2 pets didn’t survive. Five of the six crew on the Japan Coast Guard’s De Havilland Canada Dash 8 were killed.<br/>

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. pilot’s union has called for a government inquiry into the Hong Kong carrier’s handling of mass flight cancellations, laying the blame for the current woes at steep job cuts made during the height of the pandemic. “Any such review must examine the root of Cathay’s problems, which lie in the decisions made by management in 2020,” Paul Weatherilt, the chairman of the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association said in a statement Tuesday. “Hong Kong aviation will continue to suffer until there is an acknowledgment of these mistakes and a change in leadership, particularly among those responsible for overseeing flight operations.” The union’s calls comes after Hong Kong Transport Secretary Lam Sai-hung expressed great concern at Cathay’s senior executives over the flight cancellations in a Facebook post Monday. The airline didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Cathay said Sunday it was scrubbing around 12 flights a day through to the end of February to avoid disruptions in the peak Lunar New Year travel period. The carrier has said a large part of the flight cuts stem from pilots hitting flying limits of 900 hours across a rolling 12-month period, Bloomberg News reported earlier. The airline’s chronic shortage of pilots, at captain and first officer rank, comes after it eliminated thousands of jobs at the height of Covid and cut salaries of remaining workers by as much as 50%. Pilots on staff now stand at 2,532, according to data from the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, down 35% from the end of 2019. Scrubbing flights in the short term gives back pilots more hours to fly under the rolling cap, giving Cathay flexibility to deploy crews for its increased flight schedule during Lunar New Year, which runs from Feb. 10-17.<br/>