Emily Wiprud didn’t know exactly what had happened, but the Alaska Airlines pilot was certain something was going very wrong as flight 1282 made its way out of Portland on January 5. "The first indication was an explosion in my ears and then a whoosh of air," Wiprud, an Alaska Airles pilot, told CBS News of the flight, which lost an exterior panel at 16,000 feet and had to make an an emergency landing. "My body was forced forward and there was a loud bang as well...The flight deck door was open. I saw tubes hanging from the cabin." In the chaos, during which the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet lost a large panel called a door plug, her headset went flying out of the aircraft, as did some passengers’ mobile phones. She looked around and saw “empty seats and injuries” and feared some of the passengers had been thrown out of the plane too. Wiprud said she recalls looking down the aisle of the plane and seeing rows of passengers stare back at her, some of them injured. "I didn’t know that there was a hole in the airplane until we landed," she added. "I knew something was catastrophically wrong." An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board later revealed that the jet was missing bolts meant to hold on its door plug, a panel that covers slots in the plane body used for emergency exits and converts them into normal looking windows for passengers. Miraculously, the plane was able to make an emergency landing in Portland with all 177 passengers and crew onboard.<br/>
oneworld
Former Qantas boss Alan Joyce pocketed $3.4m for his last two months in the role before he left the company amid a string of scandals and a damning governance review, which found the business had a top-down culture with “too much deference to a long-tenured CEO”. Qantas’ 2024 financial year remuneration report, published on the ASX on Thursday morning, reveals that Joyce departed the airline in early September last year with more than $18m in base pay and bonuses, despite having approximately $9m stripped from his 2023 entitlements. The airline’s new CE Vanessa Hudson took a $1.5m pay cut, receiving $4.3m for the year to June 30, down from $6m the year prior when she was finance chief, after the board docked executive bonuses by 30% following Qantas’ dismal brand performance. Qantas lowered its CE pay by 26% when Hudson took over from Joyce, following a shareholder vote against the group’s remuneration at its annual general meeting in 2023. Jetstar boss Stephanie Tully was the next-highest-paid Qantas executive for the year, taking home $2.1m, followed closely by Qantas CFO Rob Marcolina, who made $13,000 less. Markus Svensson, the head of Qantas’ domestic arm, was paid $2m, and head of Qantas International Cameron Wallace received $1.6m. <br/>