On Tuesday, Boeing’s president and chief executive Dave Calhoun said the firm was “acknowledging our mistake”.
The door “plug” which fell away from the aircraft weighed 27kg (60lb) and was used to fill an emergency exit that was built into the plane, but not required by Alaska Airlines.
The missing section of the plane was retrieved from the back garden of a Portland teacher, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Speaking to Boeing staff, Mr Calhoun said: “We’re going to approach this number one acknowledging our mistake. We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.”
Mr Calhoun reassured staff that Boeing would work with the NTSB to investigate the cause of the accident.
Looking at that door it is clear that it hit nothing else on the way down. Also looking at the seat next to the door, it makes me wonder if there was a passenger there or not. Did it happen when passengers or the crew were seat belted?
Imagine for a second if that was not the case…the door flew out and then boomeranged right onto the fuselage or got jammed in between control surfaces or if it struck the elevator or the rudder. That could have been pretty bad for everyone on board.
Now if the people inside were not strapped and happened to be right next to the door…hmmm there would have been some people outside the plane real quick and probably lost of people screaming.
I think Boeing got fucking lucky that it did not end up as a bigger loss including lives. This issue should bring more attention to their decision making. Maybe change their board and management to engineers so that they make informed decisions next time.
Apparently there were only 7 empty seats on the entire plane and 2 of them were the ones beside the door blowout.
Probably because it was considered an “exit seat row” with extra leg room, so those seats were 3x as expensive.
Yes. Fortunately the plane was still climbing and seatbelts were still required at the time it blew off.