Alaska Airlines will resume flying its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes on Friday afternoon.
09.01.2024 - 21:06 / insider.com
A teen passenger had his shirt sucked off his body when the door plug of an Alaska Airlines plane blew away in mid-air last week.
And it was probably the seatbelt was wearing that saved his life, a fellow passenger told the Associated Press.
The terrifying Friday incident aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, proves just how important it is for passengers to wear their seatbelts on planes.
"His shirt got sucked off of his body when the panel blew out because of the pressure, and it was his seatbelt that kept him in his seat and saved his life," Alaska Airlines flight 1282 passenger Kelly Bartlett told the AP of the teen.
A piece of fuselage ripped off the Boeing 737 Max 9 just after takeoff.
Flight attendants quickly move the shaken, shirtless boy — whom Bartlett said was named Jack — to the seat next to hers.
With their oxygen masks on and the roaring loud noises inside the plane, Bartlett and the boy couldn't hear each other, so she said she communicated with him with a notes app on her cell phone.
"I typed to him and I asked him if he was hurt," Bartlett told the AP. "I just couldn't believe he was sitting there and what he must have gone through, what he must have been feeling at the time."
The boy wrote back that he was OK, but a little scratched up, according to Bartlett.
No one aboard the 171-passenger flight was seriously injured.
No one was seriously injured; it was sheer luck that no one was sitting in the two seats nearest the door when it was blown out. There were only five other empty seats on the plane.
"I'm glad that it is not any worse than it was — that's all. I keep coming back to it," Bartlett told the AP. "Like, how lucky Jack got. That was his name, the kid who sat next to me. His name was Jack, and how lucky he was that he had a seatbelt on."
While flight crews may turn off the seatbelt sign during a flight, airlines and safety experts suggest that passengers leave theirs on, even if they're sitting in their seats.
Keeping your seatbelt on helps in less dire situations, like if the plane suddenly hits turbulence.
Alaska Airlines will resume flying its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes on Friday afternoon.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, January 26. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Alaska Airlines said Thursday the Boeing 737 Max 9 grounding will cost it $150 million and that the airline would hold Boeing accountable.
CEOs of both Alaska Airlines and United Airlines have expressed frustrations with Boeing weeks after a mid-air blowout forced the airline to ground dozens of its planes.
High-speed rail company Brightline is starting its field investigation work in southern California to prepare for a rail corridor connecting the state with Las Vegas.
Alaska Airlines is making a few changes to its route map in the coming months, including the addition of one route to Canada and the subtraction of another between two major tech hubs.
Alaska Airlines’ CEO said he was “angry” at Boeing after a door panel on a 737 Max 9 blew out mid-air.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 saga has impacted more than 1,500 Alaska Airlines flights as the carrier said there will be cancelations through Friday.
Alaska Airlines has begun preliminary inspections on some of its Boeing 737-9 Max aircrafts this weekend, adding that up to 20 planes could undergo inspection, the company said on Saturday.
Alaska Airlines said it will extend its cancellation of Boeing 737 Max 9 flights through Tuesday, Jan. 16, for planes that have been grounded since last week’s mid-air cabin panel blowout.
It's not unusual for passengers to fall asleep on flights, but what happened next for Cuong Tran was decidedly out of the ordinary.
Alaska Airlines will cancel up to 150 flights per day through Saturday on its maligned Boeing 737-9 MAX aircraft.