A missing door seal that could be key to the investigation into why it separated from a plane mid-flight Friday was found in the backyard of a Portland, Oregon, area resident’s home, officials said Sunday.
After the press conference in which NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy presented the status of the investigation concluded, she returned with positive news: “I’m excited to announce that we have found the door seal.”
The resident who sent two photos of the item to the NTSB was identified only as Bob, a teacher, and she said, “Thank you, Bob.”
“We’ll capture that and make sure we start analyzing it,” Homendy said.
She added that two mobile phones were also found, one in a yard and the other on the side of the road.
At the end of the first full day of the NTSB’s investigation into the accident aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, the agency’s head noted that some factors were complicating the investigation: a record of the event had been recorded in the plane’s cockpit voice recorder inadvertently, and, at the time ,The door plug was not found.
“This is unfortunately a loss for us,” Homendy said, lamenting the loss of the audio data and appearing frustrated during a news conference Sunday night, “because this information is essential, not only to our investigations, but to improving aviation safety.”
The NTSB is calling for expanding the minimum logged time on devices from two hours to 25 hours, Homendy said. Such a period of time could have saved the cockpit audio data from Friday’s accident.
“I can’t stress enough how important this is for safety,” she said.
She said the device from Friday’s flight automatically recorded relevant audio data because someone failed to turn it off. Starts a new recording, and erases the last recording every two hours.
“The circuit breaker was not pulled,” Homendy said.
“They heard a bang”
She described the chaos and communication issues on board the Boeing 737 MAX 9, where the cabin crew reported hearing a loud noise and cabin pressure dropping quickly Friday evening over the Portland area.
“They heard a bang,” she said.
Homendy said that the first officer on the plane lost her headset during the depressurization, and the captain suffered problems with the headset as well. So they turned on the loudspeaker to communicate,” she said.
“Communication was a serious issue,” Homendy said.
At the same time, the cockpit door opened violently, and a laminated checklist used by pilots in an emergency came out, the chair said.
“It actually exploded during explosive decompression,” Homendy said of the cockpit door.
She said the pilots resorted to another quick reference guide, a handbook, while the flight attendant made three attempts to close the cockpit door.
“The actions of the cabin crew were truly amazing,” Homendy said. “It was very violent when the plane door was kicked out. There was a lot going on.”
Homendy described some damage inside the plane. It contained two seats, which were not occupied by chance, and which bore such violent force that their frames were “distorted.”
Both seats in row 26 lacked headrests, and one lacked a seatback. She added that damage was found in 12 rows of seats on the plane.
She expressed concern about three children being held in the arms of their caregivers. The NTSB, FAA, and Alaska Airlines all recommend, but do not require, that young children travel in secured car seats in separate, ticketed seats.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the grounding of some Boeing 737 Max 9 planes, the model flown in the Alaska Airlines incident, and issued a directive requiring inspections before certain planes can fly again. The new directive affects 171 aircraft around the world.
When the FAA sends its airworthiness directive, it is followed by a multi-operator message (MOM) from the manufacturer, in this case Boeing. The document is very specific about what the airline must do to accomplish the inspection.
Boeing typically works with airlines and the FAA to finalize its inspection process, which must ultimately satisfy the FAA. Boeing shares its progress with the FAA as the instructions are drafted and when they become final, they are submitted for final approval. Once approved, the airlines will follow the memo to inspect the grounded 737-9, a process the FAA said could take between four and eight hours.
A source familiar with the process said finalizing the MOM is a deliberate process and cannot be rushed before it is submitted for approval by the FAA.
Earlier Sunday, Homendy spoke to NBC News about the task ahead for NTSB investigators and said the “stakes are high.”
Door plug analysis
Investigators are looking into how the door seal, a panel where an optional emergency exit can be placed depending on passenger capacity, was installed before it was blown out of the plane, Homendy said during the news conference Sunday evening.
They also want to know more about the air pressure alerts that went off on the plane during flights on Dec. 7 and on Wednesday and Thursday, the latter the days before the accident.
She said the airline has banned the plane from embarking on long flights over water — specifically from flying to Hawaii — until the problem is more thoroughly examined. By Friday night’s flight from Portland to Ontario, California, that inspection had not been completed, Homendy said.
She said the problem described to the National Transportation Safety Board was “benign” and that it was unclear whether there was any connection between those alerts and Friday’s accident.
Homendy said investigators focused in part on how the door seal was installed and whether there were related malfunctions, although she said the plane’s structural integrity was intact after the accident.
It described two hinges at the bottom of the plug that allow a small degree of opening for routine inspections as well as four circle-shaped “stop fittings.”
“The purpose is to prevent that door plug from being pushed out of the air frame,” she said.
All of these elements will be taken a closer look, Homendy said.