There are new developments. Overnight after part of an Alaska
Airlines plane fell off in mid flight,
the missing piece was found and federal officials have grounded
the Boeing
737 Max 9. Transportation correspondent Gio Benitez is in Portland,
OR with the latest. Good morning Gio.
Hey George, Good morning. This is a major investigation because
they need to inspect those other Max nines.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this could
have been catastrophic.
This morning the door plug that flew off an Alaska
Airlines flight in midair,
leaving this gaping hole behind now found after a three
day search.
The NTSB locating it in the backyard of a Portland
school teacher.
The discovery coming as authorities revealed no data can be
pulled from the cockpit voice recorder because it was completely
overwritten.
At 2 hours it writes it re records over it.
So we have nothing from the
CVR 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes now grounded globally,
probably as the NTSB races to investigate what went wrong.
We are emergency, we are depressurized.
We do need to return back the Alaska jet with
177 people on board taking off from Portland OR Friday
night when all of a sudden the so-called door plug,
which is used to cover and seal optional emergency exits,
flew off. I look to my left and there's this
huge chunk
part of the airplane just like missing
and the wind is just extremely loud.
There's wind blowing everywhere, the plane depressurizing passengers describing the
terror on board.
Not only was the plane falling,
but also the masks came down.
That was really praying. I was asking God to put
angels under the wings to hold us up.
The NTSB revealing the cockpit door flew open.
When the plug flew off,
The captain had a portion of the headset pulled off,
some passengers losing cell phones out of the plane's hole,
the NTSB saying they've recovered at least two from the
ground below.
Flight attendants racing to keep every everyone calm and safe.
I just noticed one flight attendant rushing down the aisle
with a portable oxygen mask.
She was just trying to do a head count,
make sure everybody was counted for,
make sure everybody was stable.
The plane, which had been in operation since late October,
was on its third flight of the day.
It took off for Ontario,
CA around 5:00 PM Pacific when that nearly 2 foot
wide door plug flew off from the 26th row of
the plane where by chance the two seats next to
it were empty. The NTSB saying it's grateful the incident
happened before the plane hit cruising altitude at 30,000 feet,
where experts say the outcome would have been very different.
It could have been a disastrous situation and people could
have been sucked out of the airplane,
the pilot immediately heading back to Portland International Airport,
the entire ordeal lasting a harrowing
26 minutes overnight, the head of the NTSB telling ABC
News pilots flying that same plane over the past month
reported warning lights indicating some loss of cabin pressure on
the jet. A pressurization alert
light lit up in the cockpit on December 7th,
on January 3rd, on January 4th.
And it was described as pretty benign.
Maintenance teams looked at the plane and decided to restrict
it from flying long distances over open water.
Does that concern you at all?
Everything concerns us right now.
Everything is part of this investigation.
We're going to look more at the maintenance records,
the electronic logs. We're going to talk to maintenance personnel
and really figure out what what occurred here.
And we also learned overnight that the seat right next
to that door plug lost its tray table,
its seat back, its headrest.
So again, George, it is so incredible that no one
was sitting in that seat.
It really is. So how deep is the concern about
these other Max nines?
Well, George, I asked the NTSB chairwoman that question about
other Boeing airplanes,
because we know that this particular airplane was actually manufactured
in the same factory as other 730 sevens.
So that's a concern. But right now they are focusing
exclusively,
she said on this one,
Max 9, we'll see where that investigation rolls on.
OK, Gio, thanks very much.