Alaska Airlines is grounding all Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after a window and a chunk of fuselage on one of the aircraft blew out in mid-air shortly after takeoff.
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 had to make an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Portland, Oregon, on Friday.
The airline said the plane, carrying 174 passengers and six crew members, landed safely.
“Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, experienced an incident this evening soon after departure,” the company said.
On Saturday morning the company said it had taken the “precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 Boeing Max-9 aircraft”.
The plane was diverted after rising to 16,000ft (4,875 metres) about six minutes after taking off at 5.07 pm on Friday, according to flight tracking data from the FlightAware website. It landed again at 5.26pm.
A passenger sent a photo to the KATU-TV news outlet showing a gaping hole in the side of the plane next to passenger seats.
Another outlet, KPTV-TV, reported photos sent in by a passenger showing a large section of the plane’s fuselage was missing.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane landed safely after the crew reported a pressurisation issue. The agency was investigating.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a post on X that it was investigating an event on the flight and would post updates when they were available.
That particular Boeing 737 Max 9 rolled off the assembly line and received its certification two months ago, according to online FAA records.
Boeing said it was working to gather more information and was ready to support the investigation.
The Max is the newest version of Boeing’s venerable 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle plane frequently used on US domestic flights. The plane went into service in May 2017.
Two Max 8 planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people and leading to a near two-year worldwide grounding of all Max 8 and Max 9 planes. They returned to service only after Boeing made changes to an automated flight control system implicated in the crashes.
Max deliveries have been interrupted at times to fix manufacturing flaws. The company told airlines in December to inspect the planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder-control system.
