The door that blew off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 shortly after takeoff from Portland Friday night is believed to be around Barnes Road near Hwy 217 and the Cedar Hills neighborhood.
The door that blew off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 shortly after takeoff from Portland Friday night is believed to be around Barnes Road near Hwy 217 and the Cedar Hills neighborhood.
It was a plug that replaces a door.
The fuselage is built with a section that can be a door. In high-density layouts with lots of tight economy seats, a door and doorframe is installed.
In lower density layouts like the incident plane, a plug is installed and bolted into place. This is lighter because it doesn’t need a slide, an opening mechanism (hinges and latches), and a doorframe. You also don’t need an extra-wide exit row next to it.
Wow, super detailed response and very helpful! Thanks for the insight.
I’m curious what will come out of the investigation. My understanding is that this plane had software issues before (which resulted in crashes). But I haven’t heard of hardware issues with this craft before
The first round problems tried to use a software fix to remedy a hardware issue.
As I understand it, the engines were too heavy and were moved up, as well as forward, on the frame. Under heavy thrust this could cause the plane to pitch and potentially crash.
It was that they were too large and there wasn’t enough underwing clearance to mount them under the wing. They mounted them in front of the wing. This moved the center of thrust further forward relative to the center of lift. Increase the chance of a stall. To counter this, they added a new anti stall system that they didn’t tell anyone about. The in cockpit warning light was not standard and the system only pulled flight data from one sensor.
So in the event of a system failure the pilots didn’t know about it, didn’t know how to turn it off and it had a single point of failure. The only way this got past the FAA was they did an “in house certification” and didn’t tell the FAA. I can’t stress how bad this was for the PR of both Boeing and the FAA.
So basically they did a bad software fix to fix a hardware issue. One that they intentionally created because it was too costly to do the engineering and airworthiness certification required to put the engine in the correct place. And didn’t tell anyone about the new system because that would have required pilots to have additional training for the new Max plane. Which the airline with the largest 737 fleet didn’t want to have to pay for.
Yeah even though they “fixed” the software fundamentally the engines are in the wrong spot. I won’t ever fly on one and I work for an airline…
Thanks for the clarification…and warning.
Some poor engineer will get fired for negligence, and then the C-suite will give themselves bonuses for handling the situation so well.