On January 5, 2024, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 passenger plane was in flight when an emergency hatch located in row 26 on the port side of the fuselage suddenly burst and fell off, but fortunately there were no casualties.
Soon, the National Transportation Safety Board investigation team rushed to the Portland airport to conduct a detailed investigation of the plane involved. In the course of this investigation, three puzzling puzzles emerge.
First, during an inspection of 65 Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 airliners that had been temporarily grounded, it was found that at least 10 of them had loose firmware and found multiple loose bolts. These loose bolts are all in the same position on the body.
Similarly, an inspection of 79 grounded Boeing 737 MAX 9s organized by United Airlines also revealed problems with the installation of some recessed doors, as well as loose parts and untightened bolts on several aircraft.
Confusingly, however, investigators say they will not release the exact planes in which they have these conditions, nor will they release details such as the size and number of loose bolts.
Isn't it true that if the specific aircraft is not announced, passengers will be relieved to take it if they don't know which plane has hidden dangers?
Second, the latest investigation also shows that before the door dislodgement accident on January 5, the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 passenger plane had a pressurization warning during the flight on December 7, 2023, January 3 and 4, 2024, and the "automatic pressurization failure light" was lit.
What is also puzzling is why these frequently lit warning lights did not arouse the alarm of the crew? What is even more surprising is that after landing on the ground several times, the maintenance personnel chose to ignore the warning lights and approved the continuation of the flight.
Third, accident investigators said that the "cockpit voice recorder", the black box that recorded data related to the emergency landing on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, had been found to have been overwritten with new data, and the data at the time of the incident was no longer readable. Because the "cockpit voice recorder" can only record a maximum of two hours of recording time, after which it will automatically loop override.
This is even more puzzling! International aviation agencies have long stipulated that from 2021, new passenger aircraft equipped with cockpit voice recorders must record at least 25 hours. Why does this new aircraft, which only left the factory on October 25, 2023, save 2 hours of recording?
There is also a puzzle that Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 departed and landed at Portland Airport, which took only more than 20 minutes in total, why did it become more than 2 hours, and the black box information was overwritten?