Teacher finds missing door plug in garden after plane part blows out mid-air
A component from the plane that had a part ripped away while in flight was found by a teacher in his garden.
By now, you're likely familiar with the chaotic events on board the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that had to make an emergency landing after part of the fuselage and a window were blown out shortly after take-off.
The flight took off from Portland, Oregon on 5 January at around 5pm local time and was heading for Ontario, California.
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It had reached about 16,000ft when disaster struck and a big hole appeared in the side of the aircraft as a deactivated emergency door that now served as a window blew out, depressurising the cabin.
Obviously planes aren't supposed to fly with a big hole in the side of them and the Alaska Airlines flight had to turn around and make an emergency landing at Portland 20 minutes after it had taken off.
Thankfully, none of the 177 passengers and crew onboard were hurt in the chaos and in total, 171 Boeing 737 Max 9s were grounded for safety checks after the near-catastrophe.
On the same model of jet, pilots had seen three pressurisation warning lights in the past two months - one in December and two in January.
As for how exactly this happened, the discovery of part of the debris of the plane's fuselage could help shed some light on that.
The door plug which was torn off the Alaska Airlines flight ended up being found in the garden of a teacher called Bob, Sky News reports.
Living in Cedar Hills, Portland, Bob's discovery of the missing door plug could help figure out exactly what went wrong as the National Transportation Safety Board said it was a 'key missing component' on the aircraft.
The force of the plane's decompression blew the plane's cockpit door open and rendered communication inside the plane difficult.
Fortunately, as the plane had not yet reached cruising altitude, everyone was in their seats and crew were not moving around in the plane.
There were also no passengers sitting in the seats directly beside the hole in the aircraft's fuselage, which would have been a truly terrifying and life-threatening experience.
Some passengers on board the plane sent texts to their loved ones as they feared that the incident would be fatal.
One passenger explained on social media that she had been asleep on the flight when she was jolted awake and 'felt the entire plane drop'.
Oxygen masks dropped down, people were screaming and some of their belongings flew out of the hole in the aircraft.
An investigation will now determine what happened to the plane and how something like this could have happened, and the door plug found in Bob's garden could help piece it all together.
Joe Harker