PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Alaska Airlines Flight that left Portland, Oregon’s airport on Friday evening was forced to return shortly after departure due to a depressurization event after passengers said a window and part of the fuselage was ripped off the plane, according to local reports.
The flight’s pilot was forced to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport after the plane lost a window while in mid-air, according to KPTV News. One passenger reportedly claimed that the extreme depressurization caused a child’s shirt to be ripped off.
An airline spokesperson told The Messenger in an email Friday evening that Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was headed from Portland to Ontario, California, when it “experienced an incident this evening soon after departure.”
“The aircraft landed safely back at Portland International Airport with 171 guests and 6 crew members,” the spokesperson said. “The safety of our guests and employees is always our primary priority, so while this type of occurrence is rare, our flight crew was trained and prepared to safely manage the situation.”
The airline and NTSB are investigating what caused the incident.
One user on TikTok was apparently on the flight and shared a video of her experience.
“It wasn’t even the emergency door because we were in the back half,” user vy.covers wrote on the video captions. “It was just a random piece of the plane.”
@strawberr.vy
Girls’ trip turned into emergency landing trip… #alaska #alaskaair
According to flight details on FlightAware.com, the plane flew as high as 15,000 feet and as fast as 400 miles per hour before it turned around to safely land. The plane was a “brand new” Boeing 737 MAX 9 that had been “delivered to the airline at the end of October,” according to The Air Current’s Editor-in-chief Jon Ostrower.
Photos of the damage sustained by the plane appear to show an entire of a section is now gone. Other photos shared on Reddit show passengers wearing oxygen masks during the flight after the rapid depressurization event occurred. So far, no injuries have been reported.
