Alaska Airlines flight makes emergency return to PDX after large panel on side of Boeing 737 MAX 9 blows out

PORTLAND, Ore. (KGW/KTVZ) — An Alaska Airlines flight was forced to return and make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport (PDX) Friday night after a large panel on the side of the plane blew out mid-flight, KGW reported.

According to the flight tracking site FlightAware, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was heading from PDX to Ontario, California. It departed at 4:52 p.m., then had to turn back around within 35 minutes; the airplane landed in Portland at 5:27 p.m. — an hour and 20 minutes earlier than its planned arrival in California.

A passenger who was on the plane, told KGW that a panel on the side of the plane blew out, taking one of the windows with it, causing a rapid decompression of the cabin. 

A video posted to TikTok by another passenger, Elizabeth, shows the aftermath, as the plane returns to Portland and lands at PDX. By that point, passengers appeared calm, although they were using oxygen masks.

"Everything was going fine until we heard a loud bang ... a boom," Elizabeth recalled. "I look up, and the air masks are popped down, and I look down to my left, and there's a huge, gaping hole on the left side, where the window is."

While people were shaken, no one was hurt, though a child's shirt got pulled through the opening, she said. The child and the mother were sitting across the aisle when the panel blew out, and Elizabeth said she heard the mom had to drag her son back inside, his skin reddened by the wind.

Elizabeth was sitting two rows to the right behind where the window was, and recalled she could feel the air where she was. 

"It was really loud; at first, I thought it was my ears popping ...  I had my noise-canceling headphones on, so it did suppress most of the noise, thankfully," she continued. "I'm glad everyone stayed calm, and everyone had their seatbelts on ... so everyone was okay." 

The flight crew then checked up on the passengers, who could not hear the intercom announcement over the wind. Elizabeth said though she didn't know what exactly happened, a man was taken off the plane by paramedics after they landed. The paramedics also checked on the mother and son.

Elizabeth said her group was able to take a later flight.

In a brief statement, Alaska Airlines confirmed that Flight 1282 had "experienced an incident" soon after departure but landed safely back at the airport. There were 174 passengers and six crew members aboard.

We are investigating what happened and will share more information as it becomes available," Alaska said.

Sound from the air traffic control tower has the pilot declaring an emergency and planning a descent, saying the plane depressurized.

The Port of Portland and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) both confirmed the emergency landing, with the FAA noting that the crew "reported a pressurization issue" and returned safely to PDX around 5 p.m. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the incident.

Flight information shows that the plane was a twin-jet Boeing 737 MAX 9. According to FAA records, the aircraft's certification date was Nov. 2, 2023. Boeing also said it was investigating.

The Max is the newest version of Boeing’s venerable 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle plane frequently used on U.S. domestic flights. The plane model went into service in May 2017.

Two Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people, leading to a near two-year worldwide grounding of all Max 8 and Max 9 planes. The planes 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this story