NTSB Media Brief - Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 (Jan 6) recording
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- Опубликовано: 6 янв 2024
- January 6, 2024: NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy briefs the media in Portland, Oregon, on the NTSB investigation involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on a Boeing 737-9 MAX.
20:40 contrary to what Jennifer says, this door plug cannot be opened from the outside of the aircraft. It does not have a door opening mechanism. For maintenance purposes, it can be opened from inside the aircraft by removing the plastic interior panel and thermal insulation. Then removing 4 bolts. 2 of them block guide tracks to prevent the guide tracks (fixed to the upper door sides) from moving in relation to rollers (fixed to the door frame). The other 2 hold down bolts pass through the 2 hinge tubes at the bottom edge of the door plug.
With these 4 bolts removed, the door can be lifted (with the help of a lift assist spring on each of the hinge tubes) to disengage the 12 door lugs from the 12 corresponding door frame lugs and the door will then open at the top and tilt out, hinging on the bottom edge.
As it happens, the 2 hinge tubes are still on this aircraft. So they will have now been inspected to see if there are whitnes marks on the hinge tubes to show that the door tore off past the hold down bolts or if the door slipped cleanly off the hinge tubes because there were no hold down bolts fitted. Can we see where this is going...
The location of the door is also eagerly awaited, as then it can be seen if the guide rollers tore passed the guide track locking bolts leaving a trail of destruction or if the guide tracks just unlatched from the guide rollers with no damage because the guide track locking bolts weren't present at the time of the incident.
I wish someone would do a RUclips video that points out all these parts with diagrams. Should I assume that can never happen because of NDA?? You seem like one half of the equation though. Thanks for sharing
Everything is pointing to someone not installing a few bolts. To me it sounds like at least two if not three of those major important bolts were not present, which was enough to dislodge the door and then rip off the final piece if any were even bolted. Nuts. I wonder how many pressurization cycles a door like that can withstand. This plane was at much higher pressure as recently as the day before the accident and that whole prior week
@@gutraliYes, there's an excellent, video on RUclips. I think it was linked in comments on Juan Brown's coverage of this incident.
@@gutrali ruclips.net/video/maLBGFYl9_o/видео.html
@@smacktard6051agreed. Or a failure of the upper door stop fittings. Which is why I want to see photos of the inside of the found door plug. Too bad there isn't more transparency in these "investigations"
THANK YOU so much for the update
Have the NTSB secured any CCTV & external photos of the aircraft on the ground in the days before the incident? Is there CCTV at the gate for example at the places it was flying from? Or anywhere it was moved for installation/maintenance. The door would likely have been raised (say 20mm by the lift assist springs) before pressurisation started. If it was anywhere near its normal alignment of door lug pins & door frame pads when pressurisation starts then it's unlikely anything will be able to shift it towards releasing in flight.
There would be a reasonable chance of seeing this 20mm gap at the bottom of the door, (or lack of gap at the top) even in a fairly poor camera angle, especially when there will be normal examples of the door to compare against.
It's about the only thing that would tell NTSB if it had been on the edge of the door blowing out for weeks or a couple of flights or only on this last flight. It appears it didn't stand out enough for the pilots to notice it on their walk around but they aren't looking for something like that.
A white plastic zip tie is holding the door plug closed. Why isn't that mentioned in the preliminary report?
In figure 16, the "after closure" Boeing progress photo, on the (forward) right hand side of the door, the second up from the bottom, pair of door/frame lugs have a white plastic zip tie clamping the door lug pin & frame lug pad firmly together. This prevents the door from lifting/opening in a similar way that the 4 locking bolts (that didn't get fitted) would have done.
The zip tie held until a bumpy landing broke it or made it slip off one of the lugs. Without that zip tie the lift assist springs will lift the door to the point where all 12 pairs of lug pins/pads are severely misaligned and only the very bottom part of the upper guide tracks are engaged with the guide rollers.
The guide tracks were never designed to hold the cabin air pressure and they finally broke at 15,000 ft, the first flight after the zip tie broke. (After 150+ flights).
It's a shame that the lift assist springs didn't lift a tiny bit more, because then the guide tracks would have fully disengaged from the guide rollers when the zip tie broke on landing. The door would have then fallen open to 15° where it's wire lanyards would hold it. Hopefully a door plug open 15° would be noticed on the next pre-flight walk around. Failing that, there would be serious wind noise on takeoff, deformation of the interior panel & no pressurisation.
Why didn't the lift assist springs lift the door further - possibly because of incorrect adjustment of the slotted holes in the hinge guide attachment flange. Or the bolts in the slotted holes were not sufficiently tightened, allowing the springs to push the attachment flange upwards, until the bolts are at the bottom of the adjustment holes. There are photos of these very bolts being found loose, when United Airlines inspected the door plugs on their aircraft.
Note: a zip tie is also known as a hose tie, cable tie, zap-straps or tie wrap.
RUclips “keyboard warriors” take a lot of heat from the experts, but they sometimes have good mechanical understanding and catch things the experts miss. Best I can tell that ZIP TIE was first noticed & mentioned by a commenter on Blancolirio during his video on the preliminary report, a week into February. I expect some ears are burning at NTSB right. They apparently missed it.
I have never worked on this particular aircraft 737. But other commercial aircraft, we would open the emergency door for ventilation, and doing other maintenance to the aircraft interior like removing or installing seats.
She should have said that if someone FINDS the door to DO NOT touch it. Let the investigators recover it so they can see exactly where it fell and in what condition it was in when it came to rest.
DO NOT TOUCH the door if you find it.
But landing from that distance up would just crush or even shatter beyond what ever condition the door was in when it was pulled out from the aircraft so you would not really be able to judge based off what the door looks like when you find it if it is now in a crumbled mess.
@@amyhartman6786 Leave that up to the investigators.....for crying out loud.
@@amyhartman6786 This aged poorly
@@amyhartman6786 No, it's relatively light compared to its aerodynamic area, we see that it fluttered down to a butter landing.
Good transparent updates! Appreciate that!
This is a repeat from yesterday, where's the new one for today? Edit: I see, 10PM, coming up tonight...kinda late, past my bedtime :(
NTSB- What about that ZIP TIE in figure 16 of preliminary report?
Just learned the MAX was first plane to switch from STATIC assembly stations, to DYNAMIC assembly as in automobiles, OOPS!
It was to speed delivery, and reduce cost.
Why isn't there any mention of the investication on the mechanics that are responsible for the installation of the bolts of the door plug and the fact they found other planes with loose bolts?
Hello from Germany!
Jennifer has gotten a lot of exposure as the NTSB chair, though the circumstances have been tragic. She seems very competent; I would imagine if she wanted to she could capitalize on that exposure and competence and run for public office-- she definitely have the poise and can articulate a message well.
I agree that the flight and cabin crew were excellent. I thought this briefing by the Chairperson was very open and detailed. I share her frustration about the limited time period for the cockpit voice recorder.
How or what exactly are they looking for in these inspections if they do not know what caused this? Looks like 4 mounting points, one in each corner, with not any part of the panel still attached to the plane? Just how does that happen unless maybe none of the lock bolts were installed??? Seems very odd something like this could happen with no visible damage to the exterior skin area next to the door/plug? I mean if at least one bolt was installed it would not have been able to disengage from the brackets. Had it torn away in the airstream parts of the door would be left behind right? Was cabin pressure too high? It just looks like it cleanly blew off/out? Do aircraft doors not open inward to prevent them opening once pressurized? Interesting accident, won't be flying on any of these new 737 jets.....
Not sure where you see 4 mounting points. There are 12 lugs on the door which locate behind (inside) the corresponding 12 lugs on the door frame. Unless the door is lifted to lift all the door lugs out from behind the frame lugs then this door plug it is very secure and the cabin pressure just pushes the door lugs firmly against the frame lugs. In addition to the lugs there are 2 hinge tubes at the bottom of the door. There is also a fixed guide roller on each side of the upper door frame and a corresponding guide track that locates with the roller on each side of the door.
Except for maintenance, the door plug is permanently fixed closed by 4 bolts (with castle nuts locked by split pins). 2 of the bolts block the guide rollers from moving in the guide track. The other 2 bolts prevent the door from moving upwards in relation to the lower hinge tubes. With these 4 bolts fitted, the door cannot be opened and is as capable of withstanding the cabin air pressure as well any door that Boeing has ever made.
It looks like some or all of the 4 locking bolts didn't get fitted, probably in some recent maintenance operation but possibly during manufacture.
The hinge tubes are still hanging out of the open doorway, so NTSB will be checking if there are any signs that the door tore past the locking bolts (unlikely) or of the door just slid off the tubes without damage because there were no locking (hold down) bolts fitted.
If there's no sign that the hold down bolts were fitted then that is what they will be checking for when they inspect all the similar aircraft before letting them fly again. While they are at it, they will also check the 2 bolts that block the roller guide are fitted and locked correctly. They will know more about those bolts, on this aircraft, when the door is found. Either they will see damage to the guide tracks where the rollers forced passed the locking bolts or they will see no damage to the guide tracks because the locking bolts were missing. (Most likely missing as it's hard to see any way for the door to open with them fitted).
Can you show photos of the inside of the found door plug?
NTSB doesn't want to fuel lawsuits.
@@SteamCrane crazy to hear that there's already lawsuits against the manufacturer of the door plugs and initial installers (my understanding is limited). The outside of the door plug look fantastic. I want to see what the inside structure looks like if anything is bent out of shape or missing rivets. Maybe parts of the bottom bracket are still attached. It's hard to tell what was hanging out of the opening of a plane fuselage but it didn't look like the brackets with the bolts and springs. It appeared to be more like the straps.
I really like that she recognizes the abject terror the passengers must have felt. She is also very careful to point out how incredibly lucky it was that no one died, and the kinds of things that are happening at that time during a flight. It seems like most execs for airlines (and, yes, I DO know she is not an airline exec) fail to acknowledge that their planes aren't filled with automatons. I'm certain that's on the advice of their attorneys, but I would absolutely fly with an airline after a crash if the execs, at least, pretended not to be narcissistic, empathy-less, avaricious dickwads. It is the lack of human feeling, even passably fake human feeling, which leads me to conclude that airline execs will take profit over my life ANY DAY, and which makes me absolutely HATE flying, and which makes me HATE airline execs. I do not trust avaricious dickwads.
The NTSB intro is like if the apple startup and law and order into had a baby
All this lady said was how the NTSB functions and all they have did so far is party and talk on the phone. Great job lady now start investigating
Do you think that isn't important to let people know how her organization functions? And how do you know what specific activities they had or had not done at the time?
Well if you need maintenance information or technical experts.....you aren't going to find them in the Pilots union? WHY would they even be party to this investigation? Why would the pilots be party but not the Technician's union? How about Alaska's maintenance engineers?
The NTSB’s investigation will include the crew’s response. They’ll be interviewing the flight and cabin crew. I’m sure they’ll find exemplary performance but the Pilot’s Association is naturally involved here.
@@peterwmdavis Yes Peter but my question really is.....why wouldn't the technician's union be a party to the investigation since this was a MECHANICAL malfunction?.....for crying out loud. Even more so, Alaska's engineering staff. Don't get me wrong, I think everybody appreciates the flight crews professionalism in the flight deck and in the cabin. But this is really a mechanical issue. Whether it originated with Alaska's mechanics or Boeing's. I suppose there is a remote possibility something external could be involved. Maybe a bird knocked the plug out of the fuselage. Could a de-icing truck have contacted the plug and damaged it? Everything is possible at this stage.
@@rael5469because there was zero maintenance done on that plug. It’s from the manufacturer. If MX touched that plug or did any work to that plug, I’d be surprised.
@@vito774 Vito what you said is ....likely. I admit it is unlikely that Alaska had to touch that door on a brand new aircraft......but EVERYTHING is possible at this early stage.
@@rael5469 I see your point. Airline Pilots Association represents Alaska who were clearly involved. Perhaps they haven’t determined yet which mechanics are involved yet. Or perhaps the mechanics get the shaft, as usual. But it seems 99% at this point the 4 bolts that prevent the plug door from coming unseated from its pins/hinges were simply not installed at all and were missed in QA, so while the NTSB will be interested in interviewing mechanics to find out what happened, I believe they’re not interested in blaming individual people. The system failed.
Explain how you can record over a voice recorder when this had never happened before but this time you say that someone has recorded over it. Maybe you are trying to cover up what you discovered and then you decided that you should record over it to keep anyone else finding out about it
I don’t think I am the only one that question sis from the NTSB or the FAA or any other official this has never been said before about any voice recorders recovered from a plane, but this one was recorded over 🤔 I do not think I am the only one that has a problem with this information. Sounds like a cover-up to me.
Every voice recorder records in an endless loop. In a crash, it stops overwriting the old recording when it loses power, but in a non-fatal accident, it keeps running until the plane is parked and the pilots pull the circuit breaker. And it has to, as the plane still may crash. If that takes longer than 2 hours (in the US) or 25 hours (in Europe), the recording from the time of the incident will be gone.
And what do you expect to be covered up here? One of the pilots saying, "hey, look, if I wriggle this stick for funsies, the door will blow out"?
Seems like they should add the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) if they are going to include ALPA. After all, it's more likely than not an IAM member, whether from the airline, Boeing, or Spirit, is ultimately at fault for what caused this accident.
lol so you think Unions are at fault. Sounds pretty biased. 😂
All of the flight attendants were questioned and they all had familiar stories. They all crapped their pants.
ask Boeing!!!!
Know what's better than investigating plane crashes? Planes that don't crash. Why don't airplanes have parachutes so they float to the ground instead of crashing into it? It would work yet for some reason it's cheaper to keep showing the public plane crashes? Parachutes aren't on planes because they don't want them there
Only one idea in the minds of NTSB: keep the folks in the planes..... so say: all planes, especially Boeing are safe..... Oh yeah, we believe you baby....
I think she might be becoming a better Chairman, despite her claims to identify as furniture.
As normal it will take 3 yrs to find out what happened........
They’ll know WHAT happened very soon, if they don’t already, and will issue a preliminary report. The final report answers HOW it happened and makes safety recommendations; that SHOULD take less than 12 months by law, although it can be longer.
I'm willing to bet Boeing engineers already know what happened. Looking at the Alaska plane and then planes in final assembly, with associated manufacturing engineering assembly instructions, will gives some pretty strong clues as to how the plug panel made a nearly clean getaway
Were these 2 hired based on appearance