Alaska Airlines has revealed that the plane involved in the recent incident where a door panel detached midair was scheduled for maintenance on the same day. The airline informed the New York Times that the aircraft was supposed to be taken out of service to investigate two warning lights. This development raises questions about whether the scheduled maintenance would have identified the issue with the door panel, a crucial oversight by Boeing.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will now focus on examining the maintenance records to determine if the omission by Boeing could have been detected earlier. The timeline of events leading up to the incident on January 5th reveals several pressurization warnings in the cockpit on December 7th, January 3rd, and January 4th, which were deemed unrelated to the door panel detachment.
