New testimony shows Alaska Air crew feared passengers were lost in mid-air blowout

By Allison Lampert

(Reuters) -Alaska Airlines flight attendants feared passengers had been sucked out of the plane in the chaos following the Jan. 5 mid-air panel blowout on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet, according to harrowing testimony released by safety experts on Tuesday. 

The comments gathered from interviews with attendants - who were not named - were among thousands of pages of evidence made public ahead of a two-day hearing that began earlier on Tuesday by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board about the incident. They provide dramatic accounts of the cabin crew's efforts to help passengers and communicate with pilots when the panel blew off the jet at 16,000 feet after taking off from Portland, Oregon. 

“I said there is a hole in the plane, in the back of the plane and I’m sure we’ve lost passengers,” said one flight attendant with about 20 years of experience, after spotting the hole in the plane and five empty seats.     

The attendant was worried about an unaccompanied child toward the plane's rear. "All I could think of was that he was sitting there and he was too small to reach the mask and was probably really scared."

The NTSB is reviewing 737 manufacturing and inspections and oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration with a goal of making recommendations to prevent a repeat in the future. The incident has morphed into a full-blown financial and reputational crisis for manufacturer Boeing.

Flight attendants who were not authorized to speak publicly immediately after the accident described a loud bang, whooshing air and for one, tangled oxygen masks.

“I think I was able to (blurt) out, 'I think we have a hole and we might've lost passengers.' And then it seemed like I just lost contact, I tried calling back, tried speaking loudly into the phone, I couldn't hear anything," said a second flight attendant, with almost a decade of experience. 

“Probably the scariest thing was I didn't have exact communication with my flight deck and at first I didn't know if the decompression was in the front, if we have pilots, and not being able to fully communicate with the back,” the flight attendant said.    

The flight attendants both described damage to the plane and injured passengers, including one teen without a shirt on who had a red face and neck. One chair was completely stripped of the leather cover, fabric stuffing, upholstery and head rest tray table with the force of the decompression.

The second flight attendant said eventually pilots informed them that they were going to land, “so I knew that we were going to be okay.”

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by David Gaffen and Matthew Lewis)