The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported Sunday night that the "missing key component" of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet involved in an emergency landing by Alaska Airlines had been recovered from the backyard of a suburban building.

The door on the left side of an Alaska Airlines plane came off Friday after taking off from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, depressurizing the plane and forcing pilots to reverse and make an emergency landing with all 171 passengers and six crew members on board. .

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Saturday ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing MAX 9 jets installed with the same panel, which weighs about 27 kg and covers an optional departure door used mainly by low-cost airlines.

The piece that broke off was recovered Sunday by a Portland schoolteacher identified only as "Bob" in the Cedar Hills neighborhood, who found it in his backyard, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said, adding she was "very relieved" that it had been found.

He had previously told reporters that the plane's part was a "key missing component" in determining why the crash occurred.

"Our structures team will want to look at everything that's on the door: all the components of the door to see the witness marks, any paint transfers, the condition the door was in when they found it. That can tell them a lot about what happened," he said.

The force of the door loss was strong enough to open the cockpit door during the flight, said Homendy, who said it must have been a "terrifying event" to experience. "They heard an explosion," Homendy said of the pilots, who were interviewed by investigators.

PREVIOUS PRESSURIZATION ISSUES

Homendy said the automatic pressurization glide light illuminated on the same Alaska Airlines plane on Dec. 0, Jan. 7 and Jan. 3, but it was unclear if there was any connection between those incidents and the crash.

Alaska Airlines made the decision after warnings to prevent the plane from making long flights over the water to Hawaii so it could quickly return to an airport if necessary, Homendy said.

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The Seattle-based airline previously said in response to questions about the warning lights that failures in the planes' pressurization system were typical in commercial aviation operations with large jets.

The airline said that "in all cases, the report was fully evaluated and resolved in accordance with approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations."

Alaska Airlines added that it has an internal policy to restrict planes with multiple maintenance checks on some long-over-water flight systems that were not required by the FAA.

AIRCRAFT ON THE GROUND

The FAA said Sunday that the affected fleet of Boeing MAX 9 jets, including those operated by other airlines such as United Airlines, would remain grounded until the regulator was satisfied they were safe.

The FAA initially said Saturday that required inspections would take four to eight hours, leading many in the industry to assume the planes could return to service very quickly.

But criteria for the controls have yet to be agreed between the FAA and Boeing, meaning the airlines have yet to receive detailed instructions, people familiar with the matter said.

The FAA must approve Boeing's inspection criteria before the checks can be completed and the planes can resume flights. Alaska Airlines said Sunday night that it had not yet received instructions from Boeing.

Alaska Airlines canceled 170 flights on Sunday and another 60 on Monday and said travel disruptions from the flight suspension were expected to last at least until midweek. United, which grounded its 79 MAX 9s, canceled 230 flights on Sunday, or 8% of scheduled departures.

The crash has once again put Boeing under scrutiny as it awaits certification of its smaller MAX 7, as well as the larger MAX 10, which is needed to compete with a key Airbus model.

In 2019, world authorities subjected all MAX jets to a wider flight suspension that lasted 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia related to poorly designed cockpit software killed a total of 346 people.

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  • United States
  • Boeing 737 MAX
  • Boeing