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BOEING DOOR PLUG BLOWOUT

Days after the terrifying midair blowout on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, I worked with Pulitzer prize-winning aviation reporter Dominic Gates to produce maps and illustrations that helped readers understand what happened and what failures led to the incident. The investigative series was awarded a 2025 Gerald Loeb Award in Beat Reporting.

For breaking news, I first created a map of the flight path. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet departed Portland International Airport on Friday, January 5, 2024, bound for Ontario, California. About six minutes into the flight, a piece of the fuselage blew out, and the pilots made an emergency landing in Portland. Fortunately all 171 passengers and 6 crew members survived, with only three minor injuries.

In June 2025, a top U.S. aviation investigator determined that Boeing and its chief regulator, the FAA, were to blame for the Alaska Airlines blowout. Boeing is redesigning the 737 MAX section.

Map illustrating the flight path of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, showing altitude and speed during emergency landing near Portland International Airport.
A passenger view of the door plug hole on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9, flight 1282, which was forced to make an emergency landing at Portland airport.
A passenger view of the door plug hole on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9, flight 1282, which was forced to make an emergency landing at Portland airport. A 15-year-old boy was seated in the window seat just in front of the hole. The headrest is missing, having been sucked out. (Courtesy Elizabeth Le via Instagram)
The door plug from the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282’s Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane is shown at the National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2024.
The door plug from the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282’s Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane is shown at the National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2024. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP, republished in The Seattle Times)

We learned that the piece of the fuselage was in fact a door plug—a panel installed on some Boeing jets in place of an emergency exit door. My first detailed drawing of the door plug hardware was mostly black-and-white linework because it needed to be published the next day.

Four bolts, highlighted in blue, prevent the door plug from moving upward. But in the accident on flight 1282, somehow the plug moved upward so that the paired “stop fittings” on the plug and the airframe were no longer aligned.

Illustration shows the location of bolts that hold a 737 MAX 9 door plug in place.

For follow-up coverage, I added more color and details. Investigators believed the four bolts were missing on flight 1282. Later accounts from mechanics confirmed the bolts were removed during assembly at Boeing’s Renton factory and not reinstalled. This caused the door plug to move upward and fall out during flight.

Finally, I illustrated the location of the door plug and inside and outside of the cabin. Though visible from the plane’s exterior, the fuselage hole made to accommodate an additional exit door in some MAX 9 models is nearly hidden in the interior when the hole is plugged.

Diagram comparing the interior of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 with an exit door and an exit plug. The top half shows the airplane exterior and the exit door, while the bottom half illustrates the cabin layout without the exit door.

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