Alaska Airlines cancels dozens of flights after grounding Boeing MAX 9s

More than 160 Alaska Airlines flight cancellations around the country disrupted travelers’ plans on Saturday after the airline announced the temporary grounding of its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX 9s.

The grounding follows a serious incident on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 on Friday evening, when a piece of the fuselage blew out at 16,000 feet, leaving a large hole and decompressing the passenger cabin. On Saturday morning, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding of most MAX 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory.

Alaska Flight 1282 departed from Portland on Friday night and made an emergency landing there 20 minutes after taking off. The flight had been destined for Ontario, Calif. All 171 passengers and six crew on Flight 1282 were safe, with some minor injuries, Alaska said. No passenger was seated by the opening.

Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci said in a Friday night statement that the airline’s fleet of 65 MAX 9s would be grounded and inspected to ensure safety. He anticipated inspections would be complete in the next few days.

“Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” Minicucci said. “I am personally committed to doing everything we can to conduct this review in a timely and transparent way.”

[Updated: FAA orders Boeing 737-9 jetliners grounded after Alaska Air midair fuselage blowout]

By Saturday afternoon, 18 of the planes had been cleared to return to service after it was determined they’d received a in-depth inspection during recent maintenance visits. Alaska said the remaining inspections would be “completed in the next few days.”

The 160-plus canceled flights represent 21% of Alaska’s scheduled flights, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. More than 170 additional Alaska flights were delayed as of Saturday afternoon.

(Flights directly to and from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport did not appear to be heavily affected, with only a dozen or so cancellations as of Saturday evening. But passengers coming and going to Alaska could still be affected by cancellations and delays elsewhere in the Alaska Air system.)

Of those routes, 38 Alaska flights out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were canceled as of Saturday afternoon, and 70 flights out of Seattle were delayed, per FlightAware. Alaska Airlines has more flights into and out of Sea-Tac than any other carrier.

The cancellations snarled travel plans for thousands of passengers, including a high school girls club soccer team that was headed to a college showcase tournament in Tampa.

Christian Whipple, whose daughter Vienna plays on the Crossfire U16 team, said the team found out about the cancellation when they arrived at the airport a few hours before their flight. Alaska wasn’t able to offer the 17 players, plus coaches and parents, an alternate flight that would get them to the tournament in time, Whipple said.

“It’s pretty disappointing, but obviously, safety is the most important thing,” he said. “They’re an elite national team and they trained really hard throughout the break, so they were excited to go.”

The players and families were refunded for their flights, but lost thousands of dollars on tournament fees and a nonrefundable rented home. Whipple hopes they’ll be able to add another tournament in the spring.

“It’s a big recruiting year for this age group, and these tournaments provide the ability to showcase in front of college coaches,” Whipple said. “It’s a lost opportunity.”

Travelers at Sea-Tac were directed to the Alaska Airlines rebooking office on the first floor of the airport’s parking garage on Saturday. The line to rebook flights stretched far outside the office and down a hallway on Saturday morning, where many travelers hastily worked their phones trying to rebook on Alaska or other airlines. Callers reported wait times of up to four and a half hours on Alaska’s customer service phone line.

A flexible travel policy is in place for Alaska customers, allowing passengers to change or cancel their trips without a fee. In online instructions to passengers, the airline says that it will move them to the next available flight if their flight was canceled. Otherwise, they can change their flight to another one up to three days earlier or later, cancel their trip online and receive travel credit, or contact the airline to cancel their trip and receive a refund.

Twin sisters Isabel and Fiona Max were on the way from their home in Bend, Ore., to school and track practice at Princeton University when they were stranded in Seattle. After their flight was canceled, they saw that the rebooking line was “kind of a zoo,” Isabel said. Instead they started researching other options, like trying to fly to Minneapolis, where their dad lives.

A teammate in Seattle picked Isabel and Fiona up from the airport, but on the way home, they got stuck in a miles-long backup on Interstate 5 after demonstrators protesting Israel’s war in Gaza shut the highway down for hours. They keep getting kicked off Alaska’s customer service phone line and still haven’t been able to rebook.

“I’m really grateful that what we have on the other end isn’t super urgent,” Isabel said. “We were overhearing conversations about people missing weddings, funerals, things like that. We can train from anywhere.

“I’m grateful that it’s a flexible date for us and we have a free place to stay.”

[Boeing faces new questions about the 737 Max after a plane suffers a gaping hole in its side]

Husky fans flying directly to Houston for Monday’s national championship football game appear to have been spared. No flights from Seattle to Houston were listed among the cancellations as of Saturday afternoon.

“Flights on Saturday and Sunday from Seattle to Houston are not impacted,” Alaska said in a post on social media platform X. “Return flights next week are also not affected.”

Some Texas-bound Alaska flights into Austin, San Antonio and Dallas were canceled, however, upending travel plans for fans who had hoped to fly to airports outside Houston and drive to the game.

Lifelong UW fan Adam Johnson got an email at 3 a.m. that his Saturday evening red-eye flight from Seattle to Austin was canceled. He called Alaska and got in the customer service queue, receiving a call back in about an hour and a half, Johnson said.

Instead of a direct flight, he and a friend will connect through Las Vegas and spend Saturday night in the airport before flying to Austin in the morning. It was a “stressful scramble,” he said, but most importantly, they’ll make it to the game.

“They haven’t canceled our return flight, so we’re a little skeptical and cautious,” Johnson said. “Hopefully we aren’t stranded in Texas.”

What we know

Data from Friday’s flight provided by FlightAware shows that after climbing to an altitude of 16,000 feet some six and a half minutes into the flight, with the plane traveling at a speed of 444 miles per hour, the pilot descended rapidly.

It appears that’s the moment when the piece of fuselage blew out and passengers saw a gaping hole, felt a rush of air leaving the cabin, and saw oxygen masks drop from the ceiling.

“It was deathly silent” aboard the plane, said 29-year-old passenger Kyle Rinker in a text message to The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Nobody made a noise. You could feel the plane shake a little because of the air pressure difference.”

The FlightAware data shows the crew descended to 10,000 feet within four minutes, then turned back toward Portland and continued their descent.

In a statement, Boeing said it is working to gather more information and that its technical team is ready to support the investigation.

Before the FAA-mandated grounding, United Airlines also temporarily pulled some MAX 9s from service to conduct emergency inspections, according to a Bloomberg report. The airline has 78 MAX 9s in operation.

Just before 9 a.m. Saturday, Alaska posted on the social media platform X that inspections “on more than a quarter” of the MAX 9s were complete “with no concerning findings.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday morning that a team would arrive on scene in Portland later in the day, including experts in structures, operations and systems.

The 737 MAX is the latest version of Boeing’s signature narrowbody jetliner. Alaska had recently transitioned to an all-Boeing fleet and relies heavily on the MAX, which has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours globally. (The airline’s recent $1.9 billion proposed purchase of Hawaiian Airlines would add Airbus planes to its roster.)

After MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, all versions of the plane were grounded. The investigation that followed showed that a flawed flight control system in the plane was the primary cause of both tragedies.

In late December, Boeing informed airlines and the FAA of a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and directed inspections of specific tie rods that control rudder movement for possible loose hardware.

Friday’s emergency landing was Alaska Air Group’s second recent, significant flight safety incident that ended with a plane landing at Portland’s airport.

In October, an Alaska-owned Embraer E175 jet operated by its regional carrier Horizon Air diverted to Portland after authorities say an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot attempted to shut off the plane’s engines. The Alaska Airlines pilot, who was riding in a jump seat on the flight deck, currently faces state and federal charges related to the incident.

Seattle Times reporters Dominic Gates and Bob Condotta contributed to this report.