‘A Waking Nightmare’: Boeing Hit with Class Action Lawsuit After Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Door Plug Blowout

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Several Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 passengers have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against The Boeing Company after the plane on the January 5 flight lost its left-side door plug and depressurized mid-flight, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing and terrorizing passengers and crew. 

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The 17-page case says that roughly 10 minutes after takeoff, the 737 Max 9 aircraft’s left door plug, a panel used to cover an unneeded emergency exit that’s secured to the fuselage by four bolts, detached and shot away from the plane “with a sudden loud explosive noise,” suddenly and violently depressurizing the cabin in the process. Immediately thereafter, a boy’s shirt was ripped off, oxygen masks—many of which apparently did not work—deployed from the ceiling, and cell phones, a seatback, headrests, debris and much of the plane’s oxygen were sucked out of the hole in the fuselage and “expelled into the night,” the suit, filed in Washington superior court on January 11, states.

According to the complaint, the event physically injured some passengers and “emotionally traumatized most if not all aboard” the plane, which, carrying 171 passengers and six crew members, was bound from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California.

“The violence of the event bruised the bodies of some. The cockpit door blew open and a flight attendant rushed to try to close it. The pressure change made ears bleed and combined with low oxygen, loud wind noise and traumatic stress made heads ache severely. Passengers were shocked, terrorized and confused, thrust into a waking nightmare, hoping they would live long enough to walk the earth again.” 

The filing relays that Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun acknowledged in a meeting with employees that the defect that caused the door plug blowout was the company’s “mistake” and affirmed Boeing’s commitment to “complete transparency” throughout the investigation. However, the lawsuit contends that in doing so, Calhoun admitted publicly that the door plug had not been properly secured to the fuselage “either during manufacture or otherwise” while the plane was being built. 

According to the suit, as the airliner continued to fly, passengers “feared they would not survive the flight,” and most aboard were left “earily [sic] subdued in their collective helpless state, muted with masks on” as others texted family or “gripped and clung to one another.”

In the aftermath of the flight, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft around the world, pending safety inspections. The lawsuit relays that federally mandated inspections launched in the wake of the incident found “numerous loose bolts” plaguing several 737 Max 9 jets, “which suggest that The Boeing Company has failed to design and/or construct those aircraft safely.”                                   

The case accuses Boeing of violating Washington’s Product Liability Act by delivering the 737 Max 9 to Alaska Airlines without properly securing the door plug to the airframe. Further, the complaint alleges that one or more of the bolts and/or seals required to secure the door “was or were defective” at the time the aircraft was made and delivered. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all passengers aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5, 2024 who were not at that time on-duty employees of Boeing, as well as their spouses and registered domestic partners. 

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