Alaska Airlines Flight 1282's missing door plug and two passenger cell phones are found near Portland after terrifying 16,000ft blowout that sucked out possessions

Video game designer Sean Bates assumed the phone had been dropped by a jogger when he found by the side of a road in rural Washington State because it didn't have a scratch on it 

The missing door plug as well as two cell phones that belonged to passengers from the Alaska Airlines flight that experienced an inflight door blowout at 16,000 feet over Oregon on Friday have been located.

One of the cellphones, an iPhone, was found by video game designer Sean Bates who said that he picked it up while out for a walk. In a series of posts on X, Bates said that the intact phone was still in airplane mode and had half of its battery life left.

Bates added that when he contacted the National Transportation and Safety Bureau, he was told that it was the second such phone to have been found. In a subsequent post, Bates showed that the charger plug was still in the phone, indicating that it was yanked out.

The door plug was later found having been recovered from the backyard of a suburban home in Portland. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said, saying she was ‘very relieved’ it had been found.

The plug door tore off the left side of the Alaska Airlines jet on Friday following takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route to Ontario, California, depressurizing the plane and forcing pilots to turn back and land safely with all 171 passengers and six crew on board.

Alaska flight 1282 left Portland just after 5pm local time on Friday when a window blew out at 16,000 feet, ripping a child’s shirt off

Video game designer Sean Bates assumed the phone had been dropped by a jogger when he found by the side of a road in rural Washington State because it didn’t have a scratch on it

Sean Bates, shown here with NTSB investigators, said that he was told that his finding was the second cell phone from the flight found by a member of the public

A photo shows the blown out window. It is offered as a door on the aircraft. Alaska chose not to take this option – although the frame of the prospective door was entirely ripped out by the fuselage failure

In a TikTok video, Bates said that he had seen a notification from the NTSB asking residents in the area to keep an eye out for anything that may have fallen from the Alaska Airlines flight.

He said that while walking he noticed the phone but first assumed that a jogger had dropped it.

‘It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush.’

Bates added that the screen was unlocked and that a baggage confirmation email was visible when he picked up showing it had come from the flight.

Homedy had earlier told reporters the aircraft part was a ‘key missing component’ to determine why the accident occurred.

‘Our structures team will want to look at everything on the door – all of the components on the door to see to look at witness marks, to look at any paint transfer, what shape the door was in when found. That can tell them a lot about what occurred,’ she said.

The force from the loss of the plug door was strong enough to blow open the cockpit door during flight, said Homendy, who said it must have been a ‘terrifying event’ to experience.

‘They heard a bang,’ Homendy said of the pilots, who were interviewed by investigators.

A quick reference laminated checklist flew out the door, while the first officer lost her headset, she said. ‘Communication was a serious issue… It was described as chaos.’

Homendy said the cockpit voice recorder did not capture any data because it had been overwritten and again called on regulators to mandate retrofitting existing planes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data, up from the two hours required at present.

Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board said the blow-out at 16,000ft was an ‘accident, not an incident’

One passenger who filmed the drama said she woke up from a nap believing the plane had hit turbulence – only to discover a large hole in its fuselage

Homendy said the auto pressurization fail light illuminated on the same Alaska Airlines aircraft on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, but it was unclear if there was any connection between those incidents and the accident.

Alaska Airlines made a decision after the warnings to restrict the aircraft from making long flights over water to Hawaii so that it could return quickly to an airport if needed, Homendy said.

Homendy said the auto pressurization fail light illuminated on the same Alaska Airlines aircraft on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4, but it was unclear if there was any connection between those incidents and the accident.

The airline said ‘in every case, the write up was fully evaluated and resolved per approved maintenance procedures and in full compliance with all applicable FAA regulations.’

Alaska Airlines added it has an internal policy to restrict aircraft with multiple maintenance write-ups on some systems from long flights over water that was not required by the FAA.

The FAA said on Sunday the affected fleet of Boeing MAX 9 planes, including those operated by other carriers such as United Airlines (UAL.O), would remain grounded until the regulator was satisfied they were safe.

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

But criteria for the checks have yet to be agreed between the FAA and Boeing, meaning 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 planes can resume flights. Alaska Airlines said late on Sunday it had still not received instructions from Boeing.

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

The accident has put Boeing back 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 (AIR.PA) model.

In 2019, global authorities subjected all MAX planes to a wider grounding that lasted 20 months after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia linked to poorly designed cockpit software killed a total of 346 people.