US Alaska Airlines plane makes emergency landing after window, piece of fuselage breaks off

An Alaska Airlines passenger aircraft in the US had to make an emergency landing when a window and a piece of the fuselage both broke away during mid-flight. Reportedly, none of the nearly 180 passengers or crew was harmed.

The incident occurred late Friday in the Pacific Coast state of Oregon, where the window of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 passenger plane and a piece of the fuselage detached some 35 minutes after takeoff.

There were reportedly no passengers in the section where the window broke. Alaska Airlines said in a statement that the aircraft landed safely with 171 passengers and six cabin crew members.

It added that its sixty-five 737 MAX 9 aircraft would be temporarily grounded for inspection, a process expected to take a few days.

"The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating this event and we will fully support their investigation," it said.

Ben Minicucci, the airlines' president and CEO, said in a statement: "My heart goes out to those who were on this flight-I am so sorry for what you experienced. I am so grateful for the response of our pilots and flight attendants."

"We have teams on the ground in Portland assisting passengers and are working to support guests who are traveling in the days ahead," he added.

- SAFETY CONCERNS OVER BOEING 737 MAX

The years before the start of the pandemic in 2020 saw safety concerns and a string of accidents with Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, with hundreds of passengers lost.

The 737 Max model first took to the air in 2017. A crash in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019 took 346 lives.

All Max jets were grounded worldwide for nearly two years while the company made changes to an automated flight-control system that pushed the nose down based on faulty sensor readings.

The company faced substantial financial losses and was sued by numerous relatives of the victims.