Man called Bob finds missing Boeing part in his garden after mid-air blowout

That's not something you'd expect to find in your garden.

The missing part of a Boeing plane which blew off in midair has been found in the back garden of a teacher called Bob.

The Alaska Airlines plane had departed from Portland, Oregon on Friday and was due to fly to Ontario, Canada when a piece of the fuselage flew off at 16,000ft.

Boeing has grounded 171 of the 218 737 Max 9 jets following the incident while they investigate – as some of the planes have been returned to the air on Sunday after finding ‘no concerning findings’.

The missing part of the plane, the door plug, was found in a teacher’s back garden. No other details have been given about Bob, who beat the authorities to locate the faulty piece of fuselage.

Investigators will examine the plug, which is 26 by 48 inches and weighs 63 pounds, for signs of how it broke free.

Following the blowout, plane landed back in Portland safely and none of its 177 passengers and crew were injured.

Passengers described the hole in the plane as being ‘as wide as a refrigerator’.

Jennifer Homendy, of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said pilots had reported pressurisation warning lights on three earlier flights in the days before Friday’s incident – but it’s not clear if these warnings are linked.

The plane involved was not being used for journeys to Hawaii, after Alaska Airlines restricted the aircraft from long flights over water so that the plane ‘could return very quickly to an airport’ if the warning light reappeared.

Ms Homendy described the event as ‘very chaotic’, adding that no information was available to read from the cockpit voice recorder because it was not retrieved before the two-hour mark and it was recorded over.

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