More trouble for the 737 Max. It looks from the passenger footage like the whole emergency door failed outwards or something like that:
BBC News - Watch: Inside Alaska Airlines plane after part blows off mid-air
More details here:
Huh, alaskan airlines just out there proving Hollywood wrong. Thats all.
Sucks but will be interesting to see what comes of this. Plane issue or human error.
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If I was a betting man, I would say human factors. Those doors and mechanisms are over engineered. The first question I would have is who touched the door last?
That said, I have been sorely disappointed with Boeing. Ever since the bean counters took over leadership of the company, the product quality and reliability has gone downhill- all of them- Commercial and Military. Hearing USAF maintainers talking about sub floors full of beer cans, random pieces of metal, bits of wire, and dropped fasteners after a KC-46 delivery is disgusting. The MAX incidents are disgusting. They need an engineer back in charge who has a backbone and will hold the unions accountable for doing sub-par work. They need to hold QC accountable when these things occur. Most of all, there is no new ideas and they desperately need them. The cheapest way to do something is the right way, the first time.
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From what I can gather, this wasn’t a door per-se, but a plug for an optional emergency exit, which Alaskan Airlines decided to opt out of. That right there screams of profit over safety… if the design of the tube facilitates an extra emergency exit row, why would you choose not to take advantage of that?.. kind of like opting not to have an extra AoA vane. 
I have little respect for Boeing these days, what with the 737 MAX debacle and the way they went out of their way to destroy the Bombardier C-Series (thanks for saving what is by all accounts an excellent airplane Airbus)…. I’ll step off my soapbox now. 
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Uh huh. I also feel sorry for whoever was in that row… Apart from the trauma, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the ‘management’ at Alaskan were tempted to send them a message along the lines of “It appears that you were seated in an exit row afterall, so we are now going to have to bill you for the extra leg room”
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Extra leg room in the window seat would be equal or greater than infinity. That poor dude sat there will be buying alaska a new plane, not just a door 
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[devils_advocate] 
Why do we sometimes take off or land in tailwind, to save trackmiles, time and fuel? Aviation is full of tradeoffs and compromises. The number of exits is determined by the number of seats and the Max 9 comes in a tight pitch config that requires that extra exit. If you’re not going to utilize that config, why pay for the door and its added maintenance? [/devils_advocate]
In this particular case it seems that the entire frame, holding the door, broke loose.
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That seat will be hard to sell going forward. 
. Maybe have a special fare for skydivers if they bring their rig along and chose that row. Call it DB Cooper class.
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God can you imagine the moaning. Those poor flight attendants.
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I’m paying that 
I just read an update that said ‘it was lucky that no-one was sitting in that row’ - Lucky? Bloody understatement of the year
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Probably lucky they were only at 16K as well.
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I think that would have been the end of the max. If that had come off up at cruise and people died, Airlines would have to park them if they wanted to sell a seat again. Possibly all 737’s.
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That’s a stretch. But…
No question Boeing is in Big Trouble and should be. They’ve learned nothing it seems from the backlash over the Max murders. They were able to settle the lawsuits by throwing billions of dollars to save their image with no change in corporate leadership or structure. Alaska also has some ‘splainin’ to do. The pressurization warning is a big deal. Yet they dispatched repeatedly after resetting with non-ETOPS as the only restriction. Even if that is unrelated to the plug, it’s a problem.
However this plays out, it’s a crisis for airlines with big Max footprints. It is a problem for aviation at large as well. The world needs a legitimate competitor to Airbus. Maybe this could be China’s chance to make real inroads into the tough airliner market.
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Tye BBC are reporting that United have found loose bolts on at least 5 aircraft so far 
I don’t know. The knee jerk reaction last time about the max was visceral. People did not want to get on those jets. I hate to say this, but if American lives were lost, and the average person couldn’t tell the difference between a max and non-max aircraft, I think you would have seen the American public reject 737 travel. Maybe not all of them, but many of them. I think 737 heavy airlines like SWA and Alaska would have been hurting.
Massive issue! How do you, as PIC, decide to take a jet with pressurization issues? I don’t see how that’s not on the MMEL?
Agree
Oh, please don’t say that.
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Good choice for stainless (but has been replaced by 243) & if you didn’t need to get it undone easily there is always 263 
… However if they can’t get ‘proper’ lock nuts right I don’t think Loctite is the answer 
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