Bump by Baggage Cart Leads to Emergency Landing

The Alaska Airlines jet was parked at its gate when a baggage handler bumped his loading cart into the plane. Just a minor bump, he later told investigators; so minor, he said, he didn’t even tell anyone about it at the time.

And so the MD-80 twin-engine jet took off from Seattle Monday afternoon, bound for Burbank.

Twenty minutes into the sky, however, with a loud popping sound, that minor bump abruptly sheared into a 12-inch gash in the fuselage. The sudden, painful loss of pressure caused nearly all the 140 passengers on Flight 536 to tug at their ears, said Lisl Wright, a production assistant at “American Idol,” who was in seat 31F.

Oxygen masks dropped down, and there was a loud rushing noise that another passenger, Jeremy Hermanns, a marketing manager in 28D, likened to “a leaf blower in your ear.” The pilots launched into a sudden descent from 26,000 feet, returning to Seattle.

Though the incident ended with no injuries, and several passengers praised the professionalism of the pilots and flight attendants in handling the emergency, federal aviation officials said Wednesday that they were looking into the incident as a serious breach of safety.

Port of Seattle officials said the baggage handler involved, whose name had not been released, was facing possible hit-and-run charges for his failure to notify superiors about his scrape with the plane. He has been relieved of duty, at least temporarily.

The incident has also touched off renewed tensions between Seattle-based Alaska Airlines and its unions over the outsourcing of baggage-handling jobs.

The airline cut about 500 baggage and ramp-service employees this past spring, and, in a move it said would save $13 million a year, hired British-based Menzies Aviation to handle the job.

Alaska said at the time it was confident it could “continue moving Seattle customers’ bags reliably while reducing our operating costs significantly.”

Unions said the lower-paid, less-experienced contract workers would hurt operations, and in the first several weeks of the new arrangement, there were so many delayed flights and late deliveries to baggage claim that the airline issued a public apology.

“We’ve fallen far short of the high standard you should expect from us,” Bill Ayer, the company chairman and chief executive, said in a June 16 letter to frequent fliers, offering them 2,500 “bonus miles.”

Paul Emmert, an Alaska Airlines pilot who is vice chairman of the pilots union, said in a telephone interview that Monday’s incident “seems to point to a lack of training” of the ground crew and was very disturbing.

“Finding out what happened, why it happened, and, most importantly, how to keep it from happening ever again is paramount, as far as we’re concerned,” Emmert said.

Caroline Boren, an Alaska spokeswoman, said the airline and its baggage contractor were cooperating with the inquiry and strengthening safety procedures to prevent any recurrence.

“Menzies has a strong reputation for providing ramp services around the world, and it shares the same priority that we have for safety, both on the ground and in the air,” she said.

Quality assurance issues are particularly sensitive at Alaska.

Faulty maintenance involving lubrication of a tail section part was cited by federal investigators in the January 2000 crash of an MD-80 off the Southern California coast. Flight 261 crashed off Ventura County en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco. All 88 people on board were killed.

On Wednesday night, a spokeswoman for the baggage-handling company hired by Alaska at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport said it would not comment on any specifics of the investigation at this point. But, said Menzies spokeswoman Elizabeth Hanahan, the company was committed to “upholding the highest safety standards” and was thankful that all passengers and crew members returned safely.

The hole in the aircraft measured about 12 inches by 6 inches, and was near the forward cargo door, about 4 feet below the cabin windows.

The airliner was taken out of service for repairs, and passengers transferred to a replacement plane, a Boeing 737, which flew without incident to Burbank.

Wright, the passenger who works for “American Idol,” was returning to San Gabriel from a visit with her mother in Seattle. Wright said she did not think anyone on the original flight declined to get aboard the new one.

“People were shaken up, but not to the point where they refused to fly,” she said. “People have to get to where they’re going.”

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Times researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this report.