Boeing Facing $10M Lawsuit After Plane Lost Door Plug Mid-Flight

On January 5th, 2024, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282's pilot made an emergency landing just 30 minutes after taking off when an emergency exit opened due to a faulty door plug while the plane was at an altitude of 16,000 feet. All the passengers survived, although some had minor injuries from the incident. However, instead of being seen as a hero for landing the plane in an emergency, Captain Brandon Fisher was allegedly blamed for the incident by The Boeing Company. In response, Fisher filed a lawsuit on December 30th, 2025 against the aircraft manufacturer, seeking $10 million for negligence for the lost door plug, emotional distress, defamation, and more. 

"Unbeknownst to Captain Brandon Fisher, who was the pilot in command, or any of the passengers onboard, the defendants' negligence and systemic failures resulted in the creation of an unsafe aircraft not fit for flight, culminating in the horrific decompression event shortly after takeoff," the suit read (via The Hill). "Boeing's comments dramatically exacerbated the life-changing impacts that this incident caused Captain Fisher."

After Fisher filed his lawsuit, accusing Boeing of making him the scapegoat for its "numerous failures," the National Transportation Safety Board investigated Boeing for 17 months. The NTSB found that the bolts used to hold the door plug in place had been removed — or never installed to begin with. According to the investigation, the fuselage arrived from Spirit AeroSystems with damaged rivets, causing Boeing workers to remove the plug to repair them. Those workers subsequently forgot to put the bolts back in place and then didn't properly document what happened, which meant the parts weren't inspected. It's been determined by the NTSB that Boeing is largely at fault. 

"The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA," NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. "This time it was missing bolts securing the door plug, but the same safety deficiencies that led to this accident could just have easily led to other manufacturing quality escapes and other accidents."

A door plug is used to fill the hole in the Boeing 737 Max 9's fuselage when it's not being used as an additional emergency exit on planes with under 200 passengers. The door plug is held in place with four bolts, but in the case of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, those bolts were missing. After this incident, the safety of door plugs is in question, although Boeing never had an issue with this design for the decade it was implemented — until now. As a result of the incident, Boeing's President and CEO Dave Calhoun stepped down from his role and over 100 flights were canceled. For now, Alaska Airlines remains a reliable airline to use in North America.