Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

Today I'm tackling the question of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.

This took off from beautiful Portland, Oregon on Friday night, destination Ontario, California,

one of many airports serving the Los Angeles area,

nothing to do with Canada. It was aboard a Boeing 737 Max 9. And just to give you a clue about what

these are, the standard size, bear in mind that Ryanair wasn't involved, but it's a good example.

The standard size Ryan Airplane is a Boeing 737-800 or a Boeing 737 Max 8.

And they both hold, well, the 800 holds 189 passengers, the Max 8 holds 197. The max 9 is bigger than that.

It's slightly larger and can get probably 20 people in more comfortably. In fact, what the

airlines do it and the main airlines using it are Alaska Airlines United of the US and the only kind of

European Airlines, Turkish and Icelandair. They have it for fewer people. Therefore, the interesting

mid-cabin exit isn't an exit. You've got the fuselage, of course you've got an entrance at the, exit at the front, an exit. You've got the fuselage, of course, you've got an entrance at the, an exit at the

front, an exit at the back, and overwing exits as well. But on this aircraft, you've also got

the possibility of having a mid-cabin exit. Now, that isn't used for Alaska Airlines or the other airlines

that I'm talking about, basically because they keep the numbers of passengers down low enough

so you don't need it. But Boeing, as a kind of sales feature, I thought, okay, well, what are we

going to do to enhance things for our lovely customers? I know, let's allow

them to put one in without having to rip the whole fuselage apart. So we're basically going to put in a door plug, which is a panel and a window in the middle.

And people won't notice, they'll just think it's an ordinary window, but in fact, if you ever

want to adapt it so that you can have high density, then you will be able to do so. What could

possibly go wrong? Well, on Friday night, at just over 16,000 feet, so higher than the summit

of Mont Blanc, everyone on board that flight, 177 passengers and glue found

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