Alaska Airlines flight plane door: It's so much more horrifying than I thought.

Generally speaking, aviation manufacturers want to avoid situations where they must explain why a door in one of their planes imploded in the middle of a flight. Last Friday, on an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, the sheet-metal door plug covering the emergency exit on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off at around 16,000 feet, landing in the Arcadian backyard of an unlucky Oregonian far below, leaving a massive, human-sized hole in the middle of the cabin. Here’s United, who grounded all of its 737 Max 9s, reporting the results of its investigation, per NBC: “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug—for example, bolts that needed additional tightening. Al Jazeera reports that “warning lights triggered” on three separate Alaska Max 9 flights, which—to be clear—is an aircraft’s safety system announcing, in no uncertain terms, that it’s about to be rocked by a destabilizing blowout. It was terrifying, and absolutely criminal on Boeing’s part, but at least it reeked of some sinister sci-fi stuff—a vengeful A.I., of the SkyNet variety, eliminating humanity one fuselage at a time.