In the aftermath of last week’s Alaska Airlines in-flight emergency, some aviation experts are questioning the structural design of the section of the Boeing 737 Max 9 that blew off the plane.

On that January 5 flight, a “door plug” – a portion of the plane’s fuselage the manufacturer can put in place instead of an emergency exit door – detached from the plane and was later discovered in an Oregon backyard.

In interviews with CNN, some experts argued that if that door plug were designed to be larger than the opening it covers and installed inside the plane, the force of the pressurized air in the passenger cabin would force the plug against the plane’s interior frame and a situation such as the one on the Alaska Airlines flight could have been avoided. However, such a design could have added costs and practical disadvantages, some said.

“It doesn’t make sense to me why they would do it that way and not have it installed from the inside, where it literally cannot come out unless there is a structural failure in the airframe,” said David Soucie, a former FAA safety inspector and CNN analyst. “Historically, since we have had pressurized airplanes, emergency exits are designed to come inward… so why would they have not done the same thing with this plug?”

Soucie said the design of the door plug on the Max 9 may provide some advantages, such as making the plane more readily accessible for maintenance.

Robert Ditchey, an aviation consultant, agreed that if the plug were designed to be larger than the hole in the fuselage and installed inside the cabin, this incident likely would not have happened.

“It should have been installed from the inside to the outside, not the other way around,” Ditchey said of the plug, adding that the exterior installation raises the prospect that the bolts used to secure the plug could have failed.

“You could have missing bolts,” he said. “They could have had the wrong bolts, or they could have over-torqued the bolts thereby breaking them, or not torqued them enough.”

John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that while a different design could theoretically prevent a problem like this from happening, he described this design as adequate so long as proper installation and quality controls are followed.

“Could you design a plug door for this airplane that would prevent it from going out, the answer is yes you could. It just is going to cost you money and time,” he said. “Was this design adequate is the real question, and if it was installed properly, we wouldn’t be talking about it.”