Many passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight already started writing their last messages to their loved ones when the plane started to make an emergency landing.
Fear of death and the terror of escape were briefly present when a wall panel ripped off an Alaska Airlines plane shortly after takeoff. The plane made an emergency landing in Portland, USA on Friday evening local time.
Air passengers interviewed by the US media say that they have already prepared to send their last messages to their relatives.
“I glanced to the left and saw a gaping hole in the plane's wall,” says someone on the flight Vi Nguyen newspaper For The New York Times.
“My first thought was that I must be dying now.”
Air passengers noticed the loud noise caused by the panel coming off.
Soon after, the oxygen masks dropped right in front of them. It was an obvious sign that something serious had happened.
“I texted my mom and my boyfriend to tell them something was going on and I was scared. I told them I love them,” says the person on his way home to California Stephanie King news channel for CNN.
The economic newspaper worked in the same way Bloomberg's interviewed Nicholas Hoch.
“I started writing text messages to my loved ones.”
In the video below, Alaska Airlines staff talk to air traffic control. The crew says the plane has lost pressurization and is trying to return to Portland. The source of the audio recording published by Reuters is LiveATC.net.
Strong the air flow swept through the cabin, Hoch describes the situation to Bloomberg. Ilmavirta took his hat with it and tore the t-shirt off one teenage boy, he says.
King says he saw the same. He says that the boy's mother shouted “my son, my son”.
“It was a completely surreal situation.”
Fortunately, none of the passengers were sitting in the exact part of the plane where the panel popped off.
passengers the memories of the emergency differ to some extent from each other.
For example, Hoch does not remember that the flight captain of the plane had once during the entire time informed what had actually happened and whether the passengers were in immediate danger.
King, on the other hand, remembers that the cabin crew informed about the situation.
“However, because of the torn wall, there was so much noise on the plane that the passengers could hardly hear properly what the staff was trying to tell them.”
According to Reuters and the Flightradar 24 service, which monitors air traffic, the Alaska Airlines plane, despite the damage, managed to land safely back in Portland about 20 minutes after takeoff.
King estimates that the emergency was over in about ten minutes. However, the emergency landing seemed like an “eternity” to him.
“People had enough time to panic. Anything could have happened.”
Alaska Airlines the plane was a Boeing 737 Max 9. It is the latest version of the twin-engine, single-aisle 737 plane from the aircraft manufacturer Boeing.
The aircraft model in question is common on US domestic flights. The model was introduced in May 2017.
The reputation of Boeing's 737 Max aircraft took a significant hit in the late 2010s. In 2018 and 2019, two Max 8 planes were involved in two disastrous plane accidents. 189 people were killed in the crash in Indonesia and 157 in the crash of the Ethiopian plane.
As a result of the crashes, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), for example, banned the operation of Boeing 737 Max aircraft in Europe. In March 2019, the decision to suspend the operation of the Max 8 and Max 9 aircraft models also concerned Finland.
Max machines were banned from operating in Europe for almost a couple of years. The aircraft models returned to service after Boeing made changes to its automatic flight control system.
British newspaper of The Guardian according to no EU member state airline currently uses 737 Max 9 planes. In Europe, only the Icelandi
c company Icelandair uses Max 9 planes on its international flights.
The national airline of Turkey, Turkish Airlines, on the other hand, said on Saturday that it had temporarily suspended the operation of all Boeing 737 Max 9 model aircraft.
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