Woman on board flight that lost part mid-air shares terrifying footage still in sky
A woman onboard the plane that had a part ripped away mid-flight has shared footage from onboard the flight.
You may have heard about the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that was forced to make an emergency landing after part of the fuselage and a window were blown out shortly after take-off.
The flight took off from Portland, Oregon on 5 January at around 5pm local time and was heading for Ontario, California, when disaster struck.
Advert
After reaching around 16,000ft a deactivated emergency door - that was serving as a window - blew out causing a large hole to appear and depressurising the cabin.
As anyone who has ever listened to the inflight safety demonstration will know, oxygen masks dropped down from above the seats so passengers were able to breathe normally.
Due to the fact it now had a pretty large hole in the side, the flight had to turn around and make an emergency landing at Portland 20 minutes after it had taken off.
Thankfully, none of the 177 passengers and crew onboard were hurt in the chaos and in total, 171 Boeing 737 Max 9s were grounded for safety checks after the near-catastrophe.
Alaska Airlines said in its most recent statement: "While we await the airworthiness directive (AD) inspection criteria from the FAA and Boeing, our maintenance teams are prepared and ready to perform the required inspections of the mid exit door plugs on our 737-9 Max fleet.
"The 737-9 Max grounding has significantly impacted our operation. We have cancelled 170 Sunday flights and 60 cancellations for Monday, with more expected."
Boeing also said it was aware of the incident and is 'working to gather more information'.
And one passenger took to TikTok to share footage from inside the plane when the incident was ongoing - looking incredibly calm while doing so.
Vi Nguyen - or @vee_wins as she’s known on TikTok - shared a clip with the caption: “POV: Woke up from your plane thinking it was turbulence… turns out the wall of the plane flew off while in the air.”
In a comment, Nguyen said that it took about ‘20 minutes’ for the plane to land safely back on the ground.
The clip has since gone viral, picking up more than 20 million views and attracting hundreds of comments, with many people remarking on the same thing: the calmness of the passengers.
One person said: “I would be crying, throwing up, screaming! Everyone is so calm, the way my anxiety is set up I couldn’t handle that.”
A second asked: “How is everyone so calm ?”
While someone else wrote: “The way I would never fly again. Y’all are too calm for me.”
Claire Reid