Harrowing accounts have emerged from passengers on an Alaska Airlines plane who lost their door plugs mid-flight – including a woman who sent her last message to her parents, reading: “Please pray for me. I don’t want to die.”
Emma Vu was sleeping in seat 18B aboard Flight 1282 when the Boeing 737-9 MAX with 171 passengers and six crew members suddenly plummeted after a chunk of its fuselage blew off at about 16,000 feet and left a gaping hole.
“The mask has come down. I’m so scared right now,” Vu wrote to his parents in a text he sent in a TikTok video, in which he was seen wearing an oxygen mask during the ordeal on Friday on a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
“Please pray for me. Please I don’t want to die,” he wrote.
Vu told CNN it was “very scary” and “very real.”
“I woke up when the plane had just gone down and I knew it wasn’t just normal turbulence because the mask had fallen, and that’s when the panic definitely set in,” he said.
“You just think it’s never going to happen to you – and then it really does to me.”
Emma Vu, a passenger on an Alaska Airlines plane who lost her door plug mid-flight, texted her parents saying she didn’t want to die. TikTok / @shwimshady
He said he wanted to thank the passengers near him and a flight attendant for trying to calm him down.
“I am very grateful to the two women sitting next to me,” Vu told the news outlet. “They rub my back, give me comfort.”
In another post, Vu further explained how the horrific event happened.
“I fell asleep and then we were maybe 20 minutes into the air and I think the whole plane was falling and the masks were falling and people were screaming in the open,” he said.
“Please pray for me. Please I don’t want to die,” wrote Vu. TikTok / @shwimshady
Vu said the flight attendants were distributing oxygen tanks to passengers who needed them.
“I was nervous because my bag wouldn’t inflate and that’s what they tell you in safety — like don’t worry you still get airflow, but (during) fight or flight you don’t think about it … it’s very scary,” he said in the video.
“The pilot comes and tells everyone to put your mask on before you help anyone else, like word for word what you hear in the safety briefing. It was so real,” said Vu.
He told CNN that the airline had emailed passengers an apology and promised to refund the cost of the ticket while offering an additional $1,500 for “any inconvenience.”
“All I got was a free snack and a paid flight with more legroom,” Vu said in his video, adding that Alaska Airlines had to pay for the therapy.
“I don’t know, I just feel like paying back the flight with more legroom and free water and snacks isn’t enough,” she added.
Meanwhile, another passenger also said he was afraid the plane would crash.
The Boeing plane was not used for the flight to Hawaii after warning lights that may indicate a pressure problem came on on three separate trips, federal officials revealed Sunday. Instagram/@strawberrvy via REUTE
“We really thought we were going to die,” Sreysoar Un, who was on the flight with his 12-year-old son Josiah McCaul, told the Wall Street Journal.
Josiah said he looked at his phone and the teddy bear his Cambodian grandmother had given him to fly him out of the hole, which was a row ahead of them.
The boys held their mother’s hand but were unable to speak to her because they were wearing oxygen masks as the cabin was engulfed in freezing air, according to the news outlet.
“We are declaring an emergency,” the pilot said, according to footage posted by LiveATC.net. “We are stressed. We have to go back.”
Another passenger, Christopher Hickman, 44, said he heard a woman scream: “My son’s shirt is off!”
All Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft used by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines have been grounded following the incident. AP
He told the Wall Street Journal that people thought the window had fallen from the plane.
“Is it okay if I hold your hand?” a woman sitting next to Hickman asked him. He grasped the woman’s hand and the hand of his mother, Teresa.
“We were just trying to cheer each other up at that point,” Hickman told the Journal.
Evan Granger, a passenger sitting in exit row seat 16F, told NBC News he heard a “loud boom” followed by a “gust of wind” into the cabin.
“I don’t want to look back to see what happened,” he said. “My focus at the time was just breathing into the oxygen mask and trusting that the flight crew would do everything they could to keep us safe.”
Granger said that “there were so many things that had to be done right for us all to survive,” adding that he was “very grateful” the plane landed safely.
Passenger Elizabeth Le also described hearing the loud noise.
“All of a sudden I heard a big bang and I don’t know what happened, but I looked up and an oxygen mask was hanging from the ceiling,” Le told the OC Hawk news channel.
Passengers described chaos as a dislodged door plug left a gaping hole in the side of the plane. AP
“And then I looked to my left and there was this big part, part of the plane that was missing,” he said, adding that passengers remained in their seats and were wearing seat belts.
“I can’t think properly because of the strong wind,” said Le. There is a gaping hole. You can see the city and the stars and everything outside the window. It’s crazy.”
A fallen door plug was found by a Portland school teacher in her backyard, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy speaks at a news conference in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. AP
“We’re very happy that Bob found this,” said NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy, who would release only the teacher’s last name. “We’re going to go get it and make sure we start analyzing it.
Homendy also revealed Sunday that the plane was not used for the flight to Hawaii after warning lights that may indicate a pressure problem came on on three previous flights.
Alaska Airlines limits planes from long flights over water so the plane “can quickly return to the airport” if the warning lights go out, he said, but cautioned there is no known link so far between the pressurized lights and Friday’s near disaster. .
“We realize how sad this incident is and we thank you and our crew for everyone’s calm and patience throughout this experience. We will fully investigate this incident and work with the relevant authorities to understand what happened,” the airline said in an email after the Flight 1282 incident.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
