A 15-year-old Alaska Airlines passenger who was seated closest to a door plug that came loose mid-flight, sucked the shirt right off his back, fled to a different aisle and took a selfie with a stranger after the “unbelievable” ordeal.
The teenager, named Jack, was likely saved by the seat belt he was wearing as he sat in the same row as the plug flying the Boeing plane at 16,000 feet, another passenger in the selfie, Kelly Bartlett, told a local outlet.
Missing door plugs left gaping holes in the sides of the plane, causing the interior to quickly become stressed.
Barlett was sitting three rows in front of Jack when he heard a loud explosion and saw an oxygen mask fall in front of him as the cabin filled with gusts of wind, he told KGW8.
Then the shirtless teenage boy jumped into the empty seat next to him.
“I heard a commotion, I don’t know what happened,” he told a local station. “You’re taking your mask off and you’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. It was panic-inducing, it was very stressful.”
The teenager named Jack may have been saved by the seat belt he was wearing during the mid-air chaos. Kelly Bartlett
“And in the middle of all this, somebody jumped on top of me and dropped down in the middle seat and grabbed the mask and put it on.”
Stunned and confused as to where he had come from, Bartlett noticed his chest was red and blotchy.
But the wind blowing into the cabin made it too loud to hear each other talking so Barlett pulled out her phone and typed a message into her notes app.
Then the shirtless teenager jumped into the empty seat next to Kelly Bartlett after the terrifying incident. KATU
“Are you hurt?” he wrote and then handed the phone to the teenager.
“arms are abit [sic] unbelievably scratched my name is Jack brw [sic] thank you for your kindness,” he typed back in the same note, according to a screenshot obtained by KGW8.
Jack said he was sitting in the middle seat, a distance from the part of the plane that exploded. A sudden drop in pressure sucked the shirt off his back and out through a large hole into the dark sky along with his phone and laptop.
Stunned and confused as to where he had come from, Bartlett noticed his chest was red and blotchy. Kelly Bartlett Jack had asked Bartlett for a selfie as they sat side by side. Kelly Bartlett
He was tied up and his mother, who was sitting in the aisle seat next to him, restrained him, according to the station. His mother was also moved to a new seat but in a different row.
“I wasn’t in that line and I was so scared when we heard the boom and the mask fell off – it was just scary, so I can’t imagine what he or his mother went through,” Bartlett said.
The California-bound plane, which was carrying 171 passengers and six crew, had to return to Portland International Airport where it landed safely. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.
When the plane landed, the passengers clapped and cheered for the pilot and flight crew who brought them back to the ground safely.
The California-bound flight was carrying 171 passengers and six crew members at the time of the incident. Getty Images
Jack asks Bartlett for a selfie.
“She said, ‘Let’s take a selfie,’ and as a mom, I don’t think of it as a selfie moment, but as a 15-year-old, that’s her perspective. He just went through something unbelievable, is the word he used,” Bartlett told KATU2.
The boy was reunited with his mother after landing.
Despite the scary experience, Bartlett said she felt lucky.
“People say if we were at a higher elevation, it could have been worse,” he told KGW8. “And it still could have been worse if Jack hadn’t been wearing a seat belt or something. So I feel very lucky that it happened the way it did.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
