A harrowing account has been revealed from a passenger on an Alaska Airlines plane who lost his door plug during the flight. One woman sent what may be her last message to her parents. She doesn't want to die. ”
Emma Vu was sleeping in seat 18B on Flight 1282 when part of the Boeing 737-9 MAX, carrying 171 passengers and six crew members, was blown off at about 16,000 feet, leaving a large hole. Then, it suddenly fell.
“The mask is down. I'm so scared right now,” Vu posted a message to her parents. TikTok videosShe is seen wearing an oxygen mask during the ordeal on a flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California on Friday.
“Please pray for me. Please, I don't want to die,” she wrote.
Vu told CNN It was “so scary” and “so surreal.”
“I woke up to the sound of a plane falling. My mask was falling, so I knew it wasn't just turbulence. That's when the panic definitely started,” she recalled.
“I thought it would never happen to me, but it literally happened to me.”
She said she would like to thank the passengers who were nearby and the flight attendants who tried to calm her down.
“I am very grateful to the two women who were sitting on either side of me,” Vu told the press. “They rubbed my back and comforted me.”
In another post, Vu further explained how the tragic events unfolded.
“I fell asleep and I was probably 20 minutes away from takeoff when the whole plane fell, the masks fell off, and I felt people screaming in a vulnerable moment,” she says.
Vu said flight attendants were handing out oxygen cylinders to passengers who needed them.
“I panicked because the bag wouldn't inflate, but that's literally what the safety measures say. Don't worry, there's airflow, but when you're[fighting or running away]I didn't think about it.'' … It was really scary,'' she said in the video.
“The pilot came in and told everyone to put on their masks before helping others, literally word for word what we had heard at the safety briefing. It was really surreal.” said Vu.
She told CNN that the airline sent an email apologizing to the passenger and promised to refund the cost of the ticket and pay an additional $1,500 “in case of any inconvenience.”
“All I got was free snacks and a covered flight with extra legroom,” Vu said in the video, adding that Alaska Airlines should cover the cost of her treatment.
“I don't know, but I feel like a refundable ticket with more legroom and free water and snacks is not enough,” she added.
Meanwhile, another passenger also said he feared the plane would crash.
“I literally thought I was going to die,” said Sreithoa Ng, who was on the plane with her 12-year-old son, Josiah McCall. told the Wall Street Journal.
Josiah said he saw his cell phone and a teddy bear his Cambodian grandmother gave him fly out of the hole.
The boy held his mother's hand, but was unable to speak to her because the cabin was filled with freezing air and she was wearing an oxygen mask, the report said.
“I declared a state of emergency,” the pilot said, according to a recording posted by LiveATC.net. “We're losing pressure. We have to go back.”
Another passenger, Christopher Hickman, 44, said he heard a woman scream, “My son's shirt was torn off!”
He told the Wall Street Journal that people thought a window had fallen off the plane.
“Can I hold your hand?” a woman sitting next to Hickman asked him. He held the hands of his lady and her mother Teresa.
“At that time, we were all just trying to comfort each other,” Hickman told the Journal.
Evan Granger, passenger sitting in the exit row seat on the 16th floor. told NBC News He heard a “loud thud” followed by “a gust of wind coming in” into the cabin.
“I didn't want to turn around to see what was going on,” he said. “My focus at that time was just to breathe into the oxygen mask and trust that the crew was doing everything they could to keep us safe.”
“There are a lot of things that had to go right for us all to survive,” Granger said, adding that she was “very grateful” the plane landed safely.
Passenger Elizabeth Lu also said she heard a loud noise.
“Suddenly I heard what sounded like a loud explosion and I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I looked up and saw an oxygen mask hanging from the ceiling.” Lee told news outlet OC Hawk:.
“And then I looked to the left and there was a big chunk that looked like part of the plane was missing,” she said, adding that the passengers remained in their seats and kept their seatbelts on.
“The wind was so loud I couldn't think straight,” Lee said. There's a gaping hole. I could see the city, the stars, and everything else outside the window. It was crazy. ”
The fallen door plug was found in a Portland school teacher's backyard, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
“I'm so glad Bob found this,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who released only the teacher's last name. “We’re going to pick it up and we’re definitely going to start analyzing it.
Homendy also said on Sunday that the plane had not been used on flights to Hawaii because warning lights had come on on three previous flights, which could indicate a pressurization problem.
She said Alaska Airlines had restricted the plane from flying for long periods over water so the plane could “return to the airport very quickly” if the warning lights went out, but the pressurized lights and Friday It warned that there is currently no known link between the disaster and the disaster.
“We recognize how tragic this incident was and thank you and our crew for everyone's calm and patience throughout this experience. “We will thoroughly investigate this incident and work with relevant authorities to understand what happened,” the airline said in an email following the Flight 1282 incident.
