A 15-year-old Alaska Airlines passenger who was sitting closest to a door plug that flew off during the flight inhaled the shirt on his back, fled to another aisle and took a selfie with a strange man after an “unbelievable” ordeal. took.
A teenage boy named Jack, who was sitting in the same row as the plug that flew off the Boeing plane at an altitude of 16,000 feet, likely survived because he was wearing a seatbelt. Kelly Bartlett, another passenger in the photo, told local media.
The missing door plug created a large hole in the side of the plane, causing the cabin to rapidly depressurize.
Barrett was sitting three rows in front of Jack when he heard a loud bang and saw an oxygen mask drop in front of him as a gust of wind filled the cabin. I told KGW8.
Then a shirtless teenage boy jumped into the empty seat next to her.
“I heard the chaos, but I didn't know what was going on,” she told a local station. “You pick up your mask and you're just trying to figure out what's going on. It causes panic and it's really stressful.”
“And in the middle of all this, someone jumped over me and collapsed into the middle seat, grabbed a mask and put it on.”
Stunned and confused as to where he came from, Bartlet notices that his chest is stained red.
But the wind blowing through the plane was too loud to hear each other, so Barrett pulled out her phone and typed a message into a notes app.
“Are you hurt?” she wrote, handing the teen the phone.
“My arm is a little [sic] Incredibly Hurt, My Name is Jack Brew [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 one seat away from the part of the plane that was blown away. The sudden decompression sucked my shirt off my back and sucked me along with my phone and laptop through a gaping hole into the dark sky.
According to police, the man was buckled and his mother, who was sitting in the aisle seat next to him, held him down. His mother was also moved to a new seat in another row.
“I wasn't in that line, so when I heard that thud and the mask fell off, I was so scared. That alone was scary and I couldn't imagine what he and his mother were going through. I can’t,” Bartlett said.
The California-bound plane, carrying 171 passengers and six crew members, was forced to return to Portland International Airport and landed safely. Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.
When the plane landed, passengers applauded and praised the pilot and crew for getting the plane back to the ground safely.
Jack asked Bartlet to take a selfie.
“He said, 'Let's take a selfie.' As a mother, I didn't think of it as a selfie moment, but as a 15-year-old, it was his perspective. He was incredible. The words he used were that he had just experienced a he told KATU2.
The boy was reunited with his mother after the touchdown.
Despite the terrifying experience, Bartlett said she felt lucky.
“People were saying that if we had been at a higher altitude, it could have been a lot worse,” she told KGW8. “If Jack hadn't been wearing a seatbelt or something, it could have been much worse. So I think we were really lucky that something like this happened.”
