Alaska Airlines flight attendants feared passengers could be sucked out of the plane in the chaos that followed a mid-air panel rupture on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet on Jan. 5, according to shocking testimony released Tuesday by safety experts.
The comments, gleaned from interviews with unnamed crew members, are part of thousands of pages of evidence made public ahead of two days of public hearings into the accident by the National Transportation Safety Board, which began early Tuesday.
The footage depicts the dramatic events as flight attendants struggled to help passengers and contact the pilot when a panel blew off the jet at 16,000 feet after taking off from Portland, Oregon.
“We told them there was a hole in the back of the plane and that the passengers were definitely dead,” one flight attendant with about 20 years of experience said after spotting the hole in the plane and finding five empty seats.
The flight attendant expressed concern for a child sitting alone at the back of the plane: “He was sitting there and he was too small to reach the mask and all I could think was he was very scared.”
The NTSB is investigating the 737’s production and the Federal Aviation Administration’s inspection and oversight, and aims to make recommendations to prevent future recurrences. The incident has morphed into a full-blown financial and reputational crisis for manufacturer Boeing.
Flight attendants, who were not authorized to speak publicly immediately after the accident, described hearing a loud explosion, the sound of wind blowing and oxygen masks getting tangled.
“I think I said (without thinking), ‘There’s a hole and passengers may have been killed.’ After that, we seemed to lose contact, so we tried calling back, we tried yelling at them but we couldn’t hear anything,” said the second flight attendant, who has nearly 10 years of experience.
“Probably the scariest thing was not having proper communication with the people in the cockpit. At first we didn’t know if the depressurization was happening up front or if the pilot was there, and we didn’t have good communication with the rear,” the flight attendant said.
Flight attendants described damage to the plane and injured passengers, including a shirtless teenager with redness in his face and neck. The impact of the decompression had completely ripped one chair off of its leather covering, fabric stuffing, upholstery, and headrest tray table.
The second flight attendant said the pilot eventually informed them the plane was landing and “we knew it was OK.”
