Jakarta –
Travelers who board airplanes will always be reminded by cabin crew to always wear a seat belt. The reason makes perfect sense if you remember this incident.
Citing NDTVWednesday (6/3/2024), this is the miraculous story of how a plane in the United States was able to land safely after losing part of its roof in the middle of the flight.
The miraculous story of how Aloha Airlines flight 243 landed safely despite losing part of its roof is one of the most extraordinary and shocking moments in aviation history.
On April 28, 1988, most of the roof of an Aloha Airlines jetliner between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii, carrying 89 passengers and six crew members detached and peeled off in mid-flight.
What happened next was an incredible horror and a moment that changed the aviation industry forever.
According to the Washington Post, the 110-seat twin-engine Boeing 737-200 jet had only been flying for 40 minutes when it suddenly lost cabin pressure.
The ceiling of the Boeing 737 was torn off, and most of the fuselage followed, exposing passengers to extreme winds at 24,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.
Disaster struck when flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing, who was serving passengers, was sucked through the hole. The crew and other passengers screamed in terror and were convinced that the plane “would fall apart before the pilot could land the plane.
It seemed unthinkable, but the pilot managed to steer the damaged plane down from a height of 24,000 feet and land with the engine burning at Kahului Airport.
The captain took over control from the first officer and initiated an emergency landing on Maui, and successfully landed there thirteen minutes after the incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Emergency crews on the ground couldn’t believe what they saw as the damaged plane approached.
Seat belts are a lifesaver
Miraculously, everyone on board the plane survived the incident. Of the 95 people on board the plane, one person died and eight people suffered serious injuries.
The flight attendant was the only fatality, with all passengers seated and wearing seat belts at the time. Lansing’s body was never found.
According to a report by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the plane experienced ‘explosive decompression and structural failure’ which also caused the left engine to fail.
The Federal Aviation Administration also stated that a passenger noticed a crack in the fuselage while boarding the plane, but he did not notify the crew before takeoff.
“Suddenly, I heard a loud sound, a bang, but not an explosion, and felt a strong change in pressure. I looked forward and saw the top left front of the plane destroyed, smashed to pieces, pieces flying. It started with a hole about a meter wide, and it just kept coming apart,” passenger Eric Becklin, who was sitting in the back of the plane, told The Washington Post.
Watch the video “Seconds of the plane crash that killed the pilot in Chile”
(msl/fem)
2024-03-06 13:31:10
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