Credits: Social Media
Guy on board Alaska Airlines plane which ripped open mid-air says it was ‘scary as hell’
An Alaska Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing on Friday (January 5) after a piece of a plane’s wall detached mid-air.
Kyle Rinker was on board the flight from Oregon to California and said the whole experience was “scary as hell” but thankfully no one was injured.
Alaska Airlines plane breaks mid-air
The Boeing 737 was around 20 minutes into the flight and had reached 16,000 feet when an entire section of the plane’s side completely ripped off.
Photos and videos show a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft, with the whole window and side panel nowhere to be seen.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was carrying 174 passengers and 6 crew members and landed safely at Portland International Airport.
It’s not clear how the incident occurred, but the airline has temporarily grounded its 65 planes for safety checks.
“Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections,” Alaska Airlines’ CEO Ben Minicucci said.
Boeing has also said it is aware of the incident and “working to gather more information” with a technical team “ready to support the investigation”.
Passenger says it was ‘scary as hell’
Kyle Rinker was on board the flight from hell and shared a picture of the broken plane on Twitter/X which has gone viral.
“When the wall of the plane just breaks off mid flight,” he wrote in the caption of the post which had had a staggering 30 million views.
In the comments, the passenger wrote “It was crazy!! Its a brand new plane too” before adding: “Dude I was right across from it, it was scary as hell.”
He also revealed that nobody was sucked out of the plane, but people in the rows surrounding it did lose their belongings.
Rinker explained that it was really cold when the wall detached and thanked the aircraft’s “wonderful pilots”.
Two passengers missed their flight
The passenger went on to claim that the two people who were supposed to be sitting by the door missed their flight.
“Two people missed the plane that were supposed to sit right there. Talk about being blessed they missed it,” he wrote.
Someone commented: “Missing your flight to hear something like this is crazy.”
“The people who missed their flight are among the most blessed on Earth,” said another.
A third person added: “Bet they were not happy about missing their flight at first. Then this.”
Another passenger called Elizabeth told NBC: “Everything was going fine until we just heard like a loud bang! Or like a boom. And I look up, and the air masks are, like, out, popped down.”
“And I looked to my left, and theres just this huge gaping hole, on the left side where the window is,” she continued.
This is the third Boeing 737 incident in six years. In October 2018, a Lion Air flight from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang crashed, killing all 189 passengers.
Less than six months later,�157 people were killed on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.
Both crashes prompted a two-year�worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX as its safety was investigated.
