‘I thought I was going to die’ woman reveals what really happened during Alaska Airways flight when the door flew off
A WOMAN who was on the Alaska Airways aeroplane that the door flew off mid-flight has revealed what actually happened among passengers on the aircraft.
Courtney was on Flight 1282 on January 5, 2024 traveling from Oregon to California when a hole tore through the fuselage of the Boeing 737-9 MAX aircraft at 16,000 feet altitude.
The terrifying scene saw people's phones ripped from their hands and sucked through the large hole in the aircraft.
While no-one was hurt in the shocking incident - largely because there was no-one sitting next to the door when it flung off - Courtney revealed in a video on her TikTok page that she thought she was going to die after hearing the "loud bang" around 10 minutes into the flight.
"If I look really tired to you, it's because I absolutely am," she said.
"I have not slept in, like 24 hours because my mind is too awake. I still can't believe this even happened to me.
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"But here's what happened from my point of view.
"Thankfully, I was towards the front of the plane, and where the whole incident happened was in the back of the plane.
"But, about 10 minutes into takeoff, we were, we're not cruising altitude yet. We were all still in full takeoff mode. Seatbelts on, no one was trying to get up or anything, thank goodness.
"But it was at this time that we all heard a loud bang. Like, a really loud bang, a jolt and a whoosh of air that came back at us really quickly."
The oxygen masks then fell down from overhead, with Courtney and her fellow passengers immediately putting them on without even being told to do so by the flight attendant.
"We had no idea what had happened yet,"Courtney continued.
"My mind is still thinking, maybe this is a joke, but my body is like, put that over my head, tighten the straps, look around for children, see if anybody needs help.
"You know, we've seen movies, we have had those safety precautions, like, drilled into us.
"I very quickly realise that something is terribly wrong. I can, like, feel it.
"I can just feel the vibe of the plane."
While she could hear "commotion" going on behind her, Courtney tried to see what was happening, but couldn't see through the oxygen masks and all the wires that were hanging down.
"I am so grateful I was not in the back of the plane, where people could potentially be sucked out of the door and their stuff, like, was getting sucked out," she added.
"Like, anybody who had a phone in their hand, gone immediately.
"But because we were in the front of the plane, it was worse in the sense that we had no idea what was going on.
"I truly thought it was the engine. I thought an engine had blown out, a wing had gone down.
"Like, that's how loud and, like, jolting that, like, second was that. I thought we were going to nose dive that any second.
"I thought every second that went on, we were gonna start nose diving, like those planes that went down a few years ago."
At that point, Courtney started to think about what would happen to her loved ones if she lost her life on the plane.
"I just kept thinking, what was this gonna do to my family if I didn't make it, to my mum and my sister?" she said.
"I just was like, my mum's never gonna, like, recover from this. Will they ever get over this? If this is, like, how I go?
"I tried to just breathe. Like, breathe four seconds in,breathe four seconds out.
"I was looking out the window, just. Just waiting just like, hoping with every second that we got closer to the ground that we would be OK."
There was no information from the pilots, but Courtney insisted she was "totally fine" with them just concentrating on their job.
Even the fight attendants said that while they were aware there was something wrong, the pilots hadn't given them "any indication of what's going on yet".
At that point, Courtney felt the plane starting to turn around.
"We hadn't gotten that far away from the airport, so I was assuming we went back," she explained.
"But my mind was also, no surprise, in full panic mode. So I'm also like, where are we?
"Are we gonna emergency land? Do we have time to make it to an airport?
"I have no idea."
They start descending, "as smoothly as possible", and it's then that Courtney realises once again "something's really wrong, because the engines are so loud".
"Since there's a hole in the wall, I will later find out," she said.
"We land back at the Portland airport,smoothly, somehow, and everybody starts clapping.
"Only time I'm okay with people clapping at the end of a flight!
"Of course that's when we start hearing information coming from the back of the plane that, like, a window's been ripped out, there's a hole in the plane.
"Everyone's okay, ish, we think, but phones were sucked out, out of their hands. Some things were lost.
"A kid had to be held down by his mum."
When they landed in Portland, emergency services quickly came onto the aeroplane asking if anyone needed help, before being "ushered to the back" of the plane where the hole was.
"Some people got off really quickly," Courtney said.
"And we're clearly the ones closest to the hole saying that, like, they almost died.
"Their phones were sucked out. It was wild."
When the passengers had disembarked, and were waiting in the customer service queue, the picture that's become synonymous with the terrifying incident started doing the rounds.
"We're speculating, was it the emergency door?" she said.
"It looks like more than a window. Or, like, could any part of the plane, a whole chunk of it, come off?
"We, of course, would later learn that it was a fuselage door, which is a potential emergency exit door, I've learned."
However, the fuselage door on that plane was a second one, was supposed to be "sealed up", Courtney said.
She got a flight out to Ontario the next day, and is now home with her mum and "doing okay".
Concluding her video, Courtney said: "I am so unbelievably grateful for those pilots and those crew members and, honestly, everybody on the plane for staying so calm.
"Everybody was so silent.
"You could tell we were just so afraid one breath would make the plane go down."
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Following the incident on Saturday, Alaska Airlines announced it had grounded all of its Boeing 737 Max-9 flights.
The company said it would focus on "safety" after shocking images of the incident hit headlines worldwide.
