Alaska Airlines pilot had no idea Boeing plane had giant hole ‘until we landed,’ then feared passengers were sucked out mid-flight

The Alaska Airlines pilot who guided 171 passengers and four flight attendants to safety when a door panel blew out of the aircraft wasn’t aware of the mid-flight emergency — but knew something was “catastrophically wrong.”

First Officer Emily Wiprud feared passengers were sucked out of the Boeing 737 Max 9 when she turned around and saw empty seats as she and her captain made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in January.

“The first indication was an explosion in my ears and then a whoosh of air,” Wiprud told CBS News. “My body was forced forward and there was a loud bang as well. … The flight deck door was open. I saw tubes hanging from the cabin.”

The flight departed from the Oregon airport just after 5 p.m. on Jan. 5 and was bound for Ontario, Calif.

The terrifying mid-air blowout happened six minutes after taking off when the plane was 16,000 feet in the air.

Wiprud said she and her captain were unaware that a door plug had blown off the left side of the fuselage but had realized a major incident had occurred.

Investigators have said the plug inside the new Alaska MAX 9 was missing four key bolts, resulting in the panel flying off.

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“I didn’t know that there was a hole in the airplane until we landed,” Wiprud said. “I knew something was catastrophically wrong.”

“It was so incredibly loud,” she recalled. “And I remember putting the oxygen mask on and trying to transmit to air traffic control and wondering ‘Why can’t I hear anything?'”

When the plane panel blew off, Wiprud’s headset had been sucked out of the plane along with two passengers’ phones and several aircraft components.

Wiprud, at one point, turned around and opened the flight deck’s door , where she says everyone looking at her had remained quiet and calm, before asking the flight attendants if everyone was good.

One attendant responded there were “empty seats and injuries.”

“I opened the flight deck door and I saw calm, quiet, hundreds of eyes staring right back at me,” she said. She asked the flight attendants if they were OK, and the crew members told her there were “empty seats and injuries” among the passengers.

Alaska Air crew feared passengers were lost in midair blowout: ‘There is a hole in the plane’

Wiprud and one of the flight attendants feared they had lost several passengers during the terrifying mid-air blowout.

“I said there is a hole in the plane, in the back of the plane and I’m sure we’ve lost passengers,” one flight attendant with about 20 years of experience told the National Transportation Safety Board after spotting the hole in the plane and five empty seats.

The unnamed attendant was worried about an unaccompanied child toward the plane’s rear. “All I could think of was that he was sitting there and he was too small to reach the mask and was probably really scared.”

One teen, who was sitting near the hole, had his shirt ripped off his body by the fast-flowing air.

Remarkably, there were no fatalities among the 177 souls onboard — 171 passengers, four flight attendants and two flight crew.

Three people onboard had sustained minor injuries.

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The pilots turned the commercial airliner around and returned to Portland International, completing the chaotic flight in 20 minutes.

Three passengers have since filed a lawsuit against Alaska Airlines and Boeing for $1 billion alleging both parties ignored obvious warning signs and that the fight should have never taken off.

Kyle Rinker and his girlfriend Amanda Strickland, along with another passenger Kevin Kwok, late last month filed the lawsuit in Multnomah County, Oregon, on behalf of passengers aboard Alaskan Airlines Flight 1282.

Wiprud spoke alongside Air Line Pilots Association president Captain Jason Ambrosi who commended the flight crews’ demeanor during the emergency.

“The most important safety device on any aircraft is two well-trained, qualified and rested pilots. … This crew instinctually put their training in place and executed just flawlessly,” Ambrosi said.

The first officer, who had logged roughly 8,300 hours total flight experience before the incident praised the flight’s captain, who accumulated about 12,700 hours of flight experience before Jan. 5.

“My captain is a hero. Same with the flight attendants, same with all the personnel that was there to support us that day,” Wiprud said. “And that should be celebrated. Everybody survived.”

Wiprud and the captain were named recipients of the 2023 ALPA Superior Airmanship Award in recognition of their skill and professionalism.

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