By AXEL TURCIOS
Last week, passengers from Southwest Airlines flight 3426 lived their worst nightmare when they heard the captain saying the plane was going down.
According to passenger Shelley Willis, who spoke to CNN, the announcement at first sounded like a joke, but then it was terror that took over.
“He said, ‘We’re going down.’ And everyone is looking around like, ‘is this a joke? Is he serious?’ And then you felt the nosedive.” Willis was saying.
Based on later reports, the captain had apparently been working on a plan with flight attendants after getting an alert prompting irregular cabin pressure. While doing so, he accidentally activated the PA system letting everyone on board hear those horrifying words.
The Boeing 737 aircraft, took off from Tampa to Raleigh Durham International Airport in North Carolina.
Willis, who is a nurse, said that the frightening drop that occurred at about 100 miles from the airport, gave a panic attack to the first-time flyer seated next to her.
Could this have really made an impact on the passengers’ lives?
Many news media outlets were saying that many of the flyers were complaining about the way the captain handled the incident. Others were speculating about possible future lawsuits demanding compensation after the “uneasy feelings” experienced.
At the end, the aircraft was leveled out and landed safely at the original destination.
Southwest Airlines said in a statement; “flight 3426 experienced a ‘maintenance alert’ that was resolved at 25,000 feet.”
As of now, questions are still to be answered, but the fact is that things like these may scare the heck out of anyone. Probing that flying is not for everyone because when you step inside a plane you are not 100 percent sure you’ll step out.
Think about it next time you decide to board a flight to London. Why? Flying from Miami takes almost nine hours to cross the Atlantic Ocean to reach the European continent.
For those passengers who experienced terror aboard flight 3426, might take a little bit more than nine hours to actually step inside an aircraft once again.