Text: Nian Xiaonuan
Edit| According to the snow under the jade pass
On April 28, 1988, Aloha Air Flight 243 took off from Hilo International Airport as usual, however, when it climbed to an altitude of 7,500 meters, a shocking scene suddenly occurred.
I saw that the door of the cockpit of the plane was gone, and the "Tianling cover" of the first-class cabin was immediately opened, and a flight attendant who was serving was also blown away by the strong wind in an instant.
So, how did this accident happen, and what happened to the flight attendant?
Flight AQ243 is a Boeing 737-200 passenger aircraft, which began its first flight in 1969 and has been 19 years old, because the aircraft mainly flies short-haul routes, so the number of takeoffs and landings is extremely large, with a total of 89,090 takeoffs and landings.
But in fact, according to the design, the Boeing 737-200 should have a take-off and landing life of 75,000 times, so the aircraft is already an old model that is overage and in service.
Flight AQ243 is short and usually takes just over half an hour to reach its destination, so most of the plane's time is spent climbing to cruising altitude.
At 1:30 p.m. on April 28, 1988, flight AQ243 began to soar over the Pacific Ocean again, taking off from Hilo International Airport and ending at Honolulu International Airport, the journey took only 35 minutes.
There were 3 flight attendants, 2 crew members and 89 passengers on board.
Captain Robert has 11 years of flying experience, and First Officer Madeleine has been with Aloha Air for 9 years and has a wealth of experience.
The three flight attendants are Clarabel Lansing, a purser who has been flying for 37 years, Michelle Honda, a Japanese flight attendant who has been flying for 14 years, and Jen Sato-Tomita, who has been flying for 19 years.
However, who would have thought that this ordinary flight would cause a huge air crash and make headlines in the world's media.
At first everything was normal, but after about 20 minutes, when the plane climbed to about 7,000 meters, the accident happened......
At that time, the passengers were all in their respective positions, and the foreman Lansing, who was sitting in the fifth row, was collecting the cups that the passengers had drunk. Suddenly, a loud bang came, and she was instantly sucked out of the cabin by the air current.
Next, people saw a horrific scene: a small piece of the ceiling at the front of the fuselage suddenly burst, and as the cabin lost pressure instantly, the rear of the cockpit gradually cracked, and finally a large piece of the cabin ceiling near the wing also burst......
In an instant, the plane became open-topped, and the seats in the front five rows became open-air seats, and the passengers were exposed to broad daylight.
It is important to know that explosive decompression is an extremely dangerous signal that can not only cause serious lung damage and lack of oxygen to passengers, but also project objects and debris with force.
It is conceivable that at an altitude of more than 7,000 meters, passengers in the open air have to endure strong winds, low temperatures and thin air, and even more endure the danger of falling at any time.
For a while, screams, curses, and cries came one after another, some people were injured, and some people lost consciousness.
At that time, the Honda had fallen to the floor, and despite the bleeding from her head, she still struggled to get up, picked up the closed-circuit phone and tried to contact the cockpit, "Captain, captain, please speak, please speak!"
However, the phone was no longer available, and she grabbed the bottom of her seat and crawled down the aisle shouting to the passengers:
"Please stay calm, fasten your seatbelts, the plane will land safely, please trust us. ”
Another flight attendant, Tomita, was hit in the head by a detached fragment of wreckage and was already unconscious. Fortunately, one of the passengers desperately grabbed her hand so that she was not sucked out of the cabin by the air current, otherwise her life would have been really difficult to protect.
At that time, the situation in the cockpit was also precarious, because of the influence of the air current, the two captains could not hear each other's words, and in a hurry, the captain took over the control of the aircraft from the co-pilot and began to make an emergency descent at a speed of 1,200 meters per minute.
Although such a rapid descent could cause a badly damaged aircraft to disintegrate according to emergency procedures, if it is not lowered to a certain altitude as soon as possible, everyone on board is at risk of hypoxia.
However, what the captain didn't know was that with the tearing of the front cabin, the emergency oxygen delivery system had been destroyed, and the passengers could not breathe in oxygen even if they had oxygen masks, and to make matters worse, as the minutes passed, the floor of the plane continued to deform, and the middle floor was raised upwards, and the body was at risk of disintegrating in the air at any time.
At that time, the captain chose to land the plane at an airport for emergency diversion, Kafurui Airport on Maui.
Soon, the co-pilot began calling the Kafurui airport tower, "I'm Aloha 243, can you hear me?"
"Please repeat, please repeat!" Fortunately, the tower responded.
"Aloha Flight 243 has declared a state of emergency and needs to enter and land!"
"Aloha 243 is allowed to land, please land on runway 2. ”
Soon, Kafurui Airport was busy, and the airport's fire and ambulance departments were ready for the arrival of flight AQ243.
However, when the aircraft was approaching the airport, the hydraulic control system suddenly failed, and the captain had to switch to mechanical manual control, which also meant that it became very difficult to control the aircraft.
So the co-pilot immediately pressed the landing gear switch, but the bad thing was that the nose landing gear was not lowered properly.
You know, if you force a forced landing in this situation, the result may cause the plane to explode and disintegrate on the runway, and then everyone on the plane will be killed, so the captain decisively decided to fly around the field first, and let the tower identify whether the nose landing gear is down.
In this way, with the cooperation of the staff of the tower of Furuii Airport, the plane was saved and finally landed safely on Runway 02 of the airport.
For a time, the passengers who survived the disaster could not help but cheer, and they were all grateful to the two captains for not being in a hurry, and it was their decisive handling that saved the lives of 89 passengers and 2 flight attendants of the entire plane.
Sadly, Purser Lansing was pushed out of her window by a strong air current, and her body was never found, despite a three-day search by the local coast guard in the nearby waters.
After the accident, it instantly aroused the attention and heated discussion of the world, what caused the disaster?
Soon after, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSC) launched an investigation, and the final results showed that it was caused by metal fatigue damage caused by crack oxidation, and that the root cause was the ineffectiveness of the aluminum sheet adhesive that bonded the aluminum sheets. Of course, the aging of the aircraft should also be one of the key factors in the occurrence of accidents.
In 1996, the airline built a Lansing Park at Honolulu International Airport to commemorate Lansing, the purser, who went missing in the plane crash.
Safety is no small matter, and hopefully similar tragedies will not happen again.
Resources
Popular Science China "Thrilling! The Passenger Plane Exploded at an Altitude of 10,000 Meters! At the Moment of Life and Death, the Captain Made a Decision......
Aviation Industry Network "The Far-reaching Impact of the 1988 Aloha Air Disaster"