C.B.S.
Eight months after a door plug on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 exploded, co-pilot Emily Wiprud is talking about how heartbreaking the ordeal was for everyone on board.
The pilot, who was the first officer on the now infamous flight, sat down with CBS News, where she confessed that she didn’t realize the extent of the damage when it first occurred. As Wiprud recalled, she first heard an explosion and a loud “air hiss” before her body was pushed forward.
JANUARY 2024
According to Wiprud, he looked back through the flight deck door, which was open at the time, and “saw pipes hanging from the cockpit.”
The pilots went into emergency mode and began preparing a strategy for a safe landing… without realizing that there was a huge hole in the wall of the plane.
He added… “I didn’t know there was a hole in the plane until we landed. I knew something was catastrophically wrong.”
Amid the chaos in the cabin, Wiprud had trouble communicating with air traffic control because his headset had been removed.
However, according to Wiprud, everything was surprisingly quiet in the plane’s cockpit… which surprised the pilot given the nature of the situation.
During the crisis, flight attendants told her there were “empty seats and injuries” following the damage… leaving Wiprud terrified they may have lost some of the 171 passengers.
Fortunately, no one was killed in the incident… although one passenger, a teenager, had his shirt ripped off his body.
The young man was sitting in the row with the busted panel… but quickly moved to another seat, causing a brief panic that he was missing.
The results of the initial investigation found 4 key screws were missing of the door stopper, which were essential to keep it in place.
The FBI, the Department of Justice and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident… Boeing, the company that built the plane, is complying with the investigations.