Emma Vu was sleeping on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on Friday, January 5, 2024, when she suddenly felt the plane drop, saw the oxygen masks coming down and heard people on her flight screaming. A section of the plane blew off 10 minutes into the flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
There were 171 passengers on the plane. "You just never think it's going to happen to you and then it literally did happen to me," Emma told CNN, adding that her memory of what happened is a little "blurry." In a video shared on TikTok, Emma showed the texts that she sent to her parents while on the flight.
"The masks r down," Emma said in a text message to her parents. "I am so scared right now. Please pray for me. Please i don't want to die."
She described the experience as "so scary" because she didn't really know what was happening at the time.
Emma added that she is "so grateful" for the women sitting near her and for the flight attendants because they helped her calm down. "No one knew what was happening," she said, adding that it was "so surreal" to be in a situation that actually required using the safety information provided before each flight.
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Because she was seated in the middle of the plane and the section that blew off the plane was behind her, she didn't know exactly what was happening — just that something was clearly wrong.
"I was not doing well to be honest, and (the passengers next to me) were rubbing my back, giving me comfort," Emma told CNN, again thanking the passengers seated next to her for their support. "Even the flight attendant, she was so sweet. She came up to me in the midst of everything and was like, 'it's going to be OK.'"
Emma told CNN that the flight attendant even remembered her after the plane landed and asked if she could give her a hug.
Another passenger, Stephanie King, also made the decision to send "final" texts to her loved ones while on the plan. “Because I was flying alone, I drafted some text messages to my boyfriend and my mom to say something was going on, that I was scared, and I love them," she told CNN.
She added that although the plane landed safely in less than 10 minutes, "that was more than enough time to freak out."
Another passenger, Courtney, took to TikTok to speak about her experience on the flight. Courtney (@imsocorny on TikTok) was seated toward the front of the plane and at the time of the incident, she said that everyone was "still in full take-off mode," so people had their seatbelts on and weren't trying to move around the plane. She described suddenly hearing a loud sound and feeling a "whoosh of air."
"I thought we were going to nosedive at any second," Courtney said on TikTok, explaining that because she was seated far from the section that blew off the plane, she had no idea what was happening.
"I just kept thinking: what was this going to do to my family? if I didn't make it" she continued. "I just was like, 'my mom's never gonna recover from this.' Like will they ever get over this if this is how I go?"
When the plane started to descend, Courtney began experiencing "full panic all over again" because it was "so loud," making it obvious that something was wrong with the plane.
Only after the plane landed safely back in Portland did Courtney start to learn about what actually happened. Though she started her video by saying her mind was still "too awake" after the experience, which prevented her from sleeping for some time, she concluded her story by saying that she is doing alright.
"I can safely say I am home, with my mom, and I'm doing OK," she said. "I am so unbelievably grateful for those pilots and those crew members and honestly everybody on the plane for staying so calm."
