Cuong Tran did not take photos or videos of the hole that opened in the side of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.
Could not. Her iPhone was sucked through the opening and fell into what she thought must be oblivion, along with one of her Nike shoes and a sock.
Tran was sitting in seat 27A on the Alaska flight when a door plug came loose from the side of the plane Friday night, causing what National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy later said. referred to as “explosive decompression.”
But miraculously, on Wednesday, Tran got his iPhone 14 back, which Alaska Airlines sent him, and the phone was still working.
Cuong Tran's phone, which fell five kilometers away, was still working when it was recovered.
(Cuong Tran)
“I think it might be because it landed on soft ground or something,” he said. “It's working. It's 100% fine.”
Tran's ordeal occurred during the brief Alaska Airlines flight after taking off from the Portland, Oregon, airport bound for Ontario. He made an emergency landing after the piece of fuselage “came off the plane,” as transportation officials said.
The plane turned around and landed back in Portland, where it had taken off. There were no major injuries.
“I was falling asleep, phone in hand, and then the captain sent me a message that we were above 10,000 feet. The next thing I know, I hear a whistling sound — a very strong wind,” Tran told The Times. “My shoe and sock were sucked into the plane, along with my phone.”
But Tran wasn't worried about himself. His main concern was whether there was someone sitting in the front seat, in 26A, where the hole opened. He was happy to learn from the person sitting in the aisle seat in row 26 that the window seat was empty.
As a result of the explosion, the headrests of two seats adjacent to the opening were torn off.
Tran said time slowed down after the incident woke him up and what could have been seconds seemed like minutes.
“To be honest, I just couldn't believe it. I wondered what's going on here, why does everything feel so weird? Next thing I know I'm like oh shit, there's a big hole. She was just recording everything in slow motion.”
He saw a teenage passenger's shirt fly out of the opening and feared it was a human body.
“I saw that half of his body was outside the plane, then I saw that his shirt was being sucked,” he said.
Tran had his feet under the seat in front of him at the time of the incident and suffered bruises and sprains to his ankle.
Despite the trauma, Tran took another flight later that day and returned safely to his home in California.
There is no hole in that flight, he said.
