United 747 cockpit takeoff12/29/2023 ![]() I thought,` Oh my God, how did they get us way out here in Hawaii?’ I thought we were goners” Christensen said. Two months previously a Pan Am Boeing 747 had exploded over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie killing 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground. One word flashed through Christensen’s and the other crew members minds: Lockerbie. ″I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when her house gets picked up and everything gets blown away,″ Purser Sarah Shanahan said in an interview to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin after the accident. Everything came down from the ceiling and the walls inward to us.” ![]() “Out of the corner of my eye, as I was being thrown down, I watched ceiling panels fall door panels and side panels blew off. There was grey, swirling smoke and debris flying everywhere.“ It was like being in the middle of a huge cannon blast, a blast of cold air. I felt a cold wind and sucking if you will, but it wasn’t a sucking. In that instant, his senses record an indelible nightmare: “Immediately the air filled with a hazy smoke and flying debris. ″I was praying for my life, for the lives of the passengers, that we would get down safely.″Īt the moment of the explosion, Christensen was facing forward, hands empty, standing partly in the aft service centre. “I call it flag time when I was hanging onto the rungs, and my feet were literally off the ground, hanging in mid-air,” she said. Laure Brentlinger was making her way up the spiral staircase when the decompression occurred and was left clinging on for her life. Passengers and other crew members saw her clinging to a seat and were able to pull her back inside, despite her serious injuries. The devastation caused to the fuselage following the explosive decompression.Ī gaping hole was left in the side of the aircraft through which FA Mae Sapolu, in the Business Class cabin, was almost blown out. The ensuing explosive decompression caused the cabin floor to cave in, and ten seats were ejected, killing all eight passengers seated here and one behind. Unbeknown to the crew and passengers, the forward cargo door had blown off with such force that it had bent over and slammed into the side of the fuselage, ripping half of the cabin wall out with it. “We heard a tremendous explosion,” Cronin later described “and the craft violently reacted.” “What the hell was that?” Captain Cronin asked.ġ.8 seconds later all hell broke loose. ![]() “A Tremendous Explosion”Īs the jumbo climbed through 22,000 feet the crew and passengers suddenly heard a loud “thump” which shook the aircraft. Meanwhile, there was the usual chatter in the aft galley, and Christensen collected some ice and orange juice from the counter and placed it on his cart. ![]() Lythgoe was on the phone in the First-Class service bay, asking Lam to send up more champagne. In the right aisle behind the last row in Business Class, Sapolu was hunting down a Diet Coke. The Boeing 747’s iconic spiral staircase.įlight Attendant’s (FA’s) Benoit and Sapolu were already serving drinks to passengers in Business Class while Lam was prepping meals in the forward lower galley also known as ‘The Pit’. ![]()
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