Advertisement
Advertisement
A video recorded by a passenger shows the frightening moment the captain of the AirAsia X flight told passengers that their survival would depend on their co-operation. Photo: Seven Network

Videos show terrifying AirAsia X flight to Malaysia that shook ‘like washing machine’ for 90 minutes

‘Our survival depends on your co-operating. Hopefully everything will turn out for the best,’ passengers were told by crew

Whatever went wrong in the air off Australia’s west coast on Sunday, it started quickly and violently, and it did not stop.

First, AirAsia X passengers told Perth Now and other outlets, there came a loud bang about 90 minutes into the flight from Perth to Kuala Lumpur. It woke some people up. Sophie Nicolas said it was an explosion on left wing, while Dave Parry remembered a strange smell wafting through the cabin.

Then the shaking. Endless shaking, up and down the jet. “Like you were sitting on top of a washing machine,” a passenger told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It lasted another 90 minutes, passengers reported - minutes full of tears, prayers and gallows humour as the rattling jet limped back toward Australia.

Brenton Atkinson told the broadcasting station he looked out at the window and could see the engine rattling on the wing.

Inside, seat backs shook like jello blocks. A deafening thud-thud-thud-thud soundtracks every mobile phone video from the aisles. Some passengers gritted their teeth. Others just folded their hands and endured.

A blade had sheared off an engine, the captain told passengers at one point, according to Perth Now. But AirAsia told Nine News Australia it had no reason to think the plane had engine troubles - blaming the incident vaguely on a “technical issue.”

The airline later issued a statement: “Passengers were attended to by our ground staff upon landing and were provided with all necessary assistance.

“Our engineers are taking precautionary steps to check the aircraft. Guests on board the flight (were) transferred to the next available flight or the recovery flight D7689, which safely departed Perth at 23:40 hours on the same day.

“The safety of our guests is our utmost priority.”

A spokesman for Perth Airport said much the same: “There was a plane that discovered a technical issue and returned.”

It was the second scare involving an Airbus A330 in Australia this month, with a China Eastern plane making an emergency landing in Sydney after a huge hole appeared in one of its engine casings.

In any event, an early report from the loudspeaker could not have done much to reassure passengers.

“Please listen to everything,” a man said. “Our survival depends on your cooperating. Hopefully everything will turn out for the best.”
An apparently damaged engine on the left side of the AirAsia X flight from Perth. Photo: Seven Network

Those first minutes were among the worst, some passengers reported.

“I was crying a lot,” Sophie Nicolas told Australia’s ABC. “A lot of people were crying, trying to call their moms and stuff. But we couldn’t really do anything. Just wait and trust the captain.”

The captain asked everyone to pray, Nicolas told Perth Now.

“I’ll be saying a prayer, too,” she recalled him saying.

Less than three years earlier, another AirAsia flight crashed into the Java Sea and killed everyone on board, the result of a faulty rudder control system. But if any of the passengers on Sunday’s flight remembered that, they did not recall it in their interviews.

At the captain’s request, Perth Now reported, some passed the time keeping an eye on the left engine in case something else went wrong.
An AirAsia X Airbus. Photo: AirAsia X

After a while, a sense of quasi-normalcy returned to the jittery flight.

In one video, a man casually walks down shaking aisles. In another, two Australian men grin for motion-blurred selfies.

“Not great, not amazing,” says one, his voice muffled by the thumping. “We’re having 50 million beers when we get back.”

As the plane rounded back on Australia, police stood by for a possible water landing, according to Nine News.

For two full minutes of descent, CNN reported, passengers held the brace position - heads forward, unable to see if the plane was going to make it.

When it did, a passenger told CNN, passengers erupted in applause and later shook the pilot’s hand.

“I still arrive!!!” someone posted on Instagram. “Thank you God!!!”

The shaking was finally over then. No one was reported injured. Now to wait for explanations.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: ‘Washing machine’ jet shakes travellers
Post