'I Thought We Were Going to Nose Dive Any Second': Alaska Airlines Passenger on 'Terrifying' Mid-Air Blow Out

An Alaska Airlines passenger is sharing her experience aboard the “terrifying” flight that experienced a mid-air incident that left a gaping hole in the side of the plane on Friday.

A passenger named Courtney, who goes by @imsocorny.on Tiktok, recalled the moment she heard a section of the plane’s fuselage get ripped off shortly after takeoff and the horrifying minutes that followed in a video shared on the platform.

“We all heard a really loud bang, a jolt, and a woosh of air came back at us really quickly,” she says in the video. “Immediately, the next moment, the oxygen masks came down from the overhead compartment.” Everyone quickly put on their masks without an announcement even needing to be made, she says.

Since she was sitting toward the front of the plane, she adds that she had no idea what had happened. The oxygen masks blocked the view through the cabin, but she knew something was definitely wrong. 

“I truly thought it was the engine – I thought an engine had blown out or a wing had gone down. That’s how loud and jolting that second was. I thought we were going to nose dive at any second. For a full 15 to 20 minutes that felt like a lifetime, I thought every second that went on, we were gonna start nose diving."

The time also left her thinking about her family should the worst happen.

"I just kept thinking what was this gonna do to my family if I didn’t make it to my mom and my sister." she recalls getting choked up. "I just was like, my mom’s never gonna recover from this. Will they ever get over this if this is how I go?"

In the absence of any information, she tried to stay calm. "I tried to just breathe . . . I was looking out the window just waiting, just hoping with every second that we got closer to the ground that we would be OK."

The pilots never said anything during the ordeal, Courtney says, but she says she was "totally fine with that. In my mind I was like, that’s fine, just focus on your job." The flight attendants did make an announcement telling passengers to keep masks on and stay in their seats, but didn't have any information about what exactly was happening.

She says she could then feel the plane starting to turn around and that she hoped they would make it back safely to their starting point of Portland International Airport in Oregon. 

Courtney adds that she’s “so grateful” she wasn’t sitting in the back of the plane because “stuff was getting sucked out.” She adds, “anybody who had a phone in their hand — gone, immediately”

On Sunday, Portland resident Sean Bates shared photos of an iPhone he believes came from the Alaska Airlines flight in a post on X. 

He said the phone was “still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282" when he found it on the side of Portland’s Barnes Road. 

The 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft was headed for Ontario, California when the incident occurred on Friday, forcing it to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff. 

All 171 passengers and six crew members made it back to the airport safely, though some passengers “experienced injuries that required medical attention,” according to a news release from Alaska Airlines. 

On Sunday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy shared in a media brief that the missing piece of the aircraft was found in a teacher's backyard in the Portland area.

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​​"I'm excited to announce that we found the door plug," Homendy said during the brief. She added that the teacher, named Bob, sent in two photos of the missing part.

"We are really pleased that Bob found this. I can just see the outside of the door plug from the pictures, the white portions, we can't see anything else," she added. "We're going to go pick that up and make sure that we begin analyzing it."