Morning:
8°c
With a single dessert and just two glasses of wine our bill was kept in check - but the effort of doing so was not much fun
Latest: Gordon Brown apologises for his poor handwriting and for misspelling the name of a dead soldier in a letter to the young man’s mother
More...
Terrified Easyjet passengers feared they would die as plane plummeted 23,000ft
Last updated at 10:07am on 05.07.07
Emergency: Oxygen masks were needed
Amid fears of a terror attack, the 150 passengers and crew on an easyJet flight from Gatwick to Palma in Majorca frantically grabbed for oxygen masks.
In a manoeuvre designed to overcome a fall in cabin pressure, the jet continued to plunge until it reached 12,000ft and levelled off.
Minutes later the almost-full Airbus A319 made an emergency landing at Toulouse airport in France, where passengers received medical treatment.
One woman was taken to hospital suffering acute pain in her ears caused by the sudden pressure drop and a ten-year-old girl was treated by paramedics for discomfort in her ears.
Scroll down for more...
The easyJet flight from Gatwick to Palma in Majorca plunged thousands of feet before making an emergency landing
An elderly woman was treated for an injury after tripping while leaving the plane.
EasyJet engineers were last night investigating the cause of the problem as the airline sent a replacement plane from the UK to Toulouse to take the passengers on to Palma.
Passenger Kate Mulvey from London said: "Everyone was screaming. It was absolutely terrifying.
"We thought we were going to die. It dropped from 35,000ft to 12,000ft in a very short time. People were very frightened. You could hardly breathe. Some fell over in the aisles. We were very lucky."
lan Royland, 40, a band leader from Chelsea said: "When the oxygen masks suddenly shot down I practically fainted.
"I'd already had a fear that something was wrong.
"My girlfriend had heard a noise as if a drill wasn't connecting and a screw was loose coming from under the wing, and there was a strange smell of sweet tobacco. The plane suddenly shot down and my life flashed before my eyes."
Kathy Vianchi, 37, had flown from America to holiday with a friend. She said: "Here I am in England and of course the first thing you think is terrorists.
"I was sitting at the front of the plane and the passenger next to me had felt there was something wrong. When the masks came down my fears were confirmed.
"I started to shake. My life flashed before me and I felt I was going to be sick."
An easyJet spokesman said: "The flight deck were responding to a reduction in cabin pressure and oxygen flow.
"They followed standard operating procedure, which was to descend, while oxygen masks were dropped.
"I can appreciate that it would have been alarming for passengers to descend quite quickly from 35,000ft to 12,000ft."
But she insisted the manoeuvre was in line with safety rules. It was a "precautionary landing" not a maximum distress "Mayday" landing.
Reader views (16)
Well done to the pilot and crew! Shame on the tabloids again for the way they get it all out of proportion.
- Alex Gallacher, Barrow England
The reason an aircraft has to decend in such a manner is due to the fact the a normal human being has a very short time of useful consciousness at 35,000 ft - if my memeory serves me correctly, my pilot training indicated you should expect less than 30 seconds ability to perform any task normally at this height. After this, the initial signs of Hypoxia start to set in (very quickly I might add) as well as potential decompression sickness. Not only do the pilots want to get the passengers down to a flight level where all passengers can breathe without oxygen, the pilots themselves are human and need to get themselves to an altitude where they are able to function properly in an emergency situation. A lot goes on behind that locked door.
Pilots never get the credit due in such a situation unfortunately - a job well done boys.
- Paul, Brighton
Standard Journo use of the words plummet and plunge when talking about aircraft incidents.... makes it sound more dramatic. Why not just say it had an expediated decent.
Must have been bad particularly for the poor old lady who tripped as she left the plane. Not too sure if that was caused by the depressurisation.
Anyway well done to the crew who as per usual fail to get a mention for a job well done!!
Shame the wrong picture was used.
- Matt Wright, Pprune, Kent
People should calm down and stop assuming everything is a terrorist attack. Otherwise they will have won. This sort of issue is unusual but but not rare and the pilots have a standard way of dealing with it.
- Peter We, London
Thanks for the jet graphic ... reporting at its best!
- Tom, London
Looks like a standard emergency descent to 12,000' due to loss of pressurization. It does not happen very often but it is a drill we practice regularly in the simulator. The aircraft does not plummet nor plunge but carries out a rapid descent fully under control.
- Adam Takach, Sydney Australia
While to the uninitiated this was no doubt the terrifying event to which you relate, to the crew of the plane it is nothing more than a routine event, one for which they will have practiced on numerous occasions in the simulator.
Whenever there is a problem with cabin pressure, the first thing to do is decend to an altitude where oxygen is not needed, then to land at the nearest suitable airport. Congratulations to the pilots and cabin crew on a job well done!
- Steve, Salisbury, UK
Maybe next time people will listen to the cabin crew giving doing the safety demonstrations!
It's no big deal. What's all the fuss about?
- Jim, Oxford, UK
This is a standard procedure and is repeatedly trained for by flight crews.
- Alex Toft, Leeds, UK
If this was standard operating procedure, it would make sense to have a standard passenger announcement instead of just leaving people in fear of their lives.
- Robin, London, England
Scare mongering, all in line with procedure. Good job by the crew, well done.
- Ben, Maidenhead
Could the pilot not have put passengers at ease telling them that the descent was normal procedure under the circumstances rather than them being terrified?
- Julie, Essex
The aircraft plunged did it, or did it make a controlled descent? Quote "we were very lucky" what lucky you didn't spill your G&T, what actually happened is that the aircraft suffered a serious but not dangerous malfunction and the crew handled it in a very professional way, the fact that some of the passengers overreacted shows not that they were in any danger, just that they did not understand the situation.
- Mark, Huntingdon England
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
- Trevor Roll, London
This doesn't sound like a major technical fault at all! A major technical fault would be if the wing of the airbus was to suddendly fall off during flight!
If the flight deck hadn't dropped down to a safe enough altitutude it would have been another Helios iccendent where not one passenger lived!
Well done to Crew!
- J.S, Essex
I see...sounds like a major technical fault to me! Promotion for the Easy Jet publicity person who isssued this bizarre statement!
- William Grierson, Kimpton, UK
